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Hyde Housing Association Limited (202402117)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202402117

Hyde Housing Association Limited

16 May 2025


Our approach

The Housing Ombudsman’s approach to investigating and determining complaints is to decide what is fair in all the circumstances of the case. This is set out in the Housing Act 1996 and the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme). The Ombudsman considers the evidence and looks to see if there has been any ‘maladministration’, for example whether the landlord has failed to keep to the law, followed proper procedure, followed good practice or behaved in a reasonable and competent manner.

Both the resident and the landlord have submitted information to the Ombudsman and this has been carefully considered. Their accounts of what has happened are summarised below. This report is not an exhaustive description of all the events that have occurred in relation to this case, but an outline of the key issues as a background to the investigation’s findings.

The complaint

  1. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s request for repairs to the balcony.
  2. We have also investigated the landlord’s handling of the associated complaint.

Background

  1. The resident has been an assured tenant of the landlord, a housing association. The property is a flat with a balcony.
  2. The resident’s daughter acted as his representative when contacting the landlord and the Service about the matters considered in this report, and informed the landlord on the initial request for repair that the resident was vulnerable due to age. Both the resident and his representative were in contact with the landlord. As such, for clarity we refer to both as “the resident” in this report.
  3. On 28 March 2023 the resident completed the landlord’s repair request form, requesting repairs to his balcony. He explained that a drainage pipe on the property’s balcony was loose and had caused mould to grow on the balcony. He said he had asked for repairs on this balcony in the past, but they had not been completed. On 25 April 2023 the resident followed up on his repair request with the landlord.
  4. In June 2023, the landlord’s contractor replaced the panels on the balcony that were affected by mould.
  5. On 13 November 2023 the resident emailed the landlord to complain that the landlord had not fixed the drainage or the mould on the balcony railing. He also complained that the edges of the balcony floor panels were not fully sealed. The landlord formally acknowledged his complaint on 17 November 2023.
  6. On 6 December 2023 the landlord issued its stage 1 response. The landlord apologised for the delay in completing the balcony repair, and said contractors would attend on 8 and 11 December 2023 to fix the drainage and the mould. It said that the gaps in the floor sealing were intentional to allow for drainage, so it would not organise for the gaps to be closed. The landlord offered the resident £350 compensation for its delays in completing the balcony repair, and £100 for its complaint handling failures.
  7. On 7 December 2023, the resident escalated the complaint. He complained about the appearance of the gaps in the balcony floor sealing, and said he was concerned that it would cause mould.
  8. On 11 December 2023, the landlord replaced the balcony railing. On 28 December 2023, the landlord installed drainage piping on the balcony.
  9. On 26 March 2024, after the resident followed up twice, the landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint at stage 2 of its process. It provided its formal response on 10 April 2024. It acknowledged that it did not complete the drainage repair until 28 December 2023, and offered an additional £50 to compensate for this further delay since its stage 1 response. It confirmed its decision from stage 1 not to adjust the sealing on the balcony flooring.
  10. On 30 April 2024 the resident escalated his concerns to the Service. He said the landlord’s lack of action had affected his and his daughter’s health, and that he wanted the landlord to complete the work on the balcony and offer compensation to cover the time taken and stress the landlord caused.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. Under paragraph 42.c. of the Scheme the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, were not brought to the attention of the landlord as a formal complaint within a reasonable period, normally within 12 months of the matters arising. The resident mentioned making repair requests to the landlord relating to the balcony as far back as October 2021.
  2. We have seen no evidence of the resident raising a formal complaint about the balcony repair until 7 December 2023. As such, the investigation will focus on the events leading to this complaint which exhausted the landlord’s process, and particularly related to the landlord’s response to his request for repairs we have seen evidence for on 28 March 2023.
  3. Under paragraph 42.f. of the Scheme the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, concern matters where the Ombudsman considers it quicker, fairer, more reasonable or more effective to seek a remedy through the courts, other tribunal or procedure. The resident said that the landlord’s handling of the matters under review in this investigation had negatively impacted his and his daughter’s mental and physical health.
  4. The Service is unable to establish legal liability or award damages for personal injury. These matters are better suited to consideration by the courts. This report will therefore not consider the personal injury aspects of the resident’s complaint. However, we will consider whether the landlord’s conduct caused distress or inconvenience to the resident.

The landlord’s handling of the balcony repair

  1. The resident’s complaint had 2 aspects in relation to the repair timeframes and the repair quality. For clarity we have looked into the 2 aspects separately.

