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Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTV) (202326838)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202326838

Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTV)

29 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 remedial repairs to the bathroom following a leak.

Background

  1. The resident has been a secured tenant of the landlord since June 2015. The property is a 2 bedroom maisonette. The resident has said that she was suffering with her mental health at the time.
  2. On 2 June 2023 the landlord informed the resident that there was a possible leak coming from her property. The landlord attended the same day and found a leak behind the bathroom wall. During this investigation the landlord stripped out the resident’s bathroom and said it would complete the repairs by 2 August 2023.
  3. The resident raised her complaint on 3 August 2023. She said the landlord had bee unable to complete the repair works the previous day and had told her it would return on 3 August 2023. However, on that day she received a message at 2PM to say the landlord had rescheduled the repairs for 16 August 2023. She said this was unprofessional and meant the landlord had left her with an unfinished bathroom. She also said that when she called the landlord the person she spoke to was rude and unprofessional. She asked the landlord to look into bringing the date forward.
  4. The landlord issued its stage 1 response on 14 August 2023. It said it expected to complete the repairs by 18 August 2023. It apologised for the poor customer service and acknowledged the inconvenience the revised completion date caused. In recognition of these failings it offered £100 compensation.
  5. The resident escalated her complaint on 18 September 2023. She said she had recently been discharged from hospital and had returned home to find the landlord had left the bathroom unfinished. She also said the shower mixer was faulty and she was unable to use the shower.
  6. The landlord issued its stage 2 response on 3 October 2023. It said it had attended the property on 27 September 2023 and found that the resident had previously installed her own bathroom. However, it was unable to confirm if she had requested permission to do so. It said the resident had agreed to try and get 4 tiles before contacting the landlord to finish the works. It confirmed that it was upholding the complaint due to the poor workmanship when fixing the leak in the bathroom. In recognition of this it offered to increase the original compensation offered to £200.
  7. The resident contacted this Service on 6 November 2023 and confirmed she wanted us to investigate the complaint. She said the landlord had failed to enact a permanent fix to the broken shower mixer and had not properly put the wall tiles back in place.
  8. The landlord wrote to this Service on 4 June 2024. It confirmed that it had completed all the repair works in October 2023 and said it would be increasing the previous compensation offer to £400.

Assessment and findings

Scope of this investigation

  1. The Ombudsman cannot investigate complaints which have not gone through the landlord’s complaints process. We cannot fully consider any events after the landlord’s stage 2 response but may reference them for contextual purposes. This includes the standard of the repair works which took place in October 2023.

Repairs

  1. The landlord’s repairs policy says that it will complete emergency repairs within 24 hours and routine repairs within 28 calendar days.
  2. As part of tracing and stopping the leak on 2 June 2023 the landlord had had to strip out the resident’s bathroom. The repair records provided show that between 23 June to 3 August 2023 there were 5 appointments to carry out repair works at the property. However, it had rescheduled each of these because either the shower mixer was faulty, it could not complete the works or it could not attend. The landlord then completed the bulk of the agreed repairs to the bathroom on 18 August 2023.
  3. The landlord has said the initial delays to the repairs were caused by works raised in relation to a faulty shower mixer. However, it has confirmed that at that time it had not identified whether or not this was the cause of the leak and it had needed to investigate this. Additionally, it said the shower mixer valve was built into the bathroom wall and covered by tiles that the resident had installed. It said it had needed a specialist contractor and the appointments on 2 and 3 August 2023 were rescheduled due to the specialist contractor’s unexpected absence. The landlord has also said that it had tried to bring the appointment for 18 August 2023 forward but it was unable to agree a date that was convenient for the resident.
  4. The Ombudsman appreciates why the landlord needed to reschedule the appointments on 2 and 3 August 2023. While this caused a further 2 week delay in repairs, it was understandable given the specialist contractor’s unexpected absence. However, based on the evidence seen the initial delays to the repairs were caused by poor record keeping on the part of the landlord. This caused avoidable delays and in turn led to the resident chasing the landlord about the outstanding repairs.
  5. The resident contacted the landlord on 18 September 2023 and said it had not fixed the shower mixer properly because the leak had returned. The records provided show the landlord marked this as an emergency and attended within 24 hours. During the visit it stopped the leak by isolating the valve, but this caused the hot water to stay constantly on. The landlord replaced the shower mixer on 19 September 2023. The landlord then visited the property on 23 September 2023 and established what additional remedial works were required. It attended the property on 16 and 17 October 2023 to complete these. The landlord acted reasonably under the circumstances and enacted these repairs within its policy timescales.
  6. Overall the landlord’s failures, as set out above, can be summarised as poor record keeping, poor workmanship and failing to enact the initial repairs within its repairs policy timeframes. This led to unnecessary delays to the repair works which in turn caused the resident avoidable time, trouble and inconvenience. The delays and the poor workmanship also impacted the resident’s full enjoyment of the property as she was left with an unfinished bathroom for an extended period.
  7. In identifying whether there has been maladministration the Ombudsman considers both the events which initially prompted a complaint and the landlord’s response to those events through the operation of its complaints procedure. The extent to which a landlord has recognised and addressed any shortcomings and the appropriateness of any steps taken to offer redress are therefore as relevant as the original mistake or service failure. The Ombudsman will not make a finding of maladministration where the landlord has fully acknowledged any failings and taken reasonable steps to resolve them.
  8. In its stage 1 and 2 responses the landlord acknowledged the poor customer service, the inconvenience caused by the rearranged appointments and the poor workmanship. In recognition of these failings it offered a total of £200.
  9. Following this Service’s involvement with the complaint, the landlord wrote to us on 4 June 2024. It confirmed that it had completed all the repair works over 2 days on 16 and 17 October 2023. It said that it had reviewed the complaint and acknowledged that there had been failings in its handling of the bathroom repairs. It set out what steps it had taken to try and ensure these errors do not happen in future. It also said it had identified that further compensation would be appropriate and it wanted to increase the previous offer to £400.
  10. This Service has noted that the landlord revised its offer of compensation when it reviewed the case due to our investigation. We accept that the new compensation offer is more appropriate in recognition of its failings, and it represented an attempt to put things right. However, it offered this a considerable time after the complaints process was exhausted. Additionally, it followed this Service’s intention to investigate the complaint. This should have been an outcome and offer of redress identified at the time of the complaints process. Therefore, a finding of reasonable redress would not be appropriate.
  11. In view of this, we will not make a finding of reasonable redress despite the landlord now offering proportionate compensation for the failings in its handling of the repairs. Instead a finding of maladministration has been found. We have ordered the landlord to pay the compensation offered in its letter of 4 June 2024.

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in respect of its handling of remedial repairs to the bathroom following a leak.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report the landlord must:
    1. Apologise to the resident for its failures. This written apology must be from a member of the landlord’s management team and should follow the Ombudsman’s apologies guidance on our website.
    2. Directly pay the resident the £400 offered in its email to us of 4 June 2024.
    3. Review its internal complaints process and consider the proportionality and adequacy of compensation offered within it. It must also show that it has provided training and/or guidance to its complaint handlers to ensure they are aware of and empowered to award adequate compensation as part of the complaints process.
  2. The landlord is to reply to this Service to provide evidence of compliance with these orders within the timescales set out above.