Southern Housing (202225108)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202225108

Southern Housing

30 January 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 the resident’s reports of a leak.
2. The Ombudsman has also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

3. The resident has been the leaseholder of the property, a flat in a block of flats (the block) owned by the landlord, for more than 7 years.
4. In October 2019, the resident reported a leak in the utility cupboard above the gas boiler during heavy rain. The landlord’s contractor appointed a specialist contractor to respond but it did not carry out any works. In October 2022, the resident reported the leak again and continued to do so regularly thereafter.
5. On 1 December 2022, the resident complained to the landlord about its failure to deal with the leak over a lengthy period. In April 2023, the landlord discovered that the specialist contractor had failed to carry out the necessary works and asked its own contractor to complete them.
6. Following our intervention in February 2023, the landlord provided a stage 1 response on 12 May 2023. It accepted there had been a service failure over a prolonged period and offered £410 compensation. It later said it had completed the works on 27 April 2023.
7. The resident escalated her complaint on 21 May 2023, saying that, while the works had been completed, the scaffolding had made a mess of the garden and was still there. On 18 June 2023, she contacted the landlord again to say that, during heavy rain, the leak had reoccurred. She asked the landlord to consider this as part of her stage 2 complaint.
8. In its stage 2 response of 6 July 2023, the landlord said its contractor had visited the property and believed the problem to be caused by the gas flue. It said that, as the resident was a leaseholder, this was her responsibility to fix.
9. In her referral to us, the resident said the landlord had failed to take ownership of the roof leak and independent heating engineers had confirmed the problem lay with the roof and not the flue. She wanted the problem solved and more compensation.
10. In May 2024, the landlord carried out further works to the roof which the resident believes to have been successful. It then provided a further stage 1 response on 15 May 2024 which offered an additional £250 compensation for the delayed repairs.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

11. The resident did not escalate the second complaint after receiving the landlord’s stage 1 response of 15 May 2024. However, all the events are linked by a single repair, which had already been considered through a full complaint process. As a result, we have considered these more recent events as part of our investigation.

