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Lambeth Council (202222082)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202222082

Lambeth Council

11 March 2024


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 reports of a leak at the property.

Background

  1. The resident occupies the property under a secure tenancy agreement with the landlord.
  2. The property has a central atrium which has a glass roof. In or around November 2022, the glass roof began to leak. The resident emailed the landlord on 10 November 2022 and notified it of the leak. He contacted this Service on the same day saying that the landlord had failed to respond to his reports of leaks. This Service wrote to the landlord and asked it to provide a complaint response.
  3. The landlord raised a request for the roof to be repaired on 25 November 2022 with a completion date of 25 January 2023.
  4. In its stage 1 complaint response to the resident, on 2 February 2023, the landlord said that its contractors had attended the property in December 2022 when it had been too wet to go on the roof. It said it hoped it would soon be dry enough to repair the roof, but this would be dependent on the weather.
  5. In February 2023, the resident told this Service he was not satisfied with the landlord’s complaint response and wanted the works to be completed.
  6. On 11 April 2023, the landlord sent its stage 2 complaint response, stating that it had received an initial report on 25 October 2022 and carried out repairs in November 2022. The resident had written to it in February 2022 to say the roof was still leaking. It had attended and carried out further works which solved the problem. It said it had raised a job for redecoration which would be carried out in late April 2023.
  7. The landlord completed redecoration of the affected areas of the flat in April 2023. The resident referred his complaint to this Service as he remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

  1. The resident says the events set out in this report had an impact on his health which was already poor. It is not within the Ombudsman’s authority or expertise to determine how a landlord’s actions or lack of action may affect a resident’s health. The Ombudsman can only assess whether the landlord appropriately considered matters, responded reasonably, applied its policies and procedures, complied with any relevant legislation and followed good practice when reaching decisions.
  2. The resident has also said he is unhappy that the landlord failed to compensate him for items that were damaged by incoming rainwater. These included his phone, a power bank and some clothes. However, while he mentioned this in his correspondence with the Ombudsman, we have seen no evidence that he raised the matter with the landlord. The Housing Ombudsman Scheme states, at paragraph 42(a), that the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which are made prior to having exhausted a member’s complaints procedure. Therefore, this issue has not been considered in this report.

ASB

  1. The landlord is responsible for repairs to the property’s roof both under its policy and the tenancy agreement. Its policy divides repairs into 5 categories ranging from Priority 1, the most urgent, which should be undertaken within 24 hours and Priority 5, the least urgent, which must be carried out within a specified timeframe or 90 days unless otherwise stated.
  2. The landlord’s records are unclear as to the exact date on which certain events occurred. However, dated documents such as emails allow this Service to reach a view as to the approximate date of events. The first record seen by this Service of the resident raising his concerns with the landlord is 10 November 2022. The resident says in his email that he had contacted the landlord before this date, but this Service has seen no evidence to support this claim.
  3. On each occasion that the resident emailed the landlord, it replied to his email and asked him to call the office to explain the problem further and to arrange a date for an inspection.
  4. The landlord raised a Priority 5 repair job on 25 November 2022 with a completion date of 9 January 2023. This classification was, it seems, made after a visit to the resident’s property because the landlord considered the leak to be containable. Nothing seen in this investigation indicates that this categorisation was inappropriate. 
  5. On the available evidence, the works were carried out in February 2023. The landlord says that delay was caused by poor weather which made going on the roof in January impossible and further delay by the logistical difficulty of erecting scaffolding. Clearly, the contractors could not be expected to work if it was unsafe to do so. The landlord had, appropriately, advised the resident about the reasons for the delay. Therefore, on the basis of the available information, the works were carried out broadly in line with the timeframe set out when the job was raised. There is no evidence indicating the landlord missed opportunities to resolve the leak earlier than it did.
  6. On the available evidence, the redecoration required because of the leak was carried out in April 2023. There is no requirement in the landlord’s repairs policy for it to carry out redecoration. Thus, it went beyond its obligations in doing so, demonstrating its willingness to fully resolve the matter.
  7. This report concludes that the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of a leak at the property was, in all the circumstances, reasonable and it did not amount to maladministration.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of a leak at the property.