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Orbit Group Limited (202305008)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202305008

Orbit Group Limited

31 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 response to:
    1. The resident’s reports of damp and mould at the property.
    2. The associated formal complaint.

Background

  1. The resident is the assured tenant of the property owned by the landlord, a 3-bedroom house which she shares with her family.
  2. In December 2022, the resident reported to the landlord that there was damp and mould at the property and that the air extraction system was not working. The landlord sent a contractor in early December 2022 who agreed that the property’s mechanical heat and ventilation recovery plant (MHVR) was not working. A contractor attended a week later and found that it was beyond repair. The landlord sent a surveyor to carry out a damp and mould survey on 4 January 2023. It carried out mould washing throughout the property on 23 January 2023. Its contractor replaced ducting for the MHVR in February 2023 and replaced the MHVR itself in late March 2023.
  3. The resident complained on 8 March 2023 saying that she had reported the problem with damp and mould in December 2022 and it had not yet been solved. She said the MHVR was broken, there was mould throughout the property and there was a hole in the roof. She was very concerned about the damp and mould as she had children and was also concerned about the possibility of structural problems at the property.
  4. The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 15 June 2023. It said it had inspected the property in February 2023, discovered that the MHVR was broken and arranged for it to be repaired. It awarded her £70 in recognition of the service failure she had suffered because of the delay and £150 for the frustration and inconvenience it had caused. It also said it would refund her for the cost of replacing a carpet which had been damaged by damp and mould.
  5. The resident was not satisfied with this response and asked for her complaint to be escalated to stage 2 of the landlord’s internal complaints procedure on 16 June 2023. She said she believed £70 was not enough to compensate her for the problems she had faced. One of her children had been admitted to hospital with a breathing complaint and she believed this was due to the damp and mould. She said she wanted a total of £2030 in compensation made up of a 50% rent rebate, compensation for redecoration in several rooms and payment for unpaid work. 
  6. The landlord provided a stage 2 complaint response on 8 August 2023. It acknowledged that there had been a delay in carrying out the inspection of the property in January 2023. However, it said it had carried out the works promptly once it recognised what was required. It increased the offer of compensation by £250: £100 in recognition of the delay in providing the stage 2 response, £100 for distress and inconvenience and £50 for a loss of living space.
  7. The resident was not satisfied with this response and brought her complaint to this Service. She said she was not happy with the level of compensation offered.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

  1. The resident has said that the condition of the property has had an impact on her family’s health and that she believes that 1 of her children was hospitalised because of the damp and mould at the property.  This Service is unable to establish a causal link between reports of the health issues experienced by complainants and the actions of landlords. The resident may wish to seek legal advice about this, as a personal injury claim may be a more appropriate way of dealing with this aspect of her complaint. Nonetheless, we have considered the general distress and inconvenience which these events may have caused.
  2. Under paragraph 42(a) of the Scheme, the Ombudsman may not normally consider complaints which were made prior to having exhausted a member’s complaints procedure. The resident has told this Service that, later in 2023, after she received her stage 2 response about the matters set out above, the MHVR broke down again. This Service has not considered this in this investigation as it has not been through the landlord’s complaints procedure. It is open to the resident to complain about the landlord’s response to the later MHVR failure and, if she is not satisfied with its response, to bring her complaint to us and we will consider it as a fresh complaint under its own complaint reference.

