The Riverside Group Limited (202230641)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202230641

The Riverside Group Limited

17 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:
1. Response to the resident’s concerns that a carbon monoxide alarm had not been installed in their home by 1 October 2022.
2. Handling of the resident’s associated complaint.

Background

The resident is an assured tenant and they live in a 2 bedroom house. The landlord is a housing association.
The landlord has recorded that the resident has mental health conditions.
On 7 October 2022, the resident emailed the landlord saying that a carbon monoxide alarm should have been installed in their home before 1 October 2022. The landlord acknowledged the email and replied on 14 October 2022.
The resident complained about the landlord’s failure to install an alarm on 18 October 2022. The landlord decided its email of 14 October 2022 had been its stage 1 complaint response.
The landlord installed a carbon monoxide alarm on 7 November 2022.
The landlord gave a stage 2 complaint response on 8 February 2023 which said:
1. It was sorry for the delay in giving its stage 2 response and for the “shortcomings” in its stage 1 response. It offered £100 compensation.
2. It would fit carbon monoxide alarms in all its remaining homes by the end of June 2023.
The resident asked the Ombudsman to investigate. They said they remained concerned that the landlord had not installed a carbon monoxide alarm sooner and felt they should be compensated for the delay. They were dissatisfied with the handling of their complaint and felt the landlord should have paid the compensation it had offered directly to them instead of crediting it to their rent account.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

The resident’s email of 7 October 2022 had asked the landlord to refer its non-compliance with the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (Amendment) Regulations 2022 to the regulator of social housing (RSH). This was also part of the complaint that the resident asked the Ombudsman to investigate.
Paragraph 42.j. of the Scheme says that the Ombudsman may not consider matters that fall within the jurisdiction of another Ombudsman, regulator or complaint handling body.
The RSH regulates social housing providers on behalf of the Government. It sets the regulatory standards that housing providers must meet and oversees compliance with those standards.
After carefully considering the evidence, we have decided that the matter of whether the landlord should have referred itself to the RSH falls under the jurisdiction of the RSH. As such we have made no conclusion on whether the landlord should have referred itself.
Nor will we comment on the landlord’s response of 14 October 2022 in respect of its understanding of the RSH’s expectations at the time. That too is a matter for the RSH.
The resident sent us a stage 1 response from the landlord dated 18 November 2022 which had a different reference number from the complaint the landlord had logged on 19 October 2022. We asked the landlord for further information to help us understand if it was related to this case.
The landlord explained that it had logged a separate complaint from the resident about it not treating their email of 7 October 2022 as a complaint and its contractor not raising complaints. The stage 1 response dated 18 November 2022 had been to that complaint.
The Ombudsman is only permitted to consider complaints which have completed the landlord’s complaint process. As we have seen no evidence that the separate complaint had completed the landlord’s process, we have not assessed the landlord’s handling of it in this report.
Nor can we give an opinion on whether the contractor should have raised a complaint. This is because there is no evidence available to us of the discussion between the resident and the contractor that was the subject of the separate complaint the landlord had logged.
However, we have given our opinion on the landlord’s decision to log a separate complaint as part of our assessment of its handling of the complaint in this case.

