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Orbit Housing Association Limited (202321905)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202321905

Orbit Housing Association Limited

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:
    1. The repairs to the resident’s property.
    2. The resident’s complaint.

Background

  1. The resident has an assured tenancy with the landlord for a 1-bedroom flat.
  2. On 4 April 2022, the landlord’s contractor attempted to complete repairs to the resident’s bedroom window and surrounding walls. They were unable to complete the repair as the resident was ill.
  3. On 19 May 2022, the contractor attended to complete repairs to the internal walls, skirting boards and flooring. The resident cancelled the appointment as she wanted the landlord to survey all issues in her property.
  4. The resident raised a complaint on 2 August 2022 that the outstanding repairs were not complete. The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 9 September. It apologised for the repair delays and offered compensation of £366.25. It said it would complete all work within 28 days.
  5. On 9 January 2023, the resident said the landlord promised it would complete the work by December 2022. She said no work had taken place and the landlord had not paid the compensation. The landlord escalated the complaint at this point.
  6. The landlord’s stage 2 complaint response 27 July 2023 upheld the complaint as the repairs had been “going on for some time.” It explained it had closed repairs it had raised on 7 September 2022 and 20 March 2023. It offered additional compensation of £770 and confirmed all repairs would commence by 7 August 2023, taking 1 week to complete.
  7. The landlord completed all repairs on 11 August 2023. The resident confirmed this, but has said it did not complete them properly, and it had not dealt with her further concerns about this. She also said the landlord had not paid the compensation it offered on 9 September 2022 and 27 July 2023.

Assessment and findings

Scope of assessment

  1. In a call with this Service on 2 April 2025 the resident said she raised concerns with the landlord about the quality of the repairs following the repair it completed on 13 August 2023. However, we have not seen evidence of this, or the landlord’s response. As this took place after the landlord’s final complaint response of 27 July, there is no evidence that it had the opportunity to respond to these concerns under its complaint’s procedure.
  2. The Ombudsman may only consider complaints that have exhausted the landlord’s complaints’ procedure. The resident has the option to raise a further complaint, however, as this took place over 12 months ago, she may be out of time. The resident can raise her concerns to the Ombudsman, should the landlord provide a final complaint response.

The repairs to the resident’s property.

  1. The landlord’s repairs policy states routine repairs are any repair that is not an emergency. It will complete these repairs within 28 calendar days. It classifies major repairs as those that take longer than 4 hours to complete and need several types of trades, a specialist, or scaffolding. It will complete these repairs within 60 calendar days.
  2. The resident complained on 2 August 2022 that she was unhappy the landlord had not resolved the repairs and the contractor had not contacted her. In its stage 1 response of 9 September, the landlord upheld the complaint. It apologised for the delays and that its contractor had not communicated with her.
  3. This is reflected in the evidence, which shows neither the landlord or contractor updated the resident or completed further repairs following its failed attempts in May 2022. Moreover, it did not respond to the resident’s request for the landlord to inspect the property on 19 May 2022 until she complained about the issue.
  4. The landlord’s stage 1 response confirmed it had since inspected the property. The evidence shows this took place on 11 August 2022. It took 3 months to do this. In the absence of evidence explaining the delay and when measured against the landlord’s repair timescales that was an unreasonable amount of time.
  5. Nonetheless, the landlord appropriately managed the resident’s expectations about the work it identified in its inspection. It confirmed it would regrout the hallway tiles on 14 September. It completed this on the agreed date.
  6. The landlord said it would complete all other work in 28 days. This included filling gaps, repairing cracks, fixing windows, and repairing the bathroom flooring. This was an appropriate timescale in accordance with its repairs policy. It also confirmed it would refurbish the kitchen in its 2022/2023 renewal programme.
  7. The resident escalated her complaint on 9 January 2023. She was concerned the landlord had still not completed the repairs or paid her the compensation it offered.
  8. The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 27 July 2023. It again upheld the resident’s complaint and acknowledged repairs had been “ongoing for some time.” It explained it had raised the repairs on 7 September 2022 but closed them as it “did not have enough time to complete the works.” It is unclear what it meant by this and why this prohibited it from beginning the work.
  9. The landlord also said it had arranged the work again on 20 March 2023 but cancelled it as it had not raised it correctly. It confirmed it raised the work again successfully on 20 June but did not account for its further delay in doing this from March.
  10. In its complaint response, the landlord agreed it would complete all work within a week of it starting on 7 August 2023. The evidence shows it complied with this, completing all outstanding work on 13 August. However, in total from 9 September 2022 it exceeded the timescale of 60 days in its policy for major works by 173 days.
  11. There is no evidence of the landlord updating the resident on its schedule of works or to account for any delays. It failed to address this point in its stage 2 complaint response or apologise.
  12. The landlord’s stage 2 complaint response failed to address the resident’s complaint that it had not paid the compensation offered at stage 1. There is no evidence it subsequently paid this.
  13. The landlord offered compensation of £366.25 in its stage 1 complaint response. It offered further compensation of £470 in its stage 2 response. It is unclear how the landlord determined these amounts in accordance with its compensation policy.
  14. The compensation the landlord offered at stage 1 was reasonable for the 4-month delay encountered at that point, when considered against the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance for a delay of that length. However, the amount it offered at stage 2 was not proportionate for the further delay, the inconvenience caused and the lack of communication between September 2022 and July 2023. This was not in accordance with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance for failings of that scale and nature.
  15. In summary, following the cancellation of the inspection in May 2022 the landlord failed to reschedule this again until August, after the resident complained. Following this it promised to complete the repairs found in its inspection. It completed the tile grouting repair in an appropriate timescale, but did not complete all others until 12 months after the inspection. The apologies and compensation it offered for its failings went part way towards putting things right for the resident, but not fully, leaving the complaint unresolved.

Complaint handling.

  1. The landlord’s complaints policy confirms it will acknowledge all complaints in 5 working days. It will respond to stage 1 complaints in 10 working days and stage 2 complaints in 20 working days from its acknowledgement.
  2. The landlord delayed acknowledging both the resident’s initial complaint and her escalation. It took 25 working days to acknowledge the complaint of 2 August 2022. It took 123 working days to acknowledge the escalation of 9 January 2023.
  3. Following its delayed acknowledgements the landlord responded to both complaints within the timescales set out in its policy. However, the initial delays unreasonably slowed resolution of the complaint for the resident.
  4. The landlord offered compensation of £300 in its stage 2 response. It said this was for its complaint handling. It is unclear if this referred to its failures at stage 1 and stage 2. However, the amount it offered was in accordance with its compensation policy and was proportionate compensation for the complaint handling failures identified.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was service failure in respect of the landlord’s handling of repairs to the resident’s property.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 53.b of the Scheme, the landlord has offered redress to the resident prior to investigation, which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, satisfactorily resolves the concerns about its complaint handling.

Orders

  1. In light of the failings found in the report, the landlord must pay the resident compensation of £1386.25 within 4 weeks of the report. This comprises of:
    1. £250 for the failing identified in this investigation.
    2. £366.25 it offered to the resident in its stage 1 response of 9 September 2022 if it has not already paid this.
    3. £770 it offered to the resident in its stage 2 response of 27 July 2023 if it has not already paid this. This consists of £470 for its handling of the repairs and £300 for the complaint handling.
    4. Evidence of compliance with this order must be provided by the 4-week deadline.