Stevenage Borough Council (202308854)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202308854

Stevenage Borough Council

18 March 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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of:
1. A draught in the property.
2. Concerns about the installation of a positive input ventilation (PIV) unit and the increased cost of heating.
We have also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

The resident has been a secure tenant of the landlord, a local authority, since 2020. The property was a 1-bedroom 1st floor flat in a supported housing set-up. The resident moved from the property in January 2025. The landlord has recorded vulnerabilities for the resident due to his physical health.
In September 2020 the resident started reporting draughts in the property. He thought this was due to the cladding the landlord had recently installed and a door that was not sitting in its frame correctly. The front door was repaired in June 2021. The resident continued to report draughts and expressed concern about the increased cost of heating.
A PIV unit was installed in October 2022 after a surveyor had identified there was no fan extractor in the property. The resident had not complained about damp and mould and the landlord’s own investigation has not established its presence.
On 20 December 2022 the resident contacted the landlord again saying it had ‘raised a stage 2 complaint’ on itself but had not answered it. He was still awaiting an update from a visit that took place 2 months ago, when he was told he would be updated in 2 weeks. He expressed concerns about the temperature of the property and the cost of heating. The landlord spoke to the resident about his concerns on 17 March 2023, following which it logged a complaint. In its stage 1 response of 29 March 2023, it said:
1. There was no damp and mould in the property, but as new windows and insulation were installed and there was no extractor fitted, a surveyor had recommended the PIV unit.
2. Following concerns raised by the resident about draughts, 2 managers inspected the property internally and externally, and did not find a source for it.
3. Other residents had raised similar concerns in the past so plastic trim had been installed at the bottom of the external cladding.
The resident replied on 30 March 2023 via his MP and said:
1. He had repeatedly raised the issue of draughts with the landlord since 2020.
2. An operative had recommended installing the PIV and said the thermostat in the room would need repositioning.
3. The PIV was drawing cold air into the property and the thermostat had not been repositioned.
The resident emailed the landlord again on 2 May 2023 and explicitly asked it to escalate his complaint. He said:
1. A previous complaint (ref X/58967/S2/22) was escalated to stage 2 on 31 August 2022 but he did not receive a response.
2. He had chased several times with no update and even the landlord’s last response (stage 1) had not given any answers.
3. He should have received reports or letters from the visits the landlord made.
4. The new windows had trickle vents, which he used, so why was the PIV installed?
5. The PIV was installed above the thermostat which controlled the boiler and the room temperature. Due to the forced draught from the fan, he had no control over the thermostat function.
6. The installation of the PIV unit (relational to the thermostat position) was now causing him financial hardship.
In its stage 2 response of 14 June 2023 the landlord repeated its explanation of the stage 1 response and also said:
1. The complaint it had received was for a draught caused by external cladding. The position of the thermostat was not mentioned during its visit to check for the draught (the PIV was installed after the visit).
2. The PIV unit was installed as a cautionary measure, not because it had spotted damp and mould.
3. The cost of running the PIV unit was £15 per year, so it assumed the increased cost of electricity was due to other factors.
The resident referred his complaint to us in September 2023 saying the landlord had never provided him with any reports following its visits to investigate the draught. He said he had never reported mould, but the landlord had fitted the PIV which was causing a drop in temperature above the thermostat. Instead of addressing this the landlord had told him the cost of running the fan, which was not his complaint. In March 2025, after the resident had moved out, he advised that his desired outcome was for the landlord to reimburse him for the increased cost of heating.

