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London & Quadrant Housing Trust (L&Q) (202400693)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202400693

London & Quadrant Housing Trust (L&Q)

4 April 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 the resident’s reports of a communal roof leak and associated damp and mould.

Background

  1. The resident is an assured tenant of the property, a 2-bed flat owned by the landlord.
  2. The resident reported damp and mould to the landlord on 16 March 2023. It inspected the property on 17 April 2023 and noted that there were no visible issues with the roof. In May 2023, following other works, he asked it to inspect the roof due to old patches of water damage on his walls.
  3. On 25 February 2024, the resident complained to the landlord. He said the damp was continuing and despite at least 3 appointments, it had not inspected the roof. He reported scraping mould off his walls that morning.
  4. The landlord sent its stage 1 complaint response to the resident on 26 February 2024. It apologised for any trouble caused to him. It said it contacted its roofing contractor ahead of sending its response to request an urgent reply. It expected to have an answer for him by 11 March. It offered compensation of £180.
  5. The resident escalated his complaint to stage 2 of the landlord’s process on 4 June 2024. This was because it had not found the root cause of the damp and mould affecting his flat. It found an issue with a soil pipe, but he disputed that this would affect his flat due to its location.
  6. In its stage 2 response of 4 July 2024, the landlord explained that it had faced challenges in getting answers from various internal departments. It apologised for this. It listed the appointment history for this issue. When its contractor attended on 27 June 2024, it found the issue could be from the flat roof. It raised works for its internal maintenance team for further investigation on 5 August 2024. Its contractor would contact the resident to arrange help with the ongoing damp and mould. It made a further offer of £610 compensation. This brought its total offer across both complaint responses to £790.
  7. The resident remained dissatisfied with the length of time taken by the landlord to complete repairs and brought his complaint to us for investigation.

