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Lincolnshire Housing Partnership Limited (202310248)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202310248

Lincolnshire Housing Partnership Limited

31 January 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 repairs to the property bathroom and the conduct of the landlord’s contractors.
  2. The complaint is also about the landlord’s complaint’s handling and the level of compensation offered.

Background

  1. At the relevant time, the resident was an assured tenant of the landlord. He lived at the 3-bedroom semi-detached property with his wife and 2 children from 2012. At or around the time of the complaint he was in the process of buying the property from the landlord, which he has now done. The landlord said it had no records of the resident having any vulnerabilities. The resident says he informed its repairs team that he had a disability.
  2. The resident says that on 20 October 2022 he informed the landlord about a leak at the property into the bathroom. He said the landlord attended within 48 hours to apply a temporary fix. However, by the time of the resident’s stage 1 complaint, on 3 January 2023, issues arising from the leak had still not been resolved.
  3. In his stage 1 complaint, the resident complained about the poor communications from the landlord about visits to complete the required repairs, a contractor’s attitude when attending and alleged damage caused by the contractor upon a visit. He sought compensation and said he wanted any scheduled appointments cancelled until the complaint was resolved. He stressed the extra inconvenience he was experiencing, due to not having a shower, because of his disability.
  4. The landlord provided a stage 1 response on 31 January 2023. It upheld the resident’s complaint and said it would investigate the poor communication around the arrangement of repairs appointments. It said it would arrange a survey for outstanding works.
  5. The resident sought to escalate his complaint on 22 February 2023. He did not consider that any of the points he had raised in his initial complaint had been addressed.
  6. The landlord provided a stage 2 complaint response on 4 April 2023. It upheld the resident’s complaint and offered compensation totalling £700. This was to acknowledge the fact that the resident had been without a shower for 6 months and for the distress and inconvenience caused. It also said it would complete a survey within 7 days and attend to the outstanding repairs.
  7. The resident took his complaint to the Ombudsman on 12 July 2023. At that time the outcome he sought was for the repairs to be completed and for the compensation offer to be increased.
  8. By 18 August 2023, the landlord had not been able to arrange a mutually agreeable date to complete the works. It offered a “compromise” to the resident, whereby it did not complete the works but deducted £750 from the purchase price of the property so that he might arrange completion of the works himself. This was agreed by the resident.

Assessment and findings

The scope of the investigation

  1. We have seen that the landlord and the resident came to an agreement where instead of completing the outstanding repairs from the stage 2 complaint, the landlord reduced the purchase price by £750. This investigation will focus on whether the compensation offered during the complaints process was reasonable for any failings by the landlord.

On the landlord’s handling of repairs and the conduct of the landlord’s contractors

