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Notting Hill Genesis (NHG) (202213353)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202213353

Notting Hill Genesis (NHG)

10 March 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 repairs to communal lighting.
  2. The Ombudsman will also consider the associated complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident has been an assured tenant of a 2-bedroom flat within a block since 2004. She pays a service charge towards electricity and communal lighting.
  2. On 12 April 2022 the resident contacted the landlord. She said lights by the internal staircase in the building were not working. The landlord raised an emergency repair order the same day. The lights were fixed on 9 May 2022.
  3. The resident complained to the Ombudsman on 22 September 2022. She said there were still problems with communal lights. We forwarded the complaint to the landlord the same day. The landlord acknowledged the complaint on 26 September 2022.
  4. The landlord raised a repair order on 18 October 2022. It said there was a problem with the building’s electricity supply. Repairs were completed on 24 January 2023.
  5. The landlord wrote to the resident on 4 April 2023. It offered £150 compensation for the problems with the communal area lighting. It also offered a refund of the electricity service charge she had paid for 2022/2023.
  6. The resident contacted this Service on 6 April 2023. She was unhappy with the landlord’s response. On 11 September 2023 we asked the landlord to formally reply to her complaints as part of its complaints process. The landlord said it had done so in April 2023.
  7. The resident emailed the landlord on 22 December 2023. She said it had not replied to her complaints. The landlord did not reply. The resident contacted this Service on 13 February 2024 as she remained dissatisfied.

Assessment and findings

  1. The resident emailed the landlord on 12 April 2022. She said the lights by a communal staircase in her building had not worked since 2 April 2022. She said there were no emergency backup lights, which there had been previously. The landlord replied the same day. It said it had raised an emergency repair order, and it was investigating her report about the emergency lights. The landlord’s contractor fixed the lights on 9 May 2022. There is no record of it investigating the emergency lights issue.
  2. The landlord’s repair policy states that it aims to attend an emergency repair within 4 hours and have services restored within 24 hours. The landlord took nearly 4 weeks to repair the lights. It did not respond to the resident’s query about the emergency lights. The failures to complete repairs in line with its repairs policy and to investigate the emergency lights issue were unreasonable.
  3. On 1 August 2022 the landlord recorded the internal communal lights in the building were not working again. It is not clear from the landlord’s records who made this report. The landlord’s contractor repaired the communal lights 19 August 2022. The time to complete the repair was outside of its repair policy timescale.
  4. The resident contacted the Ombudsman on 22 September 2022. She said the landlord had failed to repair the communal lights when she reported it. This Service forwarded the complaint to the landlord the same day. The landlord acknowledged the complaint on 26 September 2022.
  5. On 18 October 2022 the landlord raised a work order as it said there were problems with the electricity supply to the building where the resident lived. The landlord emailed the resident on 21 October 2022. It said it would inspect the building the following week.
  6. The resident emailed the landlord on 23 and 31 October 2022. She asked when it would reply to her complaint. She asked it to refund the service charges she paid for electricity in communal areas. The landlord did not respond.
  7. On 2 November 2022 the landlord raised and emergency repair order. It had visited the building that day and said there was no electricity for the internal or external lights. It said there was a health and safety hazard. There is no record that action was taken to repair the lights at that time.
  8. The resident emailed the landlord on 9 and 11 December 2022. She said the communal staircase and garden lights did not work, nor did the fire alarm. She said she wanted to escalate her complaint. The landlord did not respond.
  9. The landlord’s contractor restored electricity to the building’s communal areas on 24 January 2023. However, its records say the communal lights were not repaired until 2 March 2023. On 30 March 2023 the landlord recorded the communal lights were not working again.
  10. On 4 April 2023 the landlord wrote to the resident. It apologised for the delay in repairing the building’s electricity problem. It offered the resident £150 compensation for the issues with the communal lights. It also offered to reimburse her the electricity service charge for 2022/23 due to the electricity and lighting problems in her building.
  11. Analysis of the complaint response shows the landlord accepted it had taken too long to repair the problems with the building’s electricity supply and the communal lights. The landlord offered redress for the failing and offered to refund her the electricity service charge for the previous year. However, the landlord’s redress offer did not take into account the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident by its delays to complete repairs over the previous year. The complaint response failed to acknowledge the landlord’s full failings in how it had handled requests to repair the communal lights. This was unreasonable.
  12. The resident did not reply to the landlord. Instead, she told us on 6 April 2023 that she remained unhappy with the landlord’s response.
  13. On 12 April 2023 the landlord recorded it had fixed the communal lights. However, further repair orders were raised for internal and garden lights throughout June and July 2023. Several repairs were completed in July and August 2023.
  14. We wrote to the landlord on 11 September 2023. We asked if it had sent a formal complaint response to the resident. The landlord told us the same day it had replied to the resident’s complaint on 4 April 2023.
  15. The resident emailed the landlord on 22 December 2023. She said it had not formally addressed her complaints. The landlord did not respond.
  16. The landlord’s records show the communal electrical problems continued until it repaired them January 2024.
  17. On 13 February 2024 the resident emailed this Service. She said she remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s handling of her complaints.
  18. In summary, the landlord failed to fix the communal lights in line with its emergency repair policy on several occasions between April 2022 and January 2024. Although some repairs were completed, those that happened were outside of its 24-hour timescale. The landlord failed to inspect the building and get to the root cause of the problem until November 2022. Even when the landlord discovered there was no electricity in communal areas in November 2022, this was not repaired until January 2023. The landlord’s failure to repair in a timely manner was made worse by its own admission that the issue posed a health and safety hazard.
  19. When a failure is identified, as in this case, the Ombudsman’s role is to consider whether the redress offered by the landlord put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this, the Ombudsman takes into account whether the landlord’s offer of redress was in line with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles: Be Fair, Put Things Right, and Learn from Outcomes, as well as our own guidance on remedies.
  20. The landlord recognised there had been delays in repairing the lights in its response to the resident in April 2023. It offered £150 compensation and to refund the electricity service charge for the previous year. However, that offer was not reflective of the delays and failures from the past year. It failed to account for the additional distress caused by the issue being a health and safety hazard to the resident. Also, there remained issues with the communal lights until January 2024.
  21. The landlord’s failures to follow its repairs policy and offer appropriate redress to put things right leads to a determination of maladministration. An order for increased compensation has been made below.

