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London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (202224928)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202224928

London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

17 June 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 council’s handling of the resident’s reports of no heating or hot water. 

Determination (jurisdiction decision)

  1. When a complaint is brought to the Housing Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
  2. After carefully considering all the evidence, I have determined that the complaint, as set out above, is not within the Housing Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.

Background

  1. The resident has an assured shorthold tenancy for a flat.
  2. The landlord is a private company. The private company is owned by the council.
  3. On 7 November 2022 the resident told his landlord his heating was not working.
  4. The resident made a complaint to his landlord on 13 December 2022. He raised concerns about the delay in it fixing his heating and hot water.
  5. The landlord issued it’s stage 1 complaint response on 4 January 2023. It said it restored the resident’s heating system on 9 December 2022. The delay was due to miscommunication between its departments. It said it had put new processes in place to prevent this from happening again.
  6. We contacted the council and asked it to respond to the resident’s complaint.
  7. The council issued a stage 2 response on 29 August 2023. It apologised and offered the resident £200 compensation for the delay in the repairs and complaint response.
  8. The resident bought his complaint to us as he felt the compensation offered to him did not reflect the time and trouble caused to him.

Reasons

  1. Paragraph 41.a. of the Scheme states we cannot consider complaints if they do not relate to the actions or omissions of a member of the Scheme. The resident’s landlord is not a member of our scheme, therefore, we cannot investigate their handling of the resident’s complaint.
  2. Paragraph 41.d. of the Scheme states we cannot consider complaints which concern matters that do not relate to a councils provision or management of social housing, or the management of dwellings which they own and let on a long lease.
  3. The resident has a tenancy with a private company. Although the council own this private company, the property was not let by the council as social housing or on a long lease. We therefore cannot investigate the resident’s complaint, as it concerns functions of the council that are not in its capacity as a social landlord.
  4. There is no Ombudsman that currently investigates private landlords. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman may be able to consider if the council did something wrong in the way it investigated your complaint of disrepair.
  5. The resident could seek legal advice about whether he could take court action against his landlord.