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Look Ahead Care and Support Limited (202332698)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202332698

Look Ahead Care and Support Limited

12 May 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:
    1. Information given to the resident about future accommodation.
    2. The resident’s dissatisfaction with the local council’s offer of alternative accommodation and the subsequent financial hardship he said he experienced.

c. The resident’s complaint.

Background

  1. The resident lived in a hostel under a licence agreement, with a housing association as the landlord, from 14 September 2017.
  2. The landlord decided to close the hostel in August 2023. On 7 August 2023 it issued the resident a 7-day notice that it was terminating the resident’s licence on 14 August 2023. The notice advised it would have staff on site to help affected residents find alternative accommodation.
  3. The resident approached the landlord’s service manager for help in finding new accommodation. It, along with representatives from the local council, completed a needs assessment. The assessment found he would be best suited to moving into private rented accommodation and it agreed to help him do so. However, shortly after an interim staff member, who was covering in the service managers absence, told him it would be moving him to a property with another housing association. When the service manager returned, he said this was incorrect. The resident ended up being placed in emergency accommodation at a hotel by the local council.
  4. The resident raised a complaint to the landlord on 19 September 2023. He said its service manager had been discriminatory against him and had blocked a move to a housing association property.
  5. The landlord provided its stage 1 response on 28 September 2023. It said there was no evidence its service manager had discriminated against the resident. It admitted its interim staff member had incorrectly told him he was being offered a property with another housing association and apologised for this. It offered to help him by contacting the local council’s housing team to chase for a decision on his housing situation and to ask it to extend his hotel stay.
  6. Citizens Advice escalated the resident’s complaint on his behalf on 17 October 2023. They said his hotel stay was causing him financial hardship because he did not have access to a kitchen. They also said the situation was having an impact on his mental health. They asked it to offer him compensation.
  7. The landlord provided its stage 2 response on 22 April 2024. It maintained there was no evidence its service manager had a vendetta against the resident and his needs assessment had been completed fairly. It did acknowledge living in the hotel was costly due to needing to buy meals. It offered him £150 compensation for inconvenience and to cover the additional food costs.
  8. The resident remained unhappy and escalated his complaint to the Service. He said the landlord’s actions had resulted in him being placed in emergency accommodation and this affected his mental health and cost him money. He also said it had not handled his complaint correctly. He wanted compensation for the distress it had caused and for it to reoffer a move to a housing association property.

Assessment and findings

Jurisdiction

  1. When the resident escalated his complaint to the Service, he said part of the resolution he was seeking was for the landlord to reinstate the offer of a property with another housing association. We understand that an offer of alternative accommodation was decided by the local council’s housing team and not the landlord. In this situation, the landlord communicated the information on the local council’s behalf. Another part of his complaint was that the emergency accommodation he was placed in caused financial hardship. We understand that it was the local council, and not the landlord, who placed him in this accommodation.
  2. In accordance with 42.j. of the Scheme, the Ombudsman cannot consider housing decisions made by the local council, or ask it to reoffer accommodation, as this is outside of our jurisdiction. The resident would be best advised to raise a complaint about this to the local council about these matters. If he is unhappy with its response, he may then be able to raise his complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman instead.
  3. We can, and will, consider the landlord’s involvement and handling of the situation outlined in the resident’s complaint.

The landlord’s handling of information given to the resident about future accommodation

