Peabody Trust (202222526)
REPORT
COMPLAINT 202222526
Peabody Trust
11 December 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
- The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
- Reports of issues with communal lifts.
- Associated formal complaint.
Background
- The resident has been the leaseholder of a property in a building which is owned and managed by the landlord, a housing association, since 2021. The building is a high-rise block of flats with 3 lifts. The 2 main lifts (the main lifts) go to the top floors where the resident lives. The landlord is responsible for the maintenance of all lifts and imposes an annual charge for this and other maintenance tasks.
- The resident began to report problems with the lifts in 2021 and made numerous reports over the next year. In April 2022, he complained formally about the ongoing problems, saying the breakdowns were occurring too frequently and lift buttons were often broken.
- The landlord decided, in light of the ongoing issues with the lift, to provide a service charge rebate equivalent to the sum paid for lift maintenance in the 2022/23 financial year.
- The landlord provided a stage 1 response on 1 February 2023 when it accepted that the lifts had broken down too often and it recognised that this had been more than was acceptable. It said it had engaged a new contractor to renovate the main lifts but could not say exactly when it would complete the works. The following day the landlord advised the resident that it would keep him updated and said it would offer compensation when the work was complete.
- The new contractor began work on the lifts in March 2023 and the works continued into Summer 2023.
- The landlord offered the resident £600 compensation for poor communication and poor complaint handling on 1 March 2023. The resident replied in May 2023 saying that this was not enough. He said he had paid a large sum for his property and had found it difficult to access it for 2 years, and he was anxious about getting stuck in a lift. He said the landlord had delayed in addressing the legitimate concerns of residents. He asked to escalate his complaint on 13 May 2023 and requested £8,500 compensation.
- Prior to providing its stage 2 response, the landlord agreed to provide the same service charge rebate to all residents in 2023/24 to reflect the continued problems with the lifts. In its stage 2 response of 15 June 2023 the landlord said the lift service had not been of an acceptable standard and offered the resident £350 compensation plus £750 for the delays in providing its complaint responses.
- The resident was not satisfied with this offer and referred his complaint to the Ombudsman. He said the lift service was still not adequate and he wanted the landlord to complete the lift renovations and provide greater compensation.
Assessment and findings
Scope of the investigation
- The resident has raised concerns about the lifts over several years and had made a further complaint about similar issues in February 2024. This Service has seen no evidence that the more recent complaint has exhausted the landlord’s complaints process. Therefore, as the landlord has not had a reasonable opportunity to fully investigate and resolve those concerns through its complaints process, they do not form part of this investigation (in line with paragraph 42.a of the Scheme).
- If the resident remains unhappy with the landlord’s handling of his concerns he could raise a new complaint with it and refer it to the Ombudsman in due course if necessary. We would then deal with it as a new complaint under a new reference number.
Landlord’s handling of reports of issues with communal lifts
- The resident’s lease says that the landlord is responsible for the management and maintenance of the common parts of the building, including lifts. It is authorised to make a charge on each resident, calculated annually as a percentage of the associated costs.
- The Ombudsman recognises that problems will occur in large buildings with multiple communal facilities. The fact that a lift fails does not necessarily show a landlord to have been responsible for service failure. Instead, this Service considers a landlord’s response to reports of problems to ascertain whether it has met its own policy commitments, the terms of the occupancy agreement, and normal standards of good service. We consider the events alongside the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles, which state that landlords should recognise poor service in a way which is fair and puts things right.
- The landlord has accepted that the lifts broke down too frequently during 2 financial years: 2022/23 and 2023/24. It acknowledged that its response to repeated failures was too slow and left residents facing an unacceptably poor service. It recognised this failure by providing all leaseholders with a rebate to cover the percentage of the management charge relating to lift maintenance in 2022/3 and has said it will do for 2023/4. This was a fair and sensible solution which went some way to recompense the resident for the poor service provided during the relevant period.
- The resident says that the landlord should have made a similar reduction in 2021/2 to cover similar failures occurring in that year as well. However, this point was not raised as part of the resident’s formal complaint and the landlord has not, therefore, had a reasonable opportunity to investigate and resolve this issue prior to the Ombudsman’s investigation. As a result, this point is not considered further in this report (reflected at paragraph 42.a of the Scheme).
- The landlord has taken sensible steps to improve its service in light of this complaint. It engaged a new expert contractor to replace the systems of the main lifts with plans to replace the others over time. It has provided evidence that this work is well under way. This reflects the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principle of ‘learning from outcomes’, which encourages landlords to use complaints as a means of making changes to prevent similar issues arising in the future.