Assessment and findings

  1. Landlords are responsible for repairs to the structure and exterior of their buildings. The landlord confirms this in its repairs policy where it says that it is responsible for repairs to all roofing and rainwater goods. It aims to complete all routine repairs in an average of 25 calendar days.
  2. Following the resident’s first reports of damp and mould on 16 March 2023, the landlord’s contractor completed an inspection on 17 April 2023 and found the bathroom extractor fan to be faulty. They noted no obvious problems with the roof. They completed extractor fan repairs and a mould wash on 17 May 2023. It completed both appointments and remedial works within its policy timescale.
  3. On 19 May 2023, the resident asked the landlord to survey the roof of his building because of old patches of water damage on his chimney breast walls. He wanted it to find the root cause of damp and mould before redecorating. It raised an order for its contractor to inspect the property on 25 May 2023, with a required completion date of 26 June 2023. This was a good response as the earlier inspection had found no obvious issues with the flat roof.
  4. The landlord rejected a quote for scaffolding on 4 July 2023. It noted that the invoice was only for an inspection. When its contractors attended on 8 July 2023, they could not access the roof for inspection. As such, they raised no further works. The resident called the landlord on 17 July 2023. He said the contractors attended but said they would probably need scaffolding to access the roof and had only looked at the walls. A more proactive approach to approving scaffolding at this stage may have allowed for faster repairs.
  5. On 23 August 2023, the landlord attended to inspect following a report of a leaking soil pipe on the outside of the building. In October 2023, it noted that there were no notes from this appointment. This showed a poor approach to record keeping. While this may not have been an issue on one occasion, this led to further confusion later in the complaint period.
  6. The landlord’s contracted reattended the resident’s property on 11 December 2023. It noted that there was an unreachable loft hatch. On the 29 January 2024, the landlord asked them if the job needed rebooking or if there was anything it needed to do. They responded that they needed extra-long ladders, which they would reattend with. It is unclear why it took the landlord over a month to ask this question, especially when considering that it had already far exceeded its average 25 calendar day repair time.
  7. In the resident’s complaint of 25 February 2024, he said the landlord’s contractors had visited him to inspect the property at least 3 times but all had failed to bring a ladder to be able to access the roof through the skylight. He reported the damp reappearing following a period of heavy rain.
  8. Upon receiving the resident’s complaint, the landlord chased its contractor for an update. In its complaint response of 26 February 2024, it acknowledged the distress and inconvenience caused by its delays in completing repairs. It offered compensation of £180, comprising:
    1. £55 for distress.
    2. £55 for inconvenience.
    3. £70 for service failure.
  9. The landlord’s compensation policy allows for undisclosed discretionary payments. The amount calculated will consider the duration of any avoidable distress or inconvenience, the landlord’s communication, and the seriousness of any other unfair impact. In line with this, its offer was not sufficient to acknowledge the 9 months that had passed since the resident requested an inspection of the roof, which it was yet to complete.
  10. The landlord continued to chase its contractor for an update throughout March and into April 2024. Its contractor completed a drone survey on 30 April 2024 and found an issue with a soil pipe, which a previous contractor identified in August 2023. The landlord raised works to fix this. However, the resident remained certain that this was not the issue affecting his flat. If it had acted upon the repair to the soil pipe in August 2023, it would have been able to find whether this was, or was not, affecting the resident earlier.
  11. Following this conversation, the landlord escalated the resident’s complaint to stage 2. In a call on the 4 June 2024, he explained that he wanted it to find and fix the root cause of the damp. He also wanted it to redecorate the 2 bedrooms affected by the mould. It raised works for inspection of the walls.
  12. In its stage 2 response of 4 July 2024, the landlord acknowledged difficulties with internal communication and information sharing. It provided a history of appointments and noted that records were unclear on why it cancelled an appointment in December 2023 and what its contractor inspected on 12 June 2024. It asked them to reattend. It then asked a separate contractor to attend to rule out issues with the brickwork. They did this and found that the issue could be the flat roof. It then raised works to its roofing team for further investigation on 5 August 2024.
  13. The landlord offered further compensation of £610 to the resident, comprising:
    1. £125 for distress.
    2. £125 for inconvenience.
    3. £20 for its delayed stage 2 response.
    4. £240 for repair delays.
    5. £100 decorating voucher.
  14. The landlord apologised to the resident for providing differing information on the cause of the damp and mould. It acknowledged that it had lessons to learn from his case about communication and attending repairs. Overall, its complaint response was thorough, factual, and fair.
  15. The contractor inspected the roof on 5 August 2024 as arranged. They told the landlord that the roof was in poor condition. The lead seal needed repair. It raised these repairs but needed to rearrange the appointment twice due to circumstances beyond its control. On 8 October 2024, it attended and found the exact required works. It booked these for 19 November 2024 but completed the repair on 15 November 2024.
  16. While there were problems outside of the landlord’s control, this was a further 4 months after its stage 2 complaint response and 18 months since the resident first requested it inspect the roof for any problems. We acknowledge that roofing repairs are often complex and can exceed a landlord’s policy timescale. However, 18 months is an unreasonable amount of time to complete works that only took 1 day to complete.
  17. The landlord did not give any weight to the resident’s report that the wall could be the source of the leak. When he told it that the soil pipe was not nearby to the damp walls, it continued to investigate this as the issue and repeatedly failed to investigate the roof. This caused him unnecessary frustration. While its compensation offers went some way towards putting things right, these were not sufficient for the length of time taken to complete works. As such, we will make a further order for financial redress in the relevant section of this report. The landlord did send the resident cheques for its compensation offers so these will not be included within the order.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in respect of the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of a communal roof leak and associated damp and mould.

Orders

  1. Within 28 days of this report, the landlord must:
    1. Pay the resident compensation of £300, comprising:
      1. An added £75 for distress.
      2. An added £75 for inconvenience.
      3. £150 for further repair delays.
    2. Provide evidence to this Service of compliance with these orders.
  2. Within 6 weeks of this report, the landlord must:
    1. Complete a damp and mould survey at the resident’s property to confirm whether the roof repairs have prevented further damp issues.
    2. Confirm in writing to the resident and this Service whether it needs to complete any further works inside the property to prevent damp and mould.