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Waltham Forest Council (202414662)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202414662

Waltham Forest Council

25 November 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 the resident’s concerns regarding the conduct of a member of its staff.

Background

  1. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord which is a local authority. The property is a one-bedroomed flat within a block containing 6 flats. 
  2. The resident has vulnerabilities resulting from being autistic; this means that he requires communications to be ‘autism-friendly’. The resident has explained that this means no complex written communications and he has requested the landlord and this Service to ring him before sending any written communication.
  3. The resident has complained about the conduct of the landlord’s Tenancy Officer who provides housing management services for his property. He contacted this Service on 10 July 2024 to report that he had had various disagreements with the Tenancy Officer during the previous 4 years, he found the Tenancy Officer to be rude and he wanted the landlord to allocate a different Tenancy Officer to cover his property. The Ombudsman passed this information to the landlord and it registered the matter as a stage one complaint.
  4. The landlord stated in its stage one reply that it had found no outstanding complaints from the resident about the Tenancy Officer’s conduct and had found no evidence to support the resident’s complaint about the Tenancy Officer and therefore had no reason to allocate a new Tenancy Officer. At stage 2, the landlord said it would only investigate incidents that had occurred in the past 12 months and, as such, it had found no evidence that the Tenancy Officer had been rude to the resident.
  5. The resident spoke to this Service on 9 September 2024 and stated that he disagreed with the landlord’s assessment that there was no evidence of the Tenancy Officer being rude. His view was that the landlord had not considered the recordings of telephone calls he had submitted to the landlord as evidence. The resident confirmed that the outcome he was seeking was for the landlord to allocate a different Tenancy Officer to manage his property.

Assessment and findings

Relevant policies and procedures

  1. The landlord operates a 2-stage complaints process and will reply to stage one complaints within 10 working days and to stage 2 complaints within 20 working days.
  2. The policy states that certain complaints are excluded from its procedure and these include “complaints over 12 months old since a complainant became aware of the issue”.

Scope of investigation

  1. The resident provided the landlord with call recordings and documents dating back to 2021 and 2022 to support his complaint about the Tenancy Officer. The Ombudsman encourages residents to raise complaints with their landlords in a timely manner. This is because with the passage of time, evidence may be unavailable and personnel involved may have left an organisation, which makes it difficult for a thorough investigation to be carried out and for informed decisions to be made. Therefore, taking into account the availability and reliability of evidence, it is considered fair and reasonable for this assessment to focus on the landlord’s handling of the events from July 2024 when the resident contacted this Service about the issue. Reference to the events that occurred prior to July 2024 is made in this report to provide context.
  2. The resident spoke to this Service on 7 November 2024 and stated he was unhappy that the Tenancy Officer had tried to ring him several times during week commencing 21 October 2024. A key part of the Ombudsman’s role is to assess the landlord’s response to a complaint and therefore it is important that the landlord has had an opportunity to consider all the information being investigated by the Ombudsman as part of its complaint response. It is therefore considered fair and reasonable to only investigate matters up to the landlord’s final response on 23 August 2024. Information following the landlord’s final complaint response has, however, been included in this report for context.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns regarding the conduct of a member of its staff

  1. The resident contacted this Service on 10 July 2024 to report that he was unhappy with the conduct of a Tenancy Officer who was a member of the landlord’s staff. The officer in question was responsible for providing tenancy management services to the resident and other residents in the area. The resident stated that he had had various disagreements with the officer over a 4-year period and the officer had been rude to him. The resident said the outcome he was seeking from the complaint was for the landlord to allocate a different Tenancy Officer to cover his property.
  2. The Ombudsman sent the complaint to the landlord on the same day (10 July 2024) and the landlord emailed this Service on 15 July 2024 to confirm that it would log the matter as a stage one complaint. In its stage 1 reply dated 26 July 2024, the landlord stated that it had discussed the complaint with the Tenancy Officer and his manager and had reviewed its case records. The landlord said it had not found any outstanding complaints about the Tenancy Officer and said the resident had not provided any specific details of the complaints. Therefore, it concluded the officer had conducted himself appropriately and there were no reasons to consider changing the Tenancy Officer. The landlord added that it was satisfied the officer was able to deliver his responsibilities to the resident.
  3. It was reasonable that the landlord had spoken to the Tenancy Officer and his manager as part of its investigations into the resident’s complaint. As the resident had not provided any specific details about the complaint, it was also reasonable that it checked whether there were any outstanding complaints from the resident about the officer. It was, however, a shortcoming on the landlord’s part that it did not phone the resident to check the specific reasons for his complaint. This would have given the resident the opportunity to clarify the reasons for his complaint.
  4. The resident provided additional information to this Service on 6 and 9 August 2024 to support his complaint. This information was forwarded to the landlord and included:
    1. A call recording from 2021 in which the resident felt the Tenancy Officer had ignored him and failed to answer his questions.
    2. A response sent by the landlord in 2021 regarding the communal bin doors and items that were in the stairwell. The resident said the landlord had not locked the bin doors and had not cleared the items from the stairwell.

