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Sanctuary Housing Association (202316345)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202316345

Sanctuary Housing Association

21 August 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 handling of:
    1. The resident’s reports about support services it provided during her tenancy.
    2. The resident’s complaint.

Background

  1. The resident lived in the property, owned by the landlord, under an assured tenancy. The property is a 1-bedroom ground floor flat in a supported housing building. She moved in in December 2022 and moved out in May 2023.
  2. On 29 March 2023 the resident raised a complaint that she was unhappy with the level of support provided by staff. The landlord held a meeting with the resident on 31 March to discuss her concerns, where it says it apologised and agreed to carry out a case review and learn from this. As a result of this it said it implemented additional training for staff. The landlord has not provided a copy of a written response to this complaint but says that at that time the resident accepted its outcome and did not ask for the complaint to be escalated.
  3. On 16 April 2023 the resident reported an incident to the landlord that had happened 2 days earlier. A resident from the landlord’s other building in the street had kicked out 3 banister poles from the stairs in the resident’s building.
  4. On 22 April 2023 the resident wrote to the landlord giving 4 weeks notice that she intended to move out by 20 May. On 31 May the resident raised a new complaint about the amount of support the landlord had provided her with whilst she lived in the property, including it not helping her with a large bill she received for care costs from the local council.
  5. The landlord sent its stage 1 response on 19 June 2023, in which it said that it was not responsible for the care bill from the council, but had still taken steps to help her with this. It also said it took appropriate action in relation to the incident on 14 April once it was made aware of this. It did not comment on the overall level of support as it said this had already been covered in the previous complaint, which she had not escalated.
  6. The resident asked for the complaint to be escalated on 29 June 2023. She said her mental health and skills had deteriorated due to poorly trained staff and insufficient support. She also said that the landlord did not support her with the pursuit of welfare benefits and allowed her to spend too much time alone without support.
  7. The landlord acknowledged the escalation request on 3 July 2023 and sent its stage 2 response on 31 July. At this time it decided to also escalate the previous complaint and respond to all points raised in this letter. It acknowledged that the resident did not receive adequate support planning during her time living at the property and offered £350 compensation to recognise this.
  8. The resident remained unhappy with this response and on 12 January 2024 contacted this Service to ask us to investigate.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

  1. What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. This is governed by the Housing Ombudsman Scheme. When a complaint is brought to the Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint, or part of a complaint, will not be investigated.
  2. According to paragraph 42(d) of the Scheme, the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which in the Ombudsman’s opinion concern the level of rent or service charge or service charge increase. These would most effectively be decided upon by the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber), (FTT), which could potentially make a legally binding decision about the service charge liability, amount and calculation of refunds, increase and reasonableness.
  3. This Service also does not have the power to assess the quality/amount of support provided to the resident as adult social care provision is not an area that the Housing Ombudsman has any level of expertise or authority. It is noted that one issue complained about related to a bill the resident received from the Local Authority for care provision. Any concerns about the support provided by or on behalf of the Local Authority should be addressed through a complaint direct to the relevant department within that Local Authority. This service is able however to consider the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports that she did not receive services it charged for within the occupancy agreement.
  4. As such, this investigation will not be looking into those aspects of the complaint related to the liability for service charges and their reasonableness. It will also not be looking into the quality or amount of support that was provided. It will focus on how the landlord responded to the resident’s concerns about the support through its complaints process.