  1. The resident’s stage 1 complaint raised a number of issues. He set out concerns about poor communication over visits on the day after reporting a leak on 20 October 2022, a failure to complete the works on 30 November 2022 and changes to the arranged dates for postponed work in December 2022.
  2. The resident said that when he contacted the landlord about a leak on 20 October 2022, he was told he would be emailed with an appointment. Instead, a contractor attended without notice the next day. This Service does not consider the landlord’s omission in emailing him before the visit was so serious as to represent a service failure. The landlord was responding with a sense of urgency and the resident was aware a contractor would be visiting.
  3. The records show that upon attendance on 21 October 2022 the contractor considered a joiner was needed to place a mermaid board around the bath at the property and then attend to the hallway. The repair was scheduled for 30 November 2022. This took the repair over the 20-working day period set out in the landlord’s repairs policy and was a service failure.
  4. Further issues arose when the contractor attended on 30 November 2022 and considered that a new bath was required. The records show the contractor reserved a new bath on that day and arranged to install it on 6 December 2022. This was a reasonable response to an altered understanding of the breadth of the work required and was not unreasonable.
  5. The records show that on 5 December 2022 the resident told the landlord he would like to “…consider going through occupational therapy (OT) for a shower cubicle as he had disabilities.” There is no indication that the landlord made further enquiries about the resident’s notification that he had disability needs, such as supporting the progress of an OT application. This was an unreasonable approach.
  6. While this Service accepts that the landlord was trying to arrange repairs to the bathroom, it would have been reasonable for it to make further enquiries about this new information. We recognise that on the same day the resident’s wife, also a tenant at the property, called the landlord with concerns about not having a bath or shower for the family if the landlord did not attend the next day. However, its failure to make further enquiries about a possible required reasonable adjustment for the resident, before or alongside the continuation of the planned works, was unreasonable. 
  7. When contractors attended on 16 December 2022, they failed to finish the work, meaning the bath trim still had to be applied and the resident remained without a shower. A further appointment was made to complete the works on 12 January 2023. The resident later cancelled this appointment.
  8. The records are not entirely clear about what access the household had at different stages to washing facilities throughout the period of 20 October 2022 to 4 April 2023, when the stage 2 response was provided. It appears that at points they could use a bath and at some points they had access to a shower. However, there were certainly periods where they did not have access to either or both. As the records are so unclear, we rely on the landlord’s stage 2 response. It provided the resident with compensation for a period of 6 months where it says the resident did not have an operating shower. It said this led to increased costs of heating water and water charges. We are not clear about the rationale applied in that case but the landlord offered £350 for this combined inconvenience.
  9. The landlord’s compensation policy says that it can offer between £250 and £700 for a considerable service failure where there is no permanent impact on the customer. While the offer of £350 was at the lower end of the landlord’s compensatory scale, we note that the resident was offered an appointment to fit a shower and install the bath trim on 12 January 2023. We also note that the resident did have access to a bath for most of the period between 20 October 2022 and 3 January 2023, when he cancelled future appointments to install a shower. Although the resident explained that he needed a shower because of his disability, his request to cancel an appointment which would have provided him with that facility is an indication that the need was not urgent. We therefore consider the sum offered was reasonable.
  10. In the landlord’s 31 January 2023 stage 1 response, it accepted that there had been some communication issues around informing the contractor that an appointment was no longer to go ahead on 8 December 2022. The contractor had attended anyway and this had caused the resident some distress. This was a reasonable response to what appears to have been a misunderstanding between the parties. We also note that at stage 2 the landlord offered the resident £200 for service failure including a consideration of the annual leave the resident or his wife had to take off work to attend appointments. We consider this sum to also be in line with the landlord’s compensation policy, which sets out that payments of between £50 and £250 are appropriate for a lack of communication and a failure to meet service standards without significant impact.
  11. The landlord offered a further £150 for the inconvenience caused by a lack of service delivery. We are unclear about the rationale behind this offer but it bolsters the compensation already offered to a total of £700. This brought the total compensation offered to the higher end of the range for compensation under the landlord’s compensation policy. The policy envisages it includes cases where a customer has had to chase for responses, where there has been a failure to act over a considerable period or a failure to meaningfully engage with the customer to resolve issues. Given the circumstances outlined above in this case, this Service considers the offer made by the landlord was appropriately judged.
  12. There were a number of other elements to the resident’s initial complaint that the landlord did not address in its complaints process. We have addressed this in the complaints section below but using the landlord’s records, have reached a view of these issues below.
  13. The resident had also complained about the conduct of contractors, referring in his stage 1 complaint to a contractors “lack of respect” and “being very unpleasant to speak to”. While we cannot say with any certainty whether the contractor’s behaviour was unreasonable, due to a lack of evidence, we would have expected the landlord to have made reasonable enquiries to try and verify the resident’s account. We note that the landlord discussed the contractor’s conduct with the resident. But we have not seen evidence that it followed up the issue with its contractors and this is unreasonable. In future, with complaints of this nature, the landlord should make reasonable enquiries to find out what happened and identify any potential training needs.
  14. The resident also complained that the attending contractor failed to provide a bath plug when installing the bath. The bath was installed on or around the 6 December 2022 and the records show a repair was raised to fit a bath plug on 12 December 2022. The resident said he had to buy a bath plug himself. He explained that otherwise his family would have no washing facilities as they did not have a shower at the time. It is clear from the records that the landlord had failed to provide a bath plug at the time of installation which is a further service failure. However, while it represents a shortcoming in service provision, we do not consider it to have been of such significance that a further order is necessary here.
  15. The resident also complained that the contractor caused a leak at the property bathroom sink on 7 December 2022 which damaged his wife’s cosmetics. We understand this leak was repaired the following day. The resident told the landlord he had evidence in support of this, but it failed to make any further enquiries. This was inappropriate.  We have made an order that the landlord should respond to the resident’s concerns about damaged property, either through its insurers or otherwise.
  16. Overall, the landlord’s approach to the repairs at the property represents a service failure. We consider the compensation already awarded is reasonable but other steps are needed to resolve the complaint, as set out below.

On the landlord’s complaints handling

  1. The landlord has a 2 stage complaints process. It says, in line with the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaints handling code (the Code), that it will provide a stage 1 response in 10 working days. It says, if necessary, it will request an extension for a maximum of 10 further days. In this case the landlord took 16 working days to provide a stage 1 response. This was inappropriate and a service failure.
  2. At stage 2, the landlord’s complaints process (and the Code), requires that it issues a further response within no longer than 20 working days. It took 29 working days. However, it wrote to the resident and requested an extension, mitigating that delay.
  3. Paragraph 5.6 of the Code says landlords must address all points raised in the complaint and provide clear reasons for any decisions. The landlord failed to address some of the points raised at stage 1. It made no comment on the resident’s allegations about the contractor’s conduct or workmanship. It neglected to respond to the resident’s complaint about its failure to provide a bath plug at the property. It also failed, as set out above, to address the resident’s claim that his wife’s property had been damaged by its contractors. Its failure to address these issues was a complaint handling failure that damaged the landlord tenant relationship and caused the resident distress.
  4. In the landlord’s stage 1 response the landlord stated that, “The Housing Ombudsman Service considers any complaint that has been investigated and responded to as resolved. This complaint will now be updated and closed on our system.” This is incorrect. A complaint is not resolved simply upon the production of a response to a complaint, unless the resident confirms it is resolved to their satisfaction. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the principles set out in the Code. We have made an order to ensure the landlord provides training to its complaints staff around this issue.
  5. Taken altogether we consider the errors identified in complaint handling in this case amount to maladministration. We have made an order that the landlord should pay the resident a sum which would acknowledge the impact on the resident of its failure to deal with his complaint in time and appropriately.

Determinations

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53 of the Scheme, in relation to the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of required repairs, there was service failure by the landlord.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in its complaint handling.

Orders

  1. The landlord is ordered to provide an apology to the resident from a senior member of staff within 4 weeks. The apology should acknowledge the maladministration, accept responsibility for it, explain clearly why it happened, and express sincere regret.
  2. The landlord is ordered to pay the resident the sum of £200 to acknowledge the impact of the failures identified in its complaint handling. The payment should be made within 4 weeks.
  3. Within 4 weeks, the landlord must respond to the resident’s reports of damages to his wife’s belongings on 7 December 2022.
  4. Within 4 weeks, the landlord should arrange training for its complaints staff on the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint’s Handling Code, paying particular attention to providing an understanding on the resolution of complaints.