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Southwark Council (202306302)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202306302

Southwark Council

17 June 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 of issues with the heating system at the property.
    2. The associated formal complaint.

Background

  1. The resident is the secure tenant of the property, a 1-bedroom flat owned by the landlord.
  2. On 12 October 2022, the resident reported that she had no heating and hot water and that there was a leak underneath the kitchen sink. She made several calls about the issue to the landlord on that day. During the evening, 2 of the landlord’s operatives attended and the leak was stopped. Another operative attended the next day to carry out a permanent repair to the leak. The resident reported to the landlord on numerous occasions during the next week that her heating was still not working. The landlord completed repairs on the heating system on 19 October 2022. It later attended on 23 December 2022 and replaced and tiled the boxing around the pipes which had been stained by the leak.
  3. On 13 October 2022, the resident complained to the landlord about the way it responded to her original report of the leak. She said that she had had to wait too long for the engineers to attend. She further stated that 2 engineers attending at first had said the problem was nothing to do with the plumbing but was caused by the boiler’s gas condenser. The second operative did not arrive until after 11pm and said that the leak had already been mended. The out-of-hours call operative she spoke with inaccurately stated that the second operative could not come for 4 hours. She said the experience was stressful and she wanted compensation.
  4. The landlord sent its stage 1 complaint response to the resident on 8 December 2022. It said the boiler was now mended and that it would attend to replace the panelling around the pipes on 23 December 2022. It said 2 operatives attended on the day of the leak, the first mended the leak, the second it had been mended and therefore left. Another operative attended the next day to carry out a permanent repair. It apologised for any inconvenience that had been caused and offered the resident £50 in compensation for the time and trouble she had been caused.
  5. The resident responded on the same day and said she was not satisfied with the offer of £50. The landlord escalated the matter but did not respond until July 2023 after being asked to do so twice by this Service. In its stage 2 response of 20 July 2023, it offered the resident a further £93 in compensation. It said £18 of this was in recognition of the fact that, according to its compensation policy, it should have paid her £3 a day for the period during which she had no hot water or heating. The remaining £75 was in recognition of the delay in handling the complaint.
  6. Having received the stage 2 response, the resident confirmed to this Service that she wanted to us to investigate her concerns. She said that the repairs had taken too long to complete and she had been misinformed. She said she wanted more compensation.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

  1. The resident has said that she has high blood pressure and the stress associated with the events set out in this report have had an impact on her health. This Service is unable to establish a causal link between reports of the health issues experienced by complainants and the actions of landlords. Nonetheless, we have considered the general distress and inconvenience which these events may have caused.

The resident’s reports of issues with the heating system at the property.

  1. The landlord’s Repairs Guide says that it will respond to emergency repairs within 24 hours. Where there is a danger to health or safety, it will try to attend in 2 to 4 hours.
  2. On 12 October 2022, the resident reported that there was a leak in the pipes near her boiler and that she had no hot water. When she used the hot water or heating, this made the leak worse. There is no record of her reporting that there was an imminent danger to her health so the landlord was required, according to its Repairs Guide, to attend within 24 hours.
  3. The evidence suggests that the resident made 4 separate reports of problems at the flat which all dealt, broadly, with the same problem of the leaking pipe and the heating. This seems, on the evidence, to explain why 2 operatives attended that night.
  4. The resident says that the first operative, a plumber, did no work as they found that the problem was with the boiler which was not their responsibility. The second operative, on the other hand, said that the first plumber had mended the leak so there was no further work to be done on an emergency basis. She also believes that a call handler lied to her by saying that the second operative would not be able to attend for 4 hours because they were on another job and then attended late. She says she had to get out of bed when they arrived.
  5. This Service is unable to ascertain what operatives said to the resident as there is no independent evidence of the conversations they had. However, it is not disputed that the operatives arrived and carried out works within the landlord’s service standard, and that more permanent repairs were carried out the next day. The heating was fixed within a week and the boxing around the pipes was completed on 23 December 2022. This date was at the resident’s request as she could not take time off work until then.
  6. At stage 1 of the complaints process, the landlord offered the resident £50 to acknowledge her time and trouble which, according to this Service’s guidance on remedies, adequately recognised any trouble she had been caused. This figure was also in line with its own compensation policy which says awards for time and trouble should range between £50 and £250.
  7. At stage 1, the landlord failed to offer any compensation for the 6 days the resident went without heating but it made up for this omission by offering her £18 at stage 2 which is the amount (£3 per day) specified in its compensation policy. This, therefore, adequately compensated her for that loss.
  8. The resident has said that the landlord should pay her further compensation because, when it returned to mend the heating on 19 October 2022, the operative left the heating on all day. However, the landlord says that it is “standard procedure for any reports of heating or hot water outages which require a gas boiler for the system to be left running after the repair.” It also says she did not ask it to leave the heating switched off and that, if she had, it would have done so. For that reason, this Service does not find any failure in the way the landlord dealt with this issue and therefore does not agree that any further compensation is due.

The associated formal complaint

  1. The landlord’s complaints policy says that it will respond to stage 1 complaints within 15 working days and stage 2 escalation requests within 25 working days. This is not in line with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) which says landlords must reply at stage 2 within 20 working days.
  2. In any event, the landlord failed to meet either of these standards. It took 40 working days to reply at stage 1 and over 150 working days to respond at stage 2. This was clearly an unacceptable delay. The landlord apologised and paid the resident £75 for this failure which is broadly in line with this Service’s guidance on remedies and therefore is adequate compensation for the inconvenience and distress the delay caused. It has also said that it is taking steps to reduce the backlog in its complaint process, which indicates that it took its failures to adhere to its process seriously and intended to prevent future occurrences. This is in line with this Service’s dispute resolution principles which requires landlords to take measures to put things right and learn from outcomes.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53(b) of the Scheme, the landlord made offers of reasonable redress which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion resolve this complaint satisfactorily in relation to:
    1. The resident’s reports of issues with the heating system at the property.
    2. The delay in handling the associated formal complaint.

Orders and Recommendations

Recommendation

  1. The landlord should ensure that its complaint handling deadlines comply with the Code.