 

  1. This Service discussed the landlord’s stage one complaint with the resident on 9 August 2024 and he said he was dissatisfied with the stage one reply because he disagreed with the landlord’s statement that there was no evidence of the Tenancy Officer being rude. He suggested the landlord listened to the call recordings of his conversations with the Tenancy Officer. The resident said he would forward more call recordings over the coming weekend to support his complaint.
  2. The landlord sent its stage 2 reply on 23 August 2024 and stated that it had decided to restrict its investigation to matters that had occurred within the past 12 months. The landlord stated that it had applied this rule because some of the events the resident had raised went back a number of years and therefore it was unable to carry out an in-depth investigation into these matters. However, the landlord reassured the resident that it had considered all the information it had available.
  3. The Ombudsman’s view is that the landlord’s decision not to investigate events that were older than 12 months was reasonable because:
    1. The resident had stated in his stage one complaint that there had been disagreements between him and the Technical Officer for about 4 years.
    2. The landlord explained in the stage 2 reply why it had applied this rule.
    3. The decision was consistent with its complaints policy, which states that it may exclude complaints where the events occurred more than 12 months ago.
  4. The landlord stated in its stage 2 reply that the resident had not supplied the additional evidence mentioned by this Service. However, the evidence shows that on 9 and 12 August 2024 the Ombudsman sent the landlord various call recordings and documents that had been supplied by the resident to support his complaint. The information forwarded by the Ombudsman was:
    1. A call recording of a phone call between the resident and the Tenancy Officer in 2021.
    2. Two call recordings of phone calls between the resident and the Tenancy Officer in 2022.
    3. An email sent by the Tenancy Officer to the resident on 17 January 2019 regarding a complaint made by the resident about one of his neighbours.
    4. An email sent by the Tenancy Officer to the North East London NHS Foundation Trust on 14 July 2020 (and copied to the resident).
    5. An email sent by the Tenancy Officer to the resident on 18 September 2023 to report an alleged tenancy violation by one of his neighbours.
    6. An email sent by the Tenancy Officer to the resident on 3 June 2024 about children latching the door open.
  5. The Ombudsman also wrote to the landlord on 9 September 2024 to query the statement in the stage 2 reply that it had not seen the additional information. The Ombudsman asked the landlord to confirm whether it wanted to send the resident a revised stage 2 letter. However, the evidence shows that the landlord did not send a revised stage 2 reply.
  6. It was unreasonable that the landlord had not considered the additional evidence forwarded on behalf of the resident by this Service. Furthermore, the Ombudsman would have expected the landlord to speak to the resident to check whether he had provided the additional evidence.
  7. Although most of the information forwarded to the landlord on the resident’s behalf was older than 12 months and therefore would not have been investigated by the landlord, 2 of the emails were less than 12 months old. The landlord’s failure to consider the additional information meant that it had not considered all the information it had been sent prior to sending its final complaint response.
  8. The landlord has confirmed to this Service that most of the additional information provided by the Ombudsman on the resident’s behalf on 9 and 12 August was outside its jurisdiction for investigation. The Ombudsman acknowledges that the landlord would not have investigated some of the information due to its age and/or lack of relevance. However, the Ombudsman would expect the landlord to at least consider all the evidence submitted. This would have helped it to fully understand the complaint and the context. Indeed, the landlord made this point itself in the stage 2 reply, in which it stated: “I can assure you I have considered all information that is available to me, including information from over 12 months ago, in order to assist with my understanding of your complaint and to provide context to its background”.
  9. The Ombudsman has found that there was a service failure by the landlord because it did not consider the additional evidence supplied by the resident (via this Service) and did not check with the resident or the Ombudsman whether any additional evidence had been supplied.
  10. This Service has ordered the landlord to consider the information that was sent to it by this Service on 9 and 12 August 2024, to ring the resident to discuss its findings and then confirm in writing its decision regarding the resident’s complaint about the Tenancy Officer’s conduct.
  11. As the landlord’s failing has resulted in a delay in considering the evidence provided by the resident, the Ombudsman has also ordered the landlord to pay £50 compensation to the resident as part of the measures to put things right.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s concerns regarding the conduct of a member of its staff.

Orders

  1. The landlord is ordered within 4 weeks of this report to:
    1. Consider the information that was sent to it by the Ombudsman on 9 and 12 August 2024, ring the resident to discuss the findings and then confirm in writing the decision regarding the resident’s complaint about the staff member.
    2. Pay the resident £50 for not considering the additional evidence supplied by the resident in relation to his complaint about a member of staff (the landlord should speak to the resident to confirm the arrangements for paying this sum prior to making the payment).