Applications are open to join the next Housing Ombudsman Resident Panel – find out more Housing Ombudsman Resident Panel.

One Housing Group Limited (202215178)

Back to Top

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202215178

One Housing Group Limited

25 July 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 management of the resident’s rent and service charge account.

Background

  1. The landlord is the freeholder of the property. The resident has been a shared owner under a lease agreement (the lease) since the 1990s. At the time of the events set out in this report, the resident was in his late seventies and at or around the time of these events, he provided the landlord with evidence showing he had suffered a head injury in 1973. The landlord understood that this meant he suffered with memory loss.
  2. In 2016 the resident received housing benefit payments to cover a proportion of the charges due under the lease to the landlord. When the charges increased the resident did not inform the relevant authority (the authority). This meant his housing benefit did not increase and an arrears balance accrued with the landlord. In late 2019 the landlord told the resident it would inform the authority for him. It did not do so, and the arrears continued to accrue. The resident considered this was not his fault but that of the landlord.
  3. The resident expressed concern about his account and the landlord raised a complaint on his behalf after a meeting on 15 June 2022. In late June 2022, the landlord provided a stage 1 response. It “partially upheld” his complaint. It said that it was the resident’s responsibility to pay his rent but accepted that it “…provided [the resident] with information that could have been considered confusing.” It offered to pay him £50 as a gesture of goodwill to reduce his arrears which were around £4600 at that point.
  4. In September 2022 the landlord reviewed its stage 1 complaint response. This time it “upheld” the resident’s complaint, accepting that despite “promising” the resident it would keep the authority updated, it did not do so.
  5. However, it also said that the resident’s lease said he was responsible for letting the authority know when there had been a change in the rent due. Further, the resident had been sent regular quarterly statements showing the arrears increasing. It said its next step would be to issue a notice seeking possession of the property if it did not receive payment. It also said it would review the compensation it had offered him after it explored whether any grants were available to help him address the arrears.
  6. The resident approached his local MP. In October 2022 the landlord told the MP that it had increased its offer of compensation to £250 to acknowledge the stress and anxiety caused by giving the resident the “wrong information”. However, it said it would not write off the balance of the arrears. It said it was providing avenues of support for the resident.
  7. After meeting with the resident, the landlord provided a stage 2 review in June 2023. It said it had increased its offer in October 2022 by £200 and it offered to increase this by a further £200. The resident came to the Ombudsman with his complaint. He said he was concerned about the landlord’s threat of repossession.
  8. On the same day, in June 2023, the resident asked the landlord if it could delay taking further action until the Ombudsman’s enquiries had concluded. The landlord told the Ombudsman that on 28 February 2024 it sent the resident a letter before action seeking repossession of the property to clear arrears of £3281.12. On 14 May 2024 it told the Ombudsman it was considering moving forward with arrears action. At the time of writing, we are awaiting a response from the landlord about its most recent action.