Assessment and findings

Draught in the property

The landlord’s repair policy says, when a resident reports a repair, it will carry out an inspection and categorise, prioritise, and provide target timescales. It categorises repairs as emergency (24 hours), urgent (5 working days), and routine (20 working days). It says in cases of a delayed repair it will explain the reason for the delay, giving indicative timeframes.
The evidence provided does not show that the landlord responded to the resident’s reports promptly or in line with its policy and procedures. While an inspection took place there is no evidence of a follow up with the resident to explain the findings or to set out next steps.
The landlord said in its stage 1 response that it had found no source of a draught during its visit. However, it has not provided evidence to show that this was communicated to the resident at the time. It has also not clarified whether a draught was noted during the visit but it was unable to find its source, or that it did not note a draught at all. It has not provided an explanation for why it took no action following the visit either way.
Following this visit, the resident continued to contact the landlord about the issue, expressing his distress at the cold temperatures in the property. There is no evidence that the landlord carried out any further investigations, or that it responded to him in any meaningful way.
It is vital that landlords keep clear, accurate and easily accessible records to provide an audit trail. Without these we may not be able to conclude that an action took place or that the landlord followed its own policies and procedures. As part of this investigation, we asked the landlord to provide records of action it took (outside of the visits by a project manager) to investigate if the internal temperature of the property was below expected standards. It told us it had no thermal images, surveyor, or inspection reports to share with us. It said there had been staff, contractor, system, and process changes which led to a loss of information.
The unavailability of detailed records has made it difficult to investigate the complaint or to even establish a comprehensive timeline of events and actions. The resident has maintained (and repeatedly told the landlord) that he had not received any updates or reports from it at any point. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that the landlord did not properly investigate his reports or keep him updated in line with its repair policy.
In light of the above, we have found maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of a draught in the property. The landlord is ordered to write to the resident with an apology for its failures and pay him £250 for the trouble, upset, and inconvenience caused by them. This is in line with our remedies guidance for findings of maladministration.

Installation of the PIV unit and heating costs

It is not for us to establish whether the landlord should have installed the PIV unit or whether it was installed in the right location. However, where the resident had contacted the landlord multiple times to raise concerns about the location of the thermostat in relation to the PIV unit, it should have responded in line with its repairs policy and procedures.
Instead of logging this as a repair and investigating the resident’s concerns, the landlord’s responses show that it did not even properly understand the concerns he had about the unit. While the resident did question why the landlord installed the unit when there was no damp and mould, his real concern was about the unit causing a drop in temperature directly above the thermostat that controlled his boiler, and the increased costs of heating as a result. The landlord did not investigate this or respond to the resident as it should.
The resident told us that a new thermostat was installed after the landlord’s stage 2 response, and he had also blocked the PIV vents which allowed him to regain control of his heating, prior to his move. He said he had obtained bill summaries from his energy supplier (from before and after the new thermostat installation) and asked the landlord to reimburse him for the increased costs. However, it had refused to engage with him, referring him instead to the complaint he had logged with us.
During our investigation we asked the landlord if it had obtained these bills or considered a new complaint from the resident about them. As the events took place after its stage 2 response, the landlord would ordinarily be expected to treat this as a new complaint issue and consider the costs for reimbursement. It told us that it had not received such a complaint from the resident. It also repeated the explanation of its stage 2 response that the PIV running costs were exceptionally low. This shows that even at such a late stage, the landlord had still not understood the resident’s concerns about the PIV unit.
As the landlord failed to grasp or respond to the resident’s concerns about the installation of the PIV unit and increased costs of heating, we have found maladministration in its handling. It is ordered below to write to the resident with an apology for its failures and to pay him £250 for the trouble and inconvenience caused by them, in line with our remedies guidance.
The landlord is also ordered to obtain the bills from the resident and engage with him to consider reimbursement of any costs incurred. Following that, should the resident remain dissatisfied with the landlord’s response to his request for reimbursement, he can then log that as a separate complaint with it.
We encourage landlords to self-assess against our Spotlight reports following publication. In March 2019, we published our Spotlight on complaints about repairs. The evidence gathered during this investigation shows the landlord’s practice was not in line with the recommendations made in that report. We encourage the landlord to consider the findings and recommendations of our Spotlight report unless it can provide evidence it has self-assessed already.