Response to concerns about not having a carbon monoxide alarm

The Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (Amendment) Regulations 2022 became law on 27 June 2022. The law required social landlords to comply with new requirements in the regulations by 1 October 2022.
In July 2022, the Government published guidance for landlords and tenants which said:
1. Landlords were expected to be compliant with the requirements by 1 October 2022.
2. Carbon monoxide alarms must be equipped in any “living” rooms containing a “fixed combustion appliance” by that date.
3. Carbon monoxide alarms must be repaired or replaced once the landlord was informed and found they were faulty.
4. If landlords were made aware that they were not compliant, they should take action to install alarms “as soon as practicable”.
As part of its evidence submission, the landlord sent us its smoke and carbon monoxide procedure. The document said it had been developed to “understand” the landlord’s compliance position regarding the amended regulations. It set out how the landlord would collect and update the necessary data and become compliant.
The procedure said the landlord intended to achieve compliance through its maintenance work. It expected contractors visiting its homes to check if the necessary carbon monoxide alarms were present and, if not, arrange for them to be installed.
The document was not dated and it is not clear from the evidence seen when the landlord implemented the procedure.
However, other evidence seen shows that the landlord was not compliant in respect of having working carbon monoxide alarms in its homes by 1 October 2022. For example, its email to the resident on 14 October 2022 said it was understanding its position to develop plans to become compliant.
Also, in its stage 2 complaint response of 8 February 2023, the landlord said that it expected to have fitted carbon monoxide alarms in all its homes where they were needed by the end of June 2023.
The resident’s email of 7 October 2022 did not specifically ask the landlord to install a carbon monoxide alarm in their home. However, from this point, the landlord was on notice that the carbon monoxide detection in the resident’s home did not comply with the regulations.
In line with the requirements of the regulations, the landlord should have arranged for a carbon monoxide alarm to be installed “as soon as practicable”. We saw no evidence that the landlord took any specific steps to arrange for an alarm to be installed following the resident’s email of 7 October 2022. This was a failing.
The resident’s email of 7 October 2022 asked the landlord to investigate how many of its homes were not compliant with the requirements of the new regulations. The landlord missed this opportunity to reassure the resident that it took its legal obligations seriously and was taking appropriate steps to become compliant.
Its opening statement that it was “well aware of the regulations” was perceived by the resident to be patronising. Similarly, the resident perceived its statement that its “priority was to understand its position and develop plans for installing alarms” to mean that the landlord felt that the requirement to comply with the regulations by 1 October 2022 did not apply to it.
The landlord may have avoided the resident’s complaint if it had worded its email of 14 October 2022 differently.
A carbon monoxide alarm was installed in the resident’s home on 7 November 2022 which was a month after the resident had put the landlord on notice. We understand that the alarm was installed when the landlord’s contractor visited to carry out the annual gas servicing appointment. This suggests that the landlord had made no arrangements to install an alarm sooner despite being put on notice that an alarm was needed on 7 October 2022.
There was service failure in the landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns about not having a carbon monoxide alarm by 1 October 2022. This is because it has not demonstrated that it took steps to fit an alarm as soon as practicable after receiving the resident’s email of 7 October 2022 and its response to their concerns was inadequate. This caused distress to the resident as they felt the landlord was not adequately considering their safety.