  1. Part of the resident’s complaint was that he felt the landlord’s service manager had discriminated against him and ‘revoked’ an offer of a property within a different housing association because he had complained about him in the past. In both complaint responses, the landlord said there was no evidence to support this claim. It said all the hostel residents affected by the closure had been offered the same needs assessment. It also said that 3 people completed this assessment, not just the service manager, and therefore the assessment process had been fair.
  2. The evidence supports the landlord’s response. The evidence shows the needs assessment was completed by a member of its staff along with two members of staff from the local council. The outcome of the resident’s needs assessment was that he could live independently as he was already receiving minimal support at the hostel and was in work. Therefore, the assessment found he would be best suited to moving into private rented accommodation. As such, any decisions made were not left solely to the service manager which reduced the risk of any prejudice, which was appropriate. The assessment’s findings were also reasonable given the information he provided.
  3. In the landlord’s responses it admitted the resident had been given incorrect information about his future accommodation by an interim member of staff. It explained the interim staff member was covering the Service Manger’s leave for a short period of time and had not seen the needs assessment and its outcome. They had then gone on to incorrectly tell him he was being offered a property with another housing association, but this was corrected when the Service Manager returned from leave. It apologised for this, which was appropriate to do as there had been failure in its communication and service.
  4. The landlord did go on to offer the resident £150 compensation for any inconvenience and financial hardship caused by being placed in emergency accommodation. We recognise this as good practice. It was not obliged to offer compensation regarding the emergency accommodation as this would have been organised by the local council instead.
  5. When escalating his complaint to us, the resident said the compensation offered was not enough to cover the additional cost of food he needed whilst living in a hotel. We have not seen any evidence that he provided it with receipts or any other evidence showing how much he had spent on additional food. Therefore, £150 was an appropriate amount to offer without evidence to show the full cost incurred.
  6. In summary, there was a failure in how the landlord communicated what offer of future accommodation the resident would receive. However, it correctly acknowledged this failing in its complaint responses, apologised and offered compensation that it was not obliged to do as a gesture of goodwill. The landlord’s recognition of the impact its failings had on the resident, along with its apology and financial redress, reasonably put things right and resolved the complaint.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint

  1. The landlord’s complaints policy says it will acknowledge stage 2 complaints within 5 working days of receipt. It will then provide its response within 20 working days of this acknowledgement.
  2. It took the landlord 131 working days to provide its stage 2 response to the resident. This was from 17 October 2023 when he escalated his complaint via Citizens Advice, to when the landlord provided its response on 22 April 2024. This is well outside of the timeframes stated in both its own complaints policy and the Ombudsman’s Complaint handling code (the Code).
  3. We had to chase the landlord for its stage 2 response twice, on 25 January 2024 and 11 March 2024. On both occasions we set it a deadline to provide its response or to contact us, and it failed to do either by the deadline set. This is not in accordance with the Code and showed poor service by the landlord.
  4. The landlord told us its response had been delayed because it could not contact the staff member from Citizens Advice who escalated the complaint on the resident’s behalf. Evidence shows it tried to email the staff member once on 28 December 2023, and the email bounced back as undeliverable. This was already 50 working days from the date the complaint was escalated and therefore already well outside its own complaint policy deadlines. We have also not seen any evidence that the landlord attempted to recontact the staff member again, meaning it only tried to make contact once, which was not appropriate.
  5. Additionally, when the staff member from Citizens Advice escalated the resident’s complaint, they did not say they were now acting as his representative. Therefore, the landlord was able to contact the resident about the complaint, but the evidence shows it did not do this. This led to unnecessary complaint handling delays that could have been avoided.
  6. The landlord did provide the resident, and us, a stage 2 response on 27 March 2024. However, we found the response to be poor and not code compliant and asked it to provide a new response by 23 April 2024. It did then provide a code compliant response within this deadline, but this caused a further delay of 17 working days. This delay could have been avoided had its initial response been code compliant.
  7. The landlord failed to acknowledge its complaint handling delays in its Stage 2 response. This was not appropriate as it showed a lack of consideration for the resident, who had continually had to contact us to help chase for a response.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53.b. of the Scheme, there was an offer of reasonable redress made by the landlord which resolved the complaint about the landlord’s handling of information given to the resident about future accommodation satisfactorily.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 42.j. of the Scheme, the landlord’s handling of the resident’s dissatisfaction with the local council’s offer of alternative accommodation and the subsequent financial hardship is a matter outside jurisdiction (OSJ).
  3. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders and recommendations

  1. Within 4 weeks of this determination the landlord is ordered to:

a. Apologise to resident for the failings it made in handling his complaint.

b. Pay the resident £250 compensation, made up of:

i. £150 for the delays in providing a Stage 2 response.

ii. £100 for failing to acknowledge poor complaint handling in the Stage 2 response.

Recommendations

  1. If it has not already done so, the landlord should now pay the resident the £150 compensation it offered in its final complaint response.