Assessment and findings

  1. Under the terms of the lease, the resident is required to pay rent and service charges to the landlord. The landlord says the resident should have informed the authority in May 2016 that his payments had increased so he would not have got into arrears.
  2. It is not clear that the resident was aware of this responsibility. While the landlord told the resident’s MP in August 2022 that the resident was aware of his responsibility, the records indicate the landlord did not tell him until June 2022. Following that meeting, a landlord member of staff said in August 2022, “I don’t think a lot of people know…homeowners are liable to update Housing Benefits themselves. I have now told the resident…”. Therefore, he may only have been aware of this responsibility for a few months at that time.
  3. The records also indicate that internally members of staff at the landlord were not aware of this requirement. The landlord said that the lease sets out that the resident had to inform the authority of any increase. However, the lease does not set out that requirement. It is clear about the requirement to make payments in accordance with its terms. It gives no instruction about communicating with the authority. It was unreasonable of the landlord to say that it did.
  4. It seems that, in all other cases, excepting those for shared owners who were receiving benefits, when payments increased, the landlord took on the responsibility of informing the authority.  In the resident’s case, the landlord had assumed he would understand that informing the authority was his responsibility, even though it was a policy that was not widely known.
  5. However, whether it was his duty to inform the authority or not, the landlord says that the resident was aware, from at least November 2017, that he was in arrears and he knew he had to address this issue. The landlord said it had been its practice to send statement of accounts a “…number of times each year and these statements would have shown the debt increasing.”
  6. The landlord also said it could see from the records that a number of phone calls were made to the resident where he had expressed frustration and the call had ended. In August 2022 the landlord noted that the resident found phone conversations difficult. The resident also explained that, because of the severe head injury he suffered in the 1970s he had memory loss and required support from family and friends.
  7. In its stage 1 review in September 2022, the landlord accepted that it had told the resident in December 2019 that it would tell the authority about an increase in his charges. It says this commitment was not set out in writing, but it has accepted in various complaint responses, that it was made. After this point, we consider the resident’s account was managed so poorly by the landlord that the continued increase of the arrears was, on the available evidence, at least in part, due to the landlord’s maladministration. In fact, the landlord indicated an acceptance of this in its stage 1 review, commenting that its failure to “…monitor [the resident’s] account effectively…led to the increase in the arrears.” 
  8. The resident said he repeatedly tried to contact the landlord about the arrears. A landlord member of staff, providing information about the case in an internal email of 15 August 2022, said: “I remember [a member of landlord staff] telling me that [they] never gave anyone that chance to pick up the phone when [they] was calling people. [They] let the phone ring once and then would hang up. [They] thought this was funny, I assured [them] that it wasn’t and [they] shouldn’t do that for many reasons. [The resident] had brought this up to me and said that the phone didn’t ring long enough for him to pick it up and it took me to a memory of when [the officer] said that.”
  9. The above statement, alongside the resident’s account of repeatedly trying to contact the landlord, but being unable to, is evidence that the landlord’s staff member made it difficult for the resident to contact the landlord about his account and the accruing arrears. The email on 15 August 2022 also added that, although the staff member monitoring the resident’s account recorded that they had attempted calls with the resident, “…I am not satisfied that [they] did.”
  10. Further, the internal email from the landlord’s member of staff on 15 August 2022 noted that the officer referred to above showed such little understanding about the resident’s account that they had, in fact, made an application for housing benefit for the resident, when the resident was already in receipt of housing benefit.
  11. In an internal email on 16 May 2023, a landlord staff member observed that, although calls were made to the resident in October and November 2020 regarding rent arrears and the resident’s pension, “…there was no clear communication regarding the arrears.” It also noted that in a letter sent to the resident in January 2021, there was “…no mention of the arrears or requesting payment for the arrears in the letter.” The landlord made other calls to the resident, but it was not until the resident visited the landlord’s offices in June 2022 that a member of staff “…helped him call [the local authority] to update his benefits to the correct monthly charge.”
  12. It appears that it was around this time that the landlord gave some consideration and focus to the resident’s vulnerability because of his memory loss issues. In August 2022, the landlord sent an internal email saying, “He is an elderly man, in his 70s, pension age. He get[s] frustrated easily over the phone and has always said that meetings face to face are easier for him.” The landlord had also noted in June 2022 that the resident did not feel comfortable dealing with large organisations.
  13. From June 2022 the records show the landlord tried various avenues to bring the arrears down for the resident. It wrote to the authority to see if he could be given a grant. This was refused. It liaised with the authority, asking it to backdate its payments. It explained about the resident’s head injury. The authority would only backdate to June 2022, saying that while it accepted that the resident had this problem, he was not in receipt of disability benefit and his age did not excuse his failure to update the authority about changes to his rent. The landlord acted reasonably and demonstrated a resolution focused approach in helping the resident, who found communication difficult, to try to solve his problem.
  14. However, the point remains that the reason the resident did not update the authority was that, from December 2019 onwards, he understood the landlord would do it because it had undertaken to do so. When he then received statements about his arrears, there is compelling evidence that the member of staff that was supposed to help him address his account either ineffectively monitored it or instead thought it “funny” to frustrate his efforts to communicate.
  15. In August 2022, before the stage 1 review response was issued to the resident, in an internal email, a staff member reflected on the landlord’s consideration of starting possession proceedings and wrote “Are we looking to take possession of a property of a pensioner where we gave him false information that led to the arrears? How would this look in court or to the Ombudsman or to the media if he takes it that far?”. The writer stressed that they were “…not blaming anyone.” They said they were simply providing the information so that the landlord was “…able to make a clear judgment of what [it] believe[d] to be necessary for this complaint.”
  16. However, this view does not appear to have been considered when the review of the stage 1 response was issued in September 2022. The landlord acknowledged it had failed to monitor the resident’s account and said it would delay action until some investigation could be completed about whether there was a way to reduce the arrears. However, it also said that if the resident could not clear them, the next step was to seek possession.
  17. The records of the resident’s contact with the landlord illustrate that he was extremely distressed and upset by the landlord’s decision to pursue him for arrears that he felt he did not create. Its decision to pursue him for rent arrears through the threat of eviction obviously caused further distress.
  18. The resident had savings and used some of these to pay down the arrears to stave off that threat. However, he was not able to clear them completely.
  19. The landlord’s compensation policy says that compensation payments for delay and distress are based on the level of the landlord’s responsibility for the loss and inconvenience and the impact on the household. It says that, where the landlord considers it is partially responsible and there has been a high impact on the resident, it will offer £250. This is likely why the landlord offered the resident first £50 and later the sum of £250. The landlord then increased the compensation offer to £450 in total. This Services remedies guidance sets out a range of awards for distress and inconvenience for cases such as this where there was a failure by a landlord which had a significant impact on the resident. Given the impact on a vulnerable resident we consider that an award at the upper end of this range is proportionate and we have made an order for the landlord to pay the resident a further £500.
  20. However, the landlord’s compensation policy also says that if there has been an actual, evidenced financial loss incurred “…as a direct result of our mismanagement or service failure we will consider the specific circumstances when considering a payment of compensation.”
  21. Our dispute resolution principles are that landlords should seek to be fair, put things right and learn from outcomes when resolving disputes. Being fair means providing a remedy that is appropriate and proportionate to the severity of the maladministration. We consider that given the failings in this case, it would have been appropriate for the landlord to use its discretion and make a payment that sought to put things right. We have therefore made a further order that the landlord pay the resident the sum of £3307. This is not a rent rebate but is an amount equivalent to the amount of arrears that accrued on the resident’s account between December 2019 and June 2022.
  22. Given the adverse impact on the resident of the landlord’s misinformation, coupled with the evidence that the landlord failed to and even possibly obstructed the resident from addressing the issues with his account, we have made a severe maladministration finding.
  23. Some members of the landlord’s staff were extremely sympathetic to the resident’s predicament and it is right that those members who reached out to him to help him correct the issues with his account, should be commended. However, it appears from the available evidence, that this approach was not adopted across the board. It is because of the significant concerns we have with the approach taken to the resident’s account and the failure by the landlord to properly take responsibility for its failings and the impact this caused to a vulnerable resident, that we have made an order which seeks to ensure that the landlord investigates the underlying issues in its handling of the matter and considers how similar issues can be avoided in the future.