The resident’s reports of damp and mould at the property

  1. The landlord’s repairs policy says it will carry out emergency repairs within 24 hours and routine repairs within 28 calendar days. The Ombudsman is aware that certain works cannot be completed within such a timeframe particularly when, as in this case, specialist contractors must undertake the work. Nonetheless, landlords must complete such works within a reasonable period.
  2. The landlord’s compensation guidance says it will provide compensation for distress and inconvenience where there is evidence that there has been a service failure that has impacted the customer. It says this includes cases where it has delayed in following its policies. Payments can range from small sums for low impacts to £400 for high impact cases, or cases where a resident had to make “high effort” to ensure that the landlord fulfilled its obligations.
  3. In this case, as the landlord has accepted, it delayed in carrying out the initial inspections at the property and this delayed the discovery that the MHVR was beyond repair and so delayed its replacement. It has offered a total of £370 for this service failure and the distress and inconvenience it caused.
  4. When there are acknowledged failings by a landlord, as is the case here, the Ombudsman will consider whether the redress it offered resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this, we take into account whether its offer of redress was in line with our Dispute Resolution Principles which are to be fair, to put things right and to learn from outcomes.
  5. The resident first raised the issue of damp and mould on 30 November 2022. The available records show that the landlord sent contractors to inspect the MHVR on 7 December and 14 December 2023, but the operatives were not qualified to mend the MHVR so they could not diagnose the problem with it. It sent a surveyor to conduct a damp and mould survey on 4 January 2023 who recommended a mould wash which was carried out 23 January 2023. This could have been completed sooner considering the presence of children in the property, and this is kept in view in our assessment of the adequacy of the landlord’s response.
  6. The resident said that she had to spend time and effort in contacting the landlord and the impact of the extreme damp was severe on her family as she had young children one of whom was hospitalised. She believes that this was because of the problems at the property. This Service accepts that this would have been a difficult time for the resident.
  7. The landlord accepts that it was slow in initiating the required works and it should have acted more quickly to begin with. It says, “We previously did not have a process for MVHR units with our contractors and so no one was responsible for maintaining them. Changes were made to ensure we have a program in place to ensure MVHR units are maintained properly”. A contractor stated that the MHVR was “unserviceable” on 1 February 2023. The MHVR ducting was replaced on 23 February 2023 and the MHVR itself was replaced on 20 March 2023. Overall, the issue was resolves within 4 months of the resident’s reports.
  8. The MHVR was under guarantee and therefore had to be repaired by the original installer. The evidence indicates that, after the initial delays in December 2022, the further delays were due to the wait for the works to be completed by the installer. It is the landlord’s responsibility to chase the installer to ensure that the works are completed within reasonable time. It is also expected that it will keep the resident updated on the situation while awaiting action by the installer Thus it was appropriate that it offered the resident compensation for the delays.
  9. While the resident’s dissatisfaction with the landlord’s response to her reports of damp and mould over the winter of 2022 to 2023 are understandable, this Service considers that its apology and offer of £370 was fair. The offer is in line with its policy, our guidance on remedies, and the Dispute Resolution Principles. When it discovered the problem, it put things right: it sent contractors to attempt to solve the problem and recognised the impact on the resident and her family and offered her compensation. It has informed the resident that it introduced a programme to maintain and service MHVRs as a result of the issues brought to light by this case.
  10. For these reasons, this Service concludes that, the landlord’s overall response has adequately remedied its failings in handling the repairs. It demonstrated that it took her complaint seriously and was willing to both resolve it and prevent future reoccurrence.

The associated formal complaint

  1. The landlord’s complaints information leaflet says it will respond to stage 1 complaints within 15 working days and at stage 2 within 20 working days. It says it may need longer to reply to some complex complaints and, if this is the case, it will keep residents informed of progress. Its compensation guidance says it will offer payments of up to £150 for complaint handling errors.
  2. The Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, (the Code) says that, where something has gone wrong, a landlord must acknowledge this and set out actions it has already taken or intends to take to put things right which could include apologising, acknowledging its errors, explaining what went wrong or providing a financial remedy.
  3. The resident has claimed that she made an original complaint in December 2022 but that the landlord did not respond to it. This Service has not seen evidence to support this claim although it is clear she did ask for compensation for a damaged carpet in late 2022 or early 2023. The evidence shows that she made her first formal complaint on 8 March 2023. She did not receive a complaint response until June 2023 which is 67 working days later.
  4. The landlord did inform the resident from time to time that its response had been delayed. However, it did not apologise for the delay, explain why it had happened or recognise it with a compensation payment in its stage 1 complaint response. Nor did it address her claim that she had made an earlier complaint. This was, then, an inadequate complaint response.
  5. The resident asked to escalate her complaint to stage 2 on 16 June 2023 and received a stage 2 response on 8 August 2023, a further 37 working days later. On this occasion, the landlord did recognise the delay by offering her £100 for its complaint handling errors at stage 2. However, while this was an appropriate response to the delay at stage 2, it left the landlord’s failures at stage 1 unrecognised. This was, then, overall, a failure of complaint handling and we have recommended a further payment in recognition of that failure.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme), the landlord made an offer of reasonable redress in relation to the resident’s reports of damp and mould at the property.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the associated formal complaint.

Orders and recommendations

Order

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this decision, the landlord should:
    1. Send the resident a letter of apology for its complaint handling failure.
    2. Pay the resident £200 in recognition of its complaint handling errors, inclusive of the £100 already offered.

Recommendation

  1. The landlord should pay the resident the sum of £546 which it offered her for its failures in handling her reports of damp and mould and for the replacement of her carpet, if it has not already done so. This offer recognised genuine elements of service failure and the sufficient redress finding is made on that basis.