Handling of the associated complaint

The landlord has a 2 stage complaint process. Its policy at the time said it would respond to complaints within 5 working days at stage 1 and within 10 working days at stage 2.
We note that the landlord’s response timescales were not in line with the Ombudsman’s complaint handling code (the Code) published in March 2022. The Code required landlords to respond within 10 working days at stage 1 and 20 working days at stage 2. The landlord has revised its policy and response timescales since the events in this case.
The resident’s email of 7 October 2022 had told the landlord they did not have a carbon monoxide alarm and asked the landlord to investigate how widespread the issue was. It was reasonable that the landlord considered this as a service request rather than a complaint.
This was in line with its complaints procedure at the time. It was also in line with the Code which said that a service request was a request from a resident asking for action to put something right. The Code said that a complaint should be raised when a resident raised dissatisfaction with the response to their service request.
In this case the resident complained on 18 October 2022 after receiving the landlord’s response to their email of 7 October 2022. The resident’s email of 18 October 2022 said they wanted to raise a formal complaint about the landlord’s failure to install a carbon monoxide alarm. The landlord had logged the complaint but provided no evidence that it had acknowledged it as required by the Code.
The resident’s email of 18 October 2022 had also referred to them raising a stage 2 complaint via the landlord’s website. We did not see evidence of the online complaint. As such it is not clear whether this was about the landlord not installing an alarm or its response to the resident’s email of 7 October 2022.
The landlord’s complaint records showed it had retrospectively decided that its email of 14 October 2022 was its stage 1 complaint response. It is not clear why the landlord decided this, when it had given that response to an email that it had considered, at the time, to be a service request.
The landlord’s email of 14 October 2022 was not in the form of a complaint response as required by the Code. Further we saw no evidence it had told the resident at any point that they should consider the email of 14 October 2022 to be its stage 1 complaint response.
The landlord’s decision that its email of 14 October 2022 was its stage 1 response was inappropriate. It should have given a stage 1 response in the form required by the Code within the timescale specified in its complaint policy after receiving the complaint on 18 October 2022.
Also, around 19 October 2022, the landlord logged the separate complaint about it not treating the resident’s email of 7 October 2022 as a complaint and its contractor not passing on complaints from residents. The resident had told the landlord they had initially raised the matter of not having a carbon monoxide alarm with its contractor in their email of 7 October 2022 and complaint of 19 October 2022.
As such, the landlord could have dealt with the matters as part of the complaint it had logged about not providing a carbon monoxide alarm before 1 October 2022. Doing so would have avoided the need for the landlord to administer the separate complaint and would have been a simpler approach.
The landlord’s complaint records contained no information about its handling of the resident’s complaint after 10 November 2022 until it gave its stage 2 response on 8 February 2023. A note made on 10 November 2022 confirmed the landlord’s position that its email of 14 October 2022 had been its stage 1 response.
The complaint records did not show any details of the resident’s escalation request or any investigation carried out at stage 2 of the landlord’s process. As such it is not clear how or why the landlord decided to give a stage 2 response 3 months later on 8 February 2023.
The lack of records shows that the landlord did not have adequate information management practices in place. If it had, it would have recorded all events during its handling of the complaint and the decisions it had made.
The landlord’s stage 2 response referred to it having spoken to the resident earlier on 8 February 2023. There were no records of the call in its complaint records and we saw no details of the discussion apart from the references in the landlord’s stage 2 response. This is a further example of inadequate information management.
It was appropriate that the landlord apologised for the delay in giving its stage 2 response and acknowledged that its stage 1 response had fallen short of its standards. However, the landlord should have explained the reasons for the delay and the failings it had identified in its stage 1 response. Doing so would have shown that the landlord had adequately investigated the complaint and understood what had gone wrong.
It was reasonable that the landlord said it would have installed alarms in all homes that needed them by the end of June 2023. The landlord could also have taken the opportunity to assure the resident that it took its legal and safety obligations seriously.
The landlord’s apology and offer of £100 compensation for its complaint handling failures should have resolved the complaint. The stage 2 response said that the resident had been satisfied with the outcome during the earlier telephone call.
When the resident brought their complaint to the Ombudsman, they said they were dissatisfied that the landlord had credited their rent account instead of paying the compensation to them directly.
We note that the landlord’s compensation procedure does allow the landlord to offset compensation payments against rent arrears. However, the procedure is not available on its website which means that the landlord’s policy position regarding offsetting compensation payments is not accessible to residents.
In this case, we saw no evidence that the landlord explained its intention to offset the compensation it had offered. There was no reference to the landlord’s intention in its stage 2 response.
The resident told us that they did not know the compensation would be offset until they saw a credit had been applied to their rent account.
In line with the Code, the landlord should have managed the resident’s expectations by discussing its intention to offset when it offered compensation. Not doing so meant the resident was not fully informed and expected to receive payment directly. It caused the resident further dissatisfaction which the landlord could have avoided.
Overall, the landlord has not demonstrated that it met the requirements of the Code or its own policy in handling the resident’s complaint. The landlord’s failings amount to maladministration.
On 8 February 2024, the Ombudsman issued the statutory Complaint Handling Code. This code sets out the requirements landlords must meet when handling complaints in both policy and practice. The statutory Code applies from 1 April 2024.
The Ombudsman has a duty to monitor compliance with the statutory Code. We will assess landlords using our Compliance Framework and take action where there is evidence that the requirements of the Code are not being met.
In this investigation we found failures in complaint handling. The landlord should consider the findings highlighted in this investigation when reviewing its policies and practices against the statutory Code.
In other cases, we have found similar failings in the landlord’s information management practices. In case 202309219 we ordered the landlord to develop a plan to improve its practices and it has made changes to its approach since the events in this case.
As such, we have made no further orders for improvement from this investigation. We will monitor the impact of the landlord’s practice changes through our future casework.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns about not having a carbon monoxide alarm.
In accordance with paragraph 52. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders

Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord must provide evidence that it has paid the resident total compensation of £100. The compensation must be paid directly to the resident and not offset against any arrears. The compensation is comprised of:
1. £50 for the distress and inconvenience caused by its handling of the resident’s concerns about not having a carbon monoxide alarm.
2. £50 for the distress and inconvenience caused by its failure to tell the resident about its plan to offset the compensation. This sum is in addition to the £100 that the landlord has previously paid for the failings in its complaint handling.

Recommendations

The Ombudsman recommends that the landlord consider the failings we have identified and:
1. Decide if it needs to change its complaint handling practices to ensure compliance with the statutory Code.
2. Decide if it needs to make further improvements to its information management practices.
3. Consider publishing its policy position regarding offsetting compensation payments on its website.