Complaints handling

  1. The landlord operates a 2 stage complaints process. Its complaint policy states it will acknowledge complaints within 2 working days. It should respond to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days. It should respond to stage 2 complaints within 20 working days.
  2. The resident first made a complaint on 22 September 2022. This was made to this Service, which we forwarded to the landlord the same day. The landlord acknowledged it on 26 September 2022. This was within its policy timescales.
  3. The landlord did not send a complaints response, despite the resident asking the landlord to do so several times in October and December 2022.
  4. The landlord replied to the resident’s complaint on 4 April 2023. It did not apologise or offer redress for the delay in replying to the complaint. It did not make clear what stage of its complaint process the reply was at, or tell the resident how to escalate the complaint if she remained dissatisfied.
  5. Paragraph 5.8 of the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code 2022 (the Code) states landlords must confirm in writing to the resident what stage the complaint is at when it has completed its stage 1 review. It also stages the landlord should give details of how to escalate the matter to stage 2 if the resident is not satisfied.
  6. The resident told us on 6 April 2023 she was unhappy with the landlord’s complaint response. We contacted the landlord on 11 September. We asked the landlord to reply to the resident’s complaint. The landlord replied the same day. It said it had responded to the resident’s complaint on 4 April 2023.
  7. On 22 December 2023 the resident again asked the landlord to reply to her complaints. The landlord did not respond.
  8. In summary, the landlord failed to follow its complaint policy and the Code throughout the timeline of the complaint. Although the landlord initially acknowledged the complaint, it did not send a response for 7 months. This was also not a formal complaint response at stage 1 of its complaints process, and it meant the resident had to contact this Service again.
  9. Despite requests made by us and the resident, the landlord did not send her a formal stage 1 or stage 2 complaint response. This prolonged the complaint process unnecessarily and delayed resolution for the resident. This failure leads to a determination of maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling. An order for compensation has been made below.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of repairs to communal lighting.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in its complaint handling.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord must:
    1. Apologise to the resident for the failings identified in this report.
    2. Pay £700 compensation directly to the resident. The landlord may deduct from the sum £150 awarded as part of its internal complaint procedure, if already paid. The outstanding balance must be paid directly to the resident and not offset against a rent or service charge account.
      1. £550 for the distress and inconvenience caused by the landlord’s handling of repairs to communal lighting.
      2. £150 for the distress and inconvenience caused by the landlord’s complaint handling failures.
    3. The compensation amounts ordered above are in addition to the landlord’s offer to refund the resident for her electricity service charge for 2022/23. The landlord should provide evidence of the refund offered as part of its internal complaint’s procedure as part of these orders. The landlord should also provide the resident with a breakdown of how that service charge refund was calculated if it has not already done so.
  2. The landlord should provide evidence of compliance for the above orders to this Service within 4 weeks.