Applications are open to join the next Housing Ombudsman Resident Panel – find out more Housing Ombudsman Resident Panel.

Lewisham Council (202321211)

Back to Top

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202321211

Lewisham Council

17 September 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 repairs to the resident’s porch light.

Background

  1. The resident occupies the property as a leaseholder. The resident is a pensioner, with health vulnerabilities that affect her balance.
  2. On 22 August 2023, the resident reported to the landlord that the communal porch light was not working. The landlord scheduled an appointment to repair the light on 24 August 2023. However, the resident raised a complaint as the landlord failed to attend the appointment and did not respond to her email.
  3. The landlord issued a stage one response on 1 September 2023. It apologised for the inconvenience and offered the resident £10 compensation for the missed appointment. It rescheduled the repair for 5 September 2023. However, it failed to attend.
  4. Following a further failed attendance on 12 September 2023, the resident escalated her complaint. On 25 September 2023, the landlord issued its stage two response. It apologised for the missed appointments and offered £60 compensation (inclusive of the £10 already offered). The landlord rescheduled the repair for 29 September 2023.
  5. The landlord failed to attend the appointment and the resident escalated her complaint. The landlord rescheduled the repair for 10 October 2023. It advised the resident that operatives had attended as scheduled but was unable to complete the repair and rescheduled it for 25 October 2023.
  6. On 30 October 2023, the landlord issued a stage three response. It acknowledged that the resident experienced inconvenience due to the delayed repairs. It said that the repair had taken too long to complete and the lack of communication with the resident was inappropriate. The landlord offered an additional £60 compensation.
  7. The resident remains dissatisfied due to the landlord’s lack of communication and poor service that it had provided.

Assessment and findings

  1. The resident’s lease outlines that the landlord is responsible for maintaining and repairing communal electrical fittings. The landlord’s repairs guidance also states that it is responsible for repairing any loss of communal lighting.
  2. The landlord has a repair policy which sets out its repairing obligations. The landlord’s repair priorities and response times are as follows:
    1. Emergency repairs are responded to in 24 hours. The landlord will attempt to complete the repair if it can. If this is not possible, it will carry out work to make safe and carry out any follow-up work as an urgent or routine repair.
    2. Urgent repairs are responded to within 3 working days.
    3. Routine repairs are responded to within 20 workings days.
  3. The landlord has a compensation, reimbursements and remedies procedure which states it will make goodwill payments where the landlord has failed to deliver on its service standard, or it agrees a mistake has been made. Discretionary payments may be made in recognition of time and trouble, inconvenience and distress. Awards are based on the level of impact on the resident, ranging from £0 – £50 where there has been low impact; £51 – £250 for medium impact and £251 – £1,000 for high impact.
  4. The landlord repaired the light on 25 October 2023; 47 working days after the resident had reported the repair. This was significantly outside the timescales outlined within its repairs policy for routine repairs and unacceptable.
  5. Furthermore, the resident had advised the landlord of her balance issues; therefore, the broken light posed a health and safety risk to her. This did not prompt the landlord to act with more urgency, which was inappropriate and caused the resident frustration.
  6. The landlord acknowledged that it had missed scheduled appointments and offered a total of £120 compensation. This was an appropriate amount in recognition of the inconvenience caused by missed appointments.
  7. Nevertheless, the landlord has not compensated the resident for the inconvenience and frustration caused by the delayed repair, as well as the lack of communication. It is apparent that the landlord failed to contact the resident prior to missing appointments. This Service would not expect that the resident would need to chase the landlord for updates or to inform that operatives had failed to attend the scheduled repairs.
  8. Overall, there were failings in this case demonstrated by the lack of action taken by the landlord in a timely manner, and the lack of communication. The landlord did not adhere to the expected repair timescales outlined within its repairs policy and it only took action when prompted to do so by the resident.
  9. While the landlord offered compensation in recognition of the missed appointments, this offer did not fully acknowledge the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident due to the delayed repair and lack of communication which has led the Ombudsman to conclude that there was service failure.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of repairs to the resident’s porch light.

Orders

  1. The landlord is to pay the resident a total of £170 compensation within 4 weeks of the date of this determination, consisting of:
    1. £120 offered to the resident previously, if this has not already been paid to the resident.
    2. An additional £50 in recognition of the distress, inconvenience and frustration caused by the delayed repair and lack of communication by the landlord.
  2. The landlord must provide the Ombudsman with evidence of compliance with the above order.