Determinations

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was severe maladministration by the landlord in its handling of issues with the resident’s rent and service charge account.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. The landlord is ordered to provide an apology to the resident from its Chief Executive Officer within 4 weeks. The apology should acknowledge the maladministration, accept responsibility for it, explain clearly why it happened, and express sincere regret.
  2. The Ombudsman orders that within 4 weeks, the landlord must pay the resident £4257, comprising:
    1. £3307, an amount equivalent to the amount of arrears that accrued on the resident’s account between December 2019 and June 2022.
    2. £950, a sum acknowledging the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident throughout the period. (If the landlord has already paid the £450 offered throughout the complaints process, this sum should be deducted from this amount.)
    3. These payments are to be made direct to the resident and not used to offset the arrears, or any other money, that the resident may owe the landlord.
  3.  In accordance with paragraph 54(g) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord is to provide the Ombudsman with a review conducted by a senior manager to ensure that similar failures in the teams that support residents with their payments do not reoccur.
  4.    The landlord should particularly focus on ensuring staff supporting residents with their accounts are alert to the requirements of vulnerable residents and that they are clear in their communications.
  5.         The landlord is to confirm compliance with this order to the Ombudsman within 8 weeks of the date of this report.

Recommendation

  1. The landlord is recommended to actively engage with the resident to discuss the options for him to repay the remaining arrears on his account.