Complaint handling

The landlord did not provide us with a copy of its complaints policy applicable at the time. Therefore, we have considered what our Complaint Handling Code (the Code) in effect at the time stipulated. The Code defined a complaint as ‘an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the organisation, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting an individual resident or group of residents. The resident does not have to use the word complaint for it to be treated as such.’
The Code set out timeframes, requiring complaints to be acknowledged within 5 working days, with a response issued within 10 working days at stage 1, and 20 working days at stage 2. It allowed the landlord to extend the response timeframe by no more than a further 10 working days in exceptional circumstances, requiring an explanation to be provided to the resident. An extension beyond 20 working days had to be agreed by both parties.
The resident said the landlord had raised a complaint about his concerns in 2022 which went to stage 2, but it then stopped communicating with him. We asked the landlord for details of this complaint, but it was unable to provide them due to the record keeping issues highlighted above. It listed other issues it thought the complaint was about, but the resident has specifically referred to this earlier complaint as being about the draught. Given that he had been contacting the landlord about this for years, we consider that a complaint should have been raised and addressed in 2022. There is no evidence of a stage 2 response having been issued until 14 June 2023.
At the very least the landlord should have treated the resident’s contact of 20 December 2022 as a complaint. However, it did not do this until 3 months later in March 2023. It then failed to treat his contact of 30 March 2023 as an escalation to stage 2, requiring him to get back in touch on 2 May 2023 to request this. Even if we treated 2 May 2023 as the escalation date, the stage 2 response was not issued within the stipulated 20 working days. Nor was an explanation provided to the resident for this delay.
The Code also set out that complaint issues that were not addressed at stage 1 should be treated as a separate complaint. However, the landlord chose to incorporate the resident’s concerns about the PIV into its stage 2 response to the draught complaint. Having done so, it then failed to understand what the issue was even though the resident’s email of 30 March 2023 and his contact of 2 May 2023 both clearly set out what he was unhappy about.
There has been a deal of confusion in the landlord’s complaint handling. It failed to understand that the resident’s concerns about the PIV and the draught had become linked by his underlying worry about the property temperature and the increased cost of heating. Even if the landlord did not believe there to be an issue with the property temperature or a link between the increased costs and the reported issues, it should have investigated the resident’s concerns and provided a detailed response setting out its findings and reasons.
The records that are available show a history of repeated contact by the resident and a complete lack of proactive contact or action by the landlord, both in relation to the complaint and the underlying repairs. In light of the failings highlighted, we have found maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the associated complaint.
The landlord is ordered to write to the resident with an apology and pay him £200 for the upset, inconvenience, and confusion caused by its complaint handling failures, in line with our remedies guidance.
On 8 February 2024, we issued the statutory Code which sets out the requirements landlords must meet when handling complaints in policy and practice. The new Code applies from 1 April 2024 and we have a duty to monitor compliance with it. We will assess landlords using our Compliance Framework and take action where there is evidence that the requirements set out in the Code are not being met. As a result, no specific order is made on this case with regard to the landlord’s compliance with the Code, and the contents of its policies and procedures in that regard.
However, an order is made for the landlord to review its handling of the complaint in this case, alongside the provisions of the Code in order to: understand how the failings occurred; identify areas for improvement; and note where current practices may be at odds with the requirements of the Code.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
1. Reports of a draught in the property.
2. Concerns about the installation of a PIV unit and the increased cost of heating.
3. Associated formal complaint.

Orders

Within 4 weeks of this report, the landlord is ordered to provide evidence that it has:
1. Written to the resident with an apology (with reference to our remedies guidance to ensure the apology is sincere and appropriate) for its failures in the handling of his reports and the associated complaint.
2. Paid directly to the resident (and not offset against any rent arrears) £700 compensation, as follows:
  1. £250 for the distress and inconvenience caused by its handling of the reports of a draught in the property.
  2. £250 for the distress and inconvenience caused by its handling of concerns raised about the PIV unit and increased cost of heating.
  3. £200 for the upset and inconvenience caused by its poor handling of the associated complaint.
3. Contacted the resident to obtain energy bills to establish and consider reimbursement of any costs incurred.
4. Reviewed the complaint handling failures highlighted in this investigation alongside the provisions of the Code.