London & Quadrant Housing Trust (L&Q) (202212074)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202212074

London & Quadrant Housing Trust (L&Q)

31 October 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 problems with the heating and hot water system.

Background

2. The resident is the tenant of the property which is owned by the landlord, a housing association. The property is situated in a block of flats (the block) in which the landlord owns a number of properties. The block shares a central heating and hot water system (the system) which is maintained by the building management (the management).
3. The resident first reported problems with the system in mid-2022 and complained formally on 1 August 2022. She said she had no hot water or heating on a number of occasions. In its stage 1 response of 5 August 2022, the landlord said the management was responsible for the maintenance of the system and it had contacted them about the matter and was awaiting a response.
4. The resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 via the Ombudsman on 29 November 2022. The system suffered several further outages in the autumn of 2022.
5. In the landlord’s stage 2 response of 22 December 2022 it reiterated that the management was responsible for the system and said that they had undertaken repairs. The landlord apologised for a failure to explain the situation fully in its stage 1 response and offered £100 compensation for this error and any inconvenience caused. It offered a further £150 in recognition of further failures in communication and the inconvenience this had caused.
6. The resident has asked this Service to investigate, stating that the problems with her boiler have not been resolved and she wants it fixed.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

7. The landlord provided a stage 2 response in December 2022, on the basis that the heating problems had been resolved. The resident did not refer her complaint to the Ombudsman for investigation until July 2023, after further problems with the system arose in June 2023. Given that there was a 6-month period between the landlord’s final response and the new issues experienced by the resident, it was reasonable for the landlord to conclude that the management had satisfactorily resolved the original issues, and to respond to the complaint accordingly. As a result, this investigation is focused on events up to the end of 2022.
8. The Ombudsman is aware that the resident made a further complaint about the subsequent system issues and 2 unrelated concerns relating to charges she was paying, in June 2023. However, there is no evidence that these matters have exhausted the landlord’s complaints process. Therefore, as the landlord has not yet had a reasonable opportunity to investigate and resolve them through its complaints process, they are not investigated here (reflected at paragraph 42.a of the Scheme).
9. If the resident remains dissatisfied with the landlord’s handling of these matters, she may wish to raise a new complaint and refer it to the Ombudsman in due course if necessary. We would then deal with it as a separate complaint under a new reference number.

Resident’s reports of problems with the heating and hot water system

10. The management has responsibility for the system. However, the landlord’s repairs policy states that it is always responsible for hot water and heating systems so that “tenants always have access to heating and hot water”. This means that, in this case, the landlord’s role was to pass the resident’s concerns on to the management and ensure that it maintained the system.
11. The landlord has not issued any guidance or policy setting out timeframes for resolution of tenants’ concerns about heating where a third party manages the building. However, the Ombudsman would expect landlords to ensure that staff take appropriate steps to address residents’ concerns within a reasonable timeframe. The Ombudsman would also want to see evidence that landlords had considered other measures to address residents’ concerns such as offering temporary heating and providing regular updates where problems are ongoing or recurring.
12. The resident complained formally about the problems with the system on 1 August 2022. The Ombudsman issued the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) in 2020. The version in use at the time of these events set out our view of best practice in complaint handling. It said that complaint handling could be a valuable tool allowing landlords to resolve issues before they become worse and to learn to prevent recurrence of similar issues. Complaint responses should address all complaint points, providing reasoned responses to each.
13. The landlord’s stage 1 response of 5 August 2022 was inadequate as it did not state what investigations it had carried out or findings it had made about the substantive issues raised in the complaint. The landlord merely said it was investigating the problem and would let the resident know when it had further information.
14. The response contained no consideration of the merits of the complaint. However, it said if the resident did not agree with ‘this decision’, she should escalate her complaint. Given that no decision had been made, and the response was merely a brief update, this was confusing and misleading for the resident. The response did little to demonstrate that the landlord was taking her concerns seriously or that it was proactively engaging with the management to find a resolution.
15. The resident did not ask the landlord directly to escalate her complaint to stage 2. Instead, she approached this Service, and we contacted the landlord on her behalf on 29 November 2022. The landlord provided its stage 2 response on 22 December 2022, 17 working days later, which was within its service standard of 20 working days for a stage 2 response.
16. For its stage 2 response, the landlord conducted a thorough investigation of the problems with the system and noted that one engineer reported that regular problems would continue until it was properly repaired by the management. However, on 20 December 2022, the landlord learned that the management had appointed a new contractor to maintain the system and advised that the new contractor was expert in maintenance of systems of this type.
17. In its stage 2 response, the landlord acknowledged that there had been 7 system failures in July, September, and October 2022 but said the problems should now have been remedied. It accepted that there had been elements of service failure, set out what had gone wrong, and explained what had been done to put things right. It also offered the resident £250 compensation for the inconvenience and frustration caused by the system failures and its poor communication.
18. This approach reflects the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles, to be fair and put things right, and the compensation award was in line with the guidelines set out in this Service’s Remedies Guidance for cases of maladministration. As set out above, it was reasonable for the landlord to believe the system issues had been resolved (given that no further problems were reported for 6 months), so no further action was required by it at that time. As a result, the landlord’s response to the complaint, and its offer of redress, resolved the complaint satisfactorily and a finding of reasonable redress is made.

Determination

19. In accordance with paragraph 53.b of the Scheme, the landlord made an offer of reasonable redress in relation to the resident’s reports of problems with the heating and hot water system.

Recommendation

20. The landlord is recommended to, if it has not already done so, pay the £250 compensation to the resident, as this recognised genuine elements of service failure and the reasonable redress finding is made on that basis.