- The resident has understandably been frustrated by the fact that repairs took some time to complete. However, there were good reasons for the delays. The landlord could not repair both lifts at once as this would have left those in the upper floors, including those with mobility problems, with no service for an extended period. This would have been contrary to fire safety regulations. The contractor also experienced unexpected obstacles in completing the early stages of the project. This was not an example of poor service but a sensible, proportionate response to a failing lift system.
- In addition, the landlord offered the resident £300 compensation for the inconvenience the lift failures caused. The resident says that this is insufficient to compensate him for the ongoing inconvenience and distress the failures caused him. The landlord’s compensation policy says that it will consider the payment of compensation where a customer has experienced a delay because of a service failure on its part. It will offer between £100 and £200 for “minor disruption” between £201 and £400 for “moderate disruption and £401 and £600 for extensive disruption”. In order to establish whether the landlord’s offer was appropriate, this Service has considered the extent of its failure.
- The resident accepted, in correspondence with the landlord, that some lift breakdowns were inevitable. This Service agrees that this is the case and that, therefore, the landlord would not be at fault if it maintained failures at an acceptable level. The resident told the landlord in correspondence that the average number of breakdowns per lift per year was 4. He said that, as there were 5 lifts in the building, residents should not be expected to endure more than 20 breakdowns per year. The landlord accepted that the number of failures was unacceptable. There were 32 failures between June 2021 and May 2022 and 48 failures between June 2022 and May 2023.
- However, while investigating the resident’s complaint, the landlord engaged a lift consultant who said that, while the average number of breakdowns per lift per year was 4, the expected number of breakdowns for any individual lift “is wholly dependent to size of lift (number of floors) the environment it is installed in and the amount of journeys they complete.” The consultant added that, for the main lifts, “an annual average of 4 calls per lift per annum would be utopia, due to the size and the fact they are carrying out a large number of journeys on a daily basis, with regular peak periods.”
- The average number of 4 breakdowns per year applies to all lifts. The main lifts in the building are large lifts covering more floors and carrying more passengers than average. Therefore, the number of breakdowns expected will be higher. For that reason, this Service cannot agree with the resident that there should be only 20 breakdowns per year or that the fact that there are more is evidence of a service failure on the landlord’s part.
- On the evidence, some lift breakdowns, and therefore some inconvenience, was inevitable. The landlord has accepted that there should have been fewer breakdowns than there were but, given the number of floors and passengers, there may well have been many more than 20 breakdowns even with the best maintenance in place. For that reason, in the view of this Service, the landlord’s offer of £300 for its service failures and the distress and inconvenience they caused was adequate. The number of excess incidents per year amounted to “moderate disruption” for the resident.
- The resident said in his escalation request that the lift failures had caused him considerable frustration and distress. He said disabled and pregnant friends and relatives could not visit him because they could not use the stairs. Everyday tasks such as shopping and putting out the rubbish became difficult as he could not rely on the lift. However, as the landlord pointed out, while accepting the impact on him, he was never trapped in a lift himself.
- For that reason, in the view of this Service, the landlord’s response to the lift failures, and its offer of redress, resolved the complaint satisfactorily and a finding of reasonable redress is made.
The associated formal complaint
- The landlord’s complaints policy says that it should provide stage 1 complaint responses within 10 working days. It should provide stage 2 responses within 20 working days in most cases. Where this is not possible, the landlord will agree an extension with the complainant.
- The landlord failed to meet that standard in this case. It took 196 working days to provide a stage 1 response and 23 days to provide the stage 2 response.
- The landlord acknowledged that its complaint handling was unacceptably poor. It offered the resident £750 in recognition of this. Its compensation policy says it will offer up to £50 for minor complaint handling failures, £52 to £150 for moderate failures and “£151 to £250 for severe failures”.
- By offering 3 times more than its maximum award, the landlord appropriately recognised the severe failing in complaint handling in this case. In the view of this Service, the landlord’s response to the complaint handling error, and its offer of redress, resolved the matter satisfactorily and we have made a finding of reasonable redress in that regard.
Determination
- In accordance with paragraph 53.b of the Scheme, the landlord made an offer of reasonable redress in relation to the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
- Reports of issues with communal lifts.
- Associated formal complaint.
Recommendations
- The landlord is recommended to, if it has not already done so, pay the £1,050 compensation to the resident, as this recognised genuine elements of service failure and the finding of reasonable redress is made on that basis.