Resident’s reports of a leak

12. The lease states that the landlord is responsible for the fabric of the building including the roof. The landlord’s repairs policy says it will aim to complete repairs in one visit and it should take “as little time as possible”.
13. The evidence indicates that works on the block’s roof were fairly frequent. In 2019, when the resident first reported the problem, she said, “I don’t think my leak is connected to other leaks”. In 2023, when the landlord claimed to have repaired the leak, the evidence indicates that its contractors had not, in fact, carried out any works at the site of the resident’s leak. Instead, it believed that works elsewhere had solved the resident’s problem.
14. The resident made frequent reports of ongoing leaks and “ridiculously slow response times”. She said the communication from contractors was poor and this is supported by the evidence. On one occasion, in April 2023, while a relative was seriously ill, the resident asked contractors to attend. Having received assurances that they would, she waited in only for them not to arrive. While she was waiting, her relative died. Neither the contractor nor the landlord informed her that it had decided not to attend because of the weather. This was clearly distressing for her and this failure was not an isolated incident.
15. In the landlord’s stage 1 response of 12 May 2023, it accepted that it had failed to repair the leak since the first report in October 2019. It said that, if the resident claimed against her insurance to recover redecoration costs, it would refund her the excess of £350. It offered her £410 compensation on the understanding that the works were now complete. It was appropriate for the landlord to recognise the length of the delay and offer a financial remedy, but the sum was not proportionate to the identified failings over a 3 and a half year period.
16. The landlord’s compensation framework says its awards of discretionary compensation are based on the Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies. It says that its compensation awards fall into 3 categories: £50 to £250, £250 to £700 and above £700. In fact, our current guidance sets out 4 categories of compensation:
    1. £50 to £100 where the landlord has made minor errors.
    2. £100 to £600 for more serious cases, usually with no lasting impact.
    3. £600 to £1,000 for failures which had a significant impact on the resident and may amount to severe maladministration.
    4. Over £1,000 where there has been severe maladministration over a long period with severe consequences.
17. This case falls within the third bracket, due to the landlord’s poor communication and repeated failure to engage over an extended period. Because of the length of the delay, the award should have been at the higher end of this range (see below for further details). In addition, we have recommended that the landlord amend its guidance to reflect the current categories.
18. The resident believed that the stage 1 response did not fully recognise the impact on her. She asked the landlord to escalate saying there had been lengthy periods during which scaffolding was still up which affected the garden. Over the course of the period under investigation, scaffolding was erected 3 times and was in place for over a year in total. While this is not, in itself, evidence of maladministration, there do appear to have been lengthy periods when no works occurred. This was understandably frustrating for the resident and the landlord failed to adequately explain the reasons for this.
19. The landlord’s stage 2 response of 6 July 2023 was confusing and inconsistent. It set out the complaint points including the resident’s concern about the continued presence of scaffolding and the fact the leak had recurred in heavy rain. It said it had asked its contractor to solve these problems and it would visit the next day. It went on to say that its contractor had already attended and said “there may be an issue with the gas flue and you may wish to arrange for a gas engineer to attend your property to investigate. As the owner of the property this would be your responsibility.”
20. The landlord said it was unable to “uphold” the complaint as it would not be clear until its contractor visited whether the repair had failed. In the circumstances, it would have been sensible to delay the response by a day so that it could clarify this point. It also said it did not uphold her complaint about poor communication as she had not provided evidence to support the claim. However, it should have investigated the complaint itself and satisfied itself that its communication had been appropriate. This was an unsatisfactory response which did little to demonstrate that it took the complaint seriously or sought to learn from it.
21. After the stage 2 response, the resident continued to press the landlord for action. She commissioned a report from a gas engineer who stated that there was no problem with the flue. The landlord carried out further works on the roof in late July 2023 and said, in an internal email of 26 July 2023, that it could “confirm the final element of works were completed on 18th July 2023”. It removed the scaffolding again on 26 July 2023.
22. The resident wrote to the landlord on 20 September 2023, during a rainstorm, to say the leak had recurred. The landlord then investigated and, for the first time, discovered the leak was coming though the next door flat. This shows that appropriate works could not have occurred before this point.
23. Despite the delay in correctly identifying the source of the leak, the landlord still did not complete the necessary repairs until 22 April 2024. The resident eventually contacted a senior landlord employee via social media in March 2024 to ask them to intervene. This led to the works being completed. This was 7 months after the September 2023 inspection and 4 and a half years after the initial report. This represents a further considerable failure in service which left the resident in a frustrating and distressing situation for an unnecessary period.
24. The landlord then opened a further stage 1 complaint and awarded an additional £250 compensation, bringing the total to £660. It also said it would refund the £90 the resident spent on the gas engineer’s report. As the landlord’s response to the leak fell well below an acceptable standard, this offer of redress was not proportionate to the failings identified in this report.
25. While the leak was minor and the damage caused was limited, the resident found it necessary to contact the landlord on numerous occasions between 2022 and 2024. The landlord’s responses were wholly inadequate in terms of the level of communication with the resident and the steps taken to resolve the substantive issue. The extensive delays, repeated service failings, and false assurances, causing considerable distress and frustration to the resident, amount to severe maladministration.
26. The Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies states that, in cases where we find severe maladministration, awards of £1,000 and above may be appropriate. Although the issue itself was minor, the length of the delay, the repeated failures to resolve the issue, and the failure to properly compensate the resident, mean that a remedy of £1,000 (inclusive of the £660 already paid) is appropriate. This award recognises both the aggravating factors (the length of the delay) and the mitigating factor (that the resident did not actively pursue the issue between 2019 and 2022).

Complaint handling

27. The landlord’s complaints procedure says it will acknowledge a complaint within 5 working days and provide a response within a further 10 working days. It says it will acknowledge an escalation request within 5 working days and provide a stage 2 response within a further 20 working days or, if it cannot do so, inform the resident and arrange a short extension. This is in line with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
28. However, the landlord failed to meet these timeframes. It took 7 working days to acknowledge the stage 1 complaint, and a further 103 working days to issue a stage 1 response. It then failed to apologise for, or even acknowledge, these delays in the stage 1 response, which would have been appropriate.
29. Following the resident’s escalation request, it took the landlord 32 working days to provide a response. This was despite us requesting it to respond promptly on 2 occasions in the intervening period. Again, this delay was not addressed within the stage 2 response.
30. The complaint responses themselves were inadequate as they failed to appropriately address all the complaint points. Together, these failures amounted to maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling. Our remedies guidance says that compensation for findings of maladministration should generally be between £100 and £1,000, with compensation awards for complaint handling errors generally being lower than those for substantive service failures. In this case, therefore, the Ombudsman orders the landlord to pay £250 compensation.

Determination

31. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme there was:
    1. Severe maladministration by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s reports of a leak.
    2. Maladministration by the landlord in its complaint handling.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

32. Within 4 weeks of the date of this decision, the landlord must provide evidence that it has:
    1. Sent a written apology from a director to the resident to apologise for the failures identified in this report.
    2. Paid the resident £1,250 compensation (inclusive of the £660 compensation already paid) as follows:
       1. £1,000 for its handling of her reports of a leak.
       2. £250 for its handling of the formal complaint.
    3. On being provided with proof that the resident paid an excess payment to her insurer, pay her that amount, if it has not already done so.
    4. Reimburse the £90 for the gas engineer’s report, if it has not already done so.

Recommendation

33. The landlord should consider amending its compensation policy to more accurately reflect the Ombudsman’s current guidance on remedies.