Support for the resident

  1. The resident’s tenancy agreement includes a support agreement which says the resident had a keyworker. The agreement says this keyworker would assess her support needs. The landlord’s occupancy management and sustainment policy says that relevant moving and settling in paperwork should be completed within 4 weeks of a resident moving in.
  2. The landlord has not provided a copy of a support plan, or evidence of any assessment being carried out within the first 4 weeks after the resident moved in. The earliest evidence the landlord has provided of it carrying out any assessment of the resident’s needs and how she was getting on was a star chart assessment it carried out on 22 March 2023, 4 months after she had moved in to the property.
  3. The landlord has provided daily record sheets from 11 March 2023 until the resident moved out in May 2023, which kept a record of the conversations it had had with her during this time. However, this Service has seen no record of what support, if any, it provided prior to 11 March.
  4. Between 11 March 2023 and her moving out, these records do show that the landlord supported the resident with a number of things, including applying for benefits, filling out paperwork and helping her set herself up on a careers website.
  5. In March 2023 the resident received a bill for care from the local authority, and as part of her complaint she said that she did not feel that the landlord supported her in dealing with this. The landlord was not responsible for this bill, but its records show that it did help her to appeal this, and the bill was subsequently rescinded.
  6. The landlord also took the proactive step of providing further training to its staff in case the same situation arose. Given that this bill related to the local authority, and not the landlord, it is commendable that it took the time to implement training to enable it to better support its residents in the future.
  7. On 14 April 2023 an incident took place involving a resident from the landlord’s other building on site, where this person entered the resident’s building and kicked out 3 banister poles. The resident did not report this to the landlord until 16 April, and later said that she felt too scared to report it at the time. It is important to note that the resident had referred to this person as a friend of hers, and whilst this Service appreciates she may have felt intimidated and therefore scared to report the incident, there is no evidence of any failure by the landlord that prevented her from reporting it.
  8. The resident said that when she did report the incident to the landlord, she felt that it did not provide appropriate support, telling her that she should have rung the police herself. The daily record sheet from 16 April 2023 when she reported this only details the event itself and does not show what steps the landlord took to support the resident.
  9. In its stage 1 response the landlord said it took appropriate action, including discussions about calling the police, however it does not say that it offered to do this for the resident. The landlord has a duty of care to its residents, and given that it is providing supported living, it would have been appropriate for it to offer to contact the police on the resident’s behalf. It would also have been appropriate for it to carry out a risk assessment to ensure that the incident could not be repeated, however there is no evidence that such action was taken.
  10. In its stage 2 response, the landlord acknowledged that the resident did not receive adequate support and planning during her time living in the property. It apologised for this and offered compensation of £350 to recognise its failings.
  11. The Ombudsman considers there to have been maladministration by the landlord in its handling of support for the resident after she moved into the property. It is evident from the information available, and from the landlord’s own admission, that it did not provide adequate support to the resident whilst she lived at the property.
  12. Whilst the landlord did recognise this during its internal complaints process, the Ombudsman does not consider the redress it offered to be proportionate to the failing in this case. The lack of support from the landlord led to the resident no longer feeling she could live independently in the property and she moved back to live with her parents. During her complaint she told the landlord that the situation had severely impacted her mental health and increased her anxiety. An order has been made for the landlord to pay the resident further compensation of £500 to recognise the distress caused by its failings, bringing the total compensation to £850.
  13. In accordance with paragraph 54(g) of the Scheme, an order has also been made for the landlord to carry out a management review of the resident’s case and provide a copy of the review to this Service within 8 weeks of the date of this report in order for it to learn from its failings in this case. This review should include consideration of whether to implement a process that ensures that required support packages are put in place and recorded within relevant timescales at supported housing schemes.

Complaint handling

  1. Landlords must have an effective complaint process to provide a good service to their residents. An effective complaint process means landlords can fix problems quickly, learn from their mistakes and build good relationships with residents.
  2. The landlord’s complaints policy says it will acknowledge complaints within 3 working days and send a stage 1 response within 10 working days. At stage 2, it will provide a response within 20 working days of escalation. Its policy at the time of the complaint stipulated that the resident needed to request escalation within 10 working days of the stage 1 response.
  3. The resident raised her initial complaint on 29 March 2023 and the landlord gave its response during a meeting with the resident on 31 March, which it says that she accepted at that time.
  4. The resident raised a new complaint on 31 May 2023, in which she reraised the issues from the previous complaint and raised additional points. The landlord sent a stage 1 response just addressing the new points on 19 June, 13 working days after it was raised. This was a few days longer than the policy timescale, but did not represent an unreasonable delay.
  5. The resident asked for the complaint to be escalated on 29 June 2023. The landlord acknowledged this on 3 July and said it would respond by 31 July 2023. The resident responded on 13 July asking why she was only allowed 10 days to escalate the complaint when the landlord did not ‘apply the same courtesy’ in responding at stage 2.
  6. The landlord acted in line with its policy when asking the resident to request escalation within 10 working days, and as she did so, this Service has not had to consider what would have happened should she have requested this outside this timescale. The Ombudsman would have recommended the landlord review this part of its policy, however it is noted that its current complaints policy has removed this requirement for the resident to request escalation within 10 working days.
  7. The landlord sent its stage 2 response on 31 July 2023, 22 working days after the escalation was requested. Again, this was slightly outside the policy timescale, but did not represent a substantial delay. In this response it chose to escalate the issues from both of the complaints and addressed all of her concerns.
  8. After the stage 2 response was sent, on several occasions the resident’s mother, who was representing her, questioned why compensation had been offered to her. However, although the complaint responses had been sent to her email address, they were addressed to the resident herself, so there was no suggestion that the compensation was being offered to the wrong person. The landlord confirmed in an email of 5 September 2023 that the compensation was intended for the resident and not her mother.
  9. The Ombudsman does not consider there to have been maladministration by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s complaint. Whilst there was a delay of a few days at each stage, there is no evidence that these delays had a significant impact on the resident.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in relation to its handling of support for the resident after she moved into the property.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in relation to its handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders

  1. The landlord to take the following action within 28 days of this report and provide evidence of compliance to this Service:
    1. Pay £850 compensation to the resident, less anything already paid during its internal complaint process, in relation to its handling of support for the resident.
    2. A senior officer at the landlord to provide a written apology to the resident.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 54(g) of the Scheme, the landlord to carry out a management review of the resident’s case and provide a copy of the review to this Service within 8 weeks of the date of this report in order for it to learn from its failings in this case. This review should include consideration of whether to implement a process that ensures that required support packages are put in place and recorded within relevant timescales at supported housing schemes.