The landlord’s repair process

  1. The landlord’s repair policy states that non-urgent repairs will be planned with a commitment to be completed within 120 days. It defines non-urgent repairs as works that are ‘complex, multi disciplined, require detailed planning, weather related, non-essential’. As this repair was to an external balcony and required multiple works to rectify both the drainage and the mould, it was reasonable for the landlord to treat this repair as non-urgent.
  2. The resident initially raised the repair request on 28 March 2023. Under the landlord’s non-urgent repair timeframe, it should have planned the repairs to be completed before 26 July 2023. The resident confirmed that some initial works were completed in June 2023. However, the landlord acknowledged in its formal complaint responses to the resident that it had not completed the mould repairs until it had replaced the balcony railing on 11 December 2023, and had not completed the drainage repairs until it installed an overflow pipe and further sealing on 28 December 2023.
  3. These repairs were completed 139 days and 156 days outside of the landlord’s policy timeframes respectively, and the resident was forced to make multiple repair requests and a formal complaint in order to have them completed. We have seen no evidence to show why the repair could not be completed within the landlord’s policy timeframes. These delays were unnecessary and caused considerable inconvenience to the resident.
  4. In its formal complaint responses to the resident, the landlord acknowledged that it had failed to arrange the works to the balcony in a timely manner despite the resident’s attempts to chase the repair. It apologised for the inconvenience and explained that it had introduced a new communication management system to better track complaint investigations and improve communication with the resident. It offered £400 to the resident to compensate for the distress and inconvenience caused, the delays in completing the repairs, and for the resident’s efforts.
  5. This response was reasonable and consistent with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles: be fair, put things right, and learn from outcomes. The landlord apologised for all the failures identified in this report. It acknowledged the impact on the resident and demonstrated that it had learned from the complaint. The offer of £400 is consistent with the Ombudsman’s remedy guidance for failures which reflect to a finding of maladministration. This amount of compensation is proportionate considering the failure affected the resident’s use of a non-essential part of the property for an extended period of time, and required significant effort on the part of a vulnerable resident to resolve.

The quality of the repair

  1. The resident raised concerns in his stage 1 complaint of 13 November 2023 that the edges of the balcony flooring were not fully sealed. In his stage 2 complaint of 7 December 2023 he said the gaps in the sealing were ‘unpleasant to the eye’, and that he was concerned that the gaps would allow water to sit underneath the balcony and cause mould.
  2. The landlord organised for contractors to inspect the balcony on 21 November 2023 and 16 March 2024, as part of its investigations of the resident’s stage 1 and 2 complaints respectively. The contractors advised the landlord after both inspections that the gaps in the sealing were necessary to allow water to drain, and after the second inspection that the work completed was fit for purpose.
  3. It was reasonable for the landlord to rely on its contractors’ expert opinions when it decided not to undertake any further work on the balcony floor sealing. We have seen evidence to demonstrate the landlord took the resident’s concerns about the sealing seriously and provided a fair explanation of its decision in both of its complaint responses.
  4. In summary, the landlord appropriately responded to both aspects of the resident’s concerns. It provided proportionate remedy in relation to the identified failures and a clear and evidence–based explanation on the quality of the works.

The associated complaint

  1. At the time of this complaint, the landlord’s complaints policy timeframes for its formal responses to complaints were 10 working days after acknowledgment for stage 1 complaints, and 20 working days after receipt for stage 2 complaints.
  2. When the landlord acknowledged the resident’s stage 1 complaint on 17 November 2023, it said it would provide a response by 1 December 2023 and would update the resident if it could not provide a response by this date. The landlord provided its response on 6 December 2023, which was delayed 3 working days outside of the landlord’s policy timeframe. This was unreasonable, as we have seen no evidence to show the landlord kept the resident updated on the delay or notified him that it needed an extension of the time to respond.
  3. In its stage 1 response, the landlord offered the resident £100 to compensate for complaint handling failures, without further explanation or context. This is inconsistent with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles, as the landlord did not address its failures with enough specificity to put things right or to demonstrate that it learned from the complaint. However, this compensation was proportionate for the failures related to the delay in issuing its stage 1 response and the lack of update or agreed extension with resident.
  4. The resident escalated his complaint on 7 December 2023. The landlord did not provide its stage 2 response until 10 April 2024, after the resident chased the complaint 3 times on 8 January, 25 March, and 9 April 2024. This was unreasonable, as the landlord provided its stage 2 response 65 working days outside of its policy timeframes. It also missed commitments it made to the resident to provide an update on his stage 2 complaint by 17 March 2024, and to provide a response by 6 April 2024. These delays and failures to follow through on promised deadlines placed an unfair burden on the resident to chase the complaint. In its stage 2 response, the landlord repeated its offer of £100 to compensate for complaints handling failures but failed to explain or apologise for any specific delay in the response or at all address them.
  5. The redress the landlord offered is insufficient to compensate for the severity of the failures, considering the repeated delays in the landlord’s complaints process (particularly extensive at stage 2), and the opportunities the landlord missed to address these failures and put things right during its complaints process.
  6. Taking into account all of the circumstances, it is the Ombudsman’s opinion that the landlord’s complaint handling was unreasonable.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53.b. of the Scheme, the landlord made an offer of reasonable redress which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolved the complaint about its handling of the balcony repair satisfactorily.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme there was maladministration with regards to the landlord’s handling of the resident’s associated complaint.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

38. Within 4 weeks of this report, the Ombudsman orders the landlord to pay the resident a total of £250 compensation (including £100 offered during its complaints process if not paid already) for the time and trouble caused by its complaint handling failures.

  1. Within 4 weeks of this report, the Ombudsman orders the landlord to apologise to the resident for the distress and inconvenience caused by its delays in responding to the resident’s stage 1 and 2 complaints. The landlord should refer to the Service’s Apologies Guidance in making this apology.

Recommendations

  1. The Ombudsman recommends the landlord to pay the resident the £400 it offered in its stage 2 complaint response for the failures to the balcony repairs, if it has not done so already.