Ambitions must translate into improved resident experience finds Ombudsman special investigation, after Hyde accepts failings in complaint handling, repairs and service charges enquiry delays

5 December 2024

The Housing Ombudsman has published its special investigation report into Hyde Housing Association, finding repeated failings in repairs, complaint handling and how it responded to residents’ enquiries about service charges. This has, on occasion, caused distress and inconvenience to residents with unreasonable delays to repairs, barriers to complaints and poor communication.

The landlord engaged extensively as part of this investigation and has taken action to make improvements in these key areas, which has been welcomed by the Ombudsman.

During the special investigation, in addition to changes it has already made to improve services for residents, it responded promptly and constructively to requests for information and volunteered additional helpful information.

The investigation was prompted by the landlord’s 10 severe maladministration findings and a high overall maladministration rate, including in areas such as repairs (94%) and damp and mould (100%). Between April 2023 and June 2024, the Ombudsman made 137 determinations, with 353 findings. These included 23 findings of severe maladministration (10 relating to property condition, and 9 relating to complaint handling). There was an overall maladministration rate of 82%. The Ombudsman put forward 548 orders to put things right for residents in these cases.

In one case, the landlord inferred blame for the severity of a leak on a resident as they were away at the time the leak occurred. The landlord disputed that their home was uninhabitable and whether a bed had been damaged by water. It also did not offer appropriate compensation, despite the resident dealing with the additional stress of having cancer. In another case, the landlord failed to make a repair for nearly a year, leaving a vulnerable resident with peeling wallpaper, mouldy walls, and damaged furniture. The resident was afraid to use the heating due to the issues. Once again, the landlord failed to provide appropriate redress.

The report sets out 3 key areas for the landlord to improve in and a series of recommendations to help it achieve that.

Complaint handling

Barriers to the complaints process still existed in policy and practice, and the report found that the intention of the Code had been skewed in the landlord’s policy towards its choice and control, not resident choice. There was a failure to escalate complaints with the Ombudsman intervening in 25 out of 44 cases to ask the landlord to accept or progress the complaint. The evidence suggested that many of the issues resulted from historical under resourcing of its complaints team and complaints being held whilst delayed repairs were taking place. Poor systems and knowledge and information management also contributed. Where there was service failure, at times the landlord provided inadequate redress, including poorly handled apologies. It is encouraging that the landlord has invested in knowledge systems, training and has recruited a complaint quality and improvement officer. However, the report recommended the landlord ensures its complaints policy is in line with the Code and it takes learning from the Ombudsman’s determinations seriously to identify the root cause of complaints.

Repairs

There were a significant amount of repair cases with unreasonable delays, mainly caused by poor knowledge exchange with repairs contractors, missed or otherwise ineffective appointments, and failure to effectively manage or oversee contractors’ work on individual repair jobs. This was further exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic when the landlord struggled to keep up as delivering compliant repair became harder. There were also issues with the landlord’s response to reports of leaks, damp and mould, with repairs not being completed. Other issues in this theme included poor communication, a failure to mitigate impact, and failure to assist the resident with an insurance claim. The landlord identified its need to reduce repairs times and has worked on this. The report recommends that the landlord reviews the causes of its wasted appointments and create an action plan seeking to minimise these, as well as update its damp and mould policies and procedures.

Service charges

The landlord experiences peaks in service charge enquiries twice per year, in response to it sending out information at set times. It appeared enquiries were placed in a queue for response and answered in turn without any triage for common queries or process or criteria for prioritising responses. This had historically resulted in residents typically waiting 5 or 6 months for a response but sometimes up to a year. When residents did receive a response, these were not specific enough or did not cover all the points they needed to. The landlord has undertaken a number of improvements in this area. The report has recommended it makes its policies clear and consistent about when a service charge enquiry becomes a complaint, including appropriate signposting to the complaints procedure, as well as making sure its systems and processes are effective so that residents receive timely and sufficiently detailed answers to their enquiries.

There are also a range of cross-cutting themes identified as part of this investigation, including knowledge and information management, policy and procedure management, communication and taking vulnerabilities into account.

Hyde special investigation summary and full report

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “The timing of this investigation provides a valuable opportunity for the landlord to further establish an open, positive complaint handling culture throughout what is a growing organisation.

“Our investigation shows that residents have experienced the same problems repeatedly over several years, but the landlord was initially slow to recognise and respond to these.

“Problems within repairs and maintenance, in particular the management and monitoring of contractors, had consequences across other teams which meant residents received poor service from more than one part of the landlord. The landlord was complacent about delays in numerous areas of its service.

“More recently, there have been encouraging steps. Action has been taken on delays in 3 service areas, there has been a focus on better communication with residents, and recognition of the need to improve the adequacy of redress offered. These actions are welcome.

“However, as the landlord has noted, and our more recent investigations highlight, there is still some way to go, and we will work with the landlord to help reach the ambitious goals it has set itself.

“We have also seen that the landlord’s service failures can contribute to profoundly increased distress to residents. This can then be compounded further by the landlord appearing reluctant to provide appropriate redress.

“If a landlord misses or undermines its own opportunities to contribute to repairing or restoring the relationship then it increases the risk it will undermine trust further. Setting the right tone and behaviours will encourage learning from complaints.

“Where a landlord has provided poor service to any resident, a focus should be on opportunities to offer meaningful redress. We understand there needs to be a careful individualised balancing between fulfilling its obligations as an employer when managing complex relationships with a resident, but it must ensure it delivers on its obligations as a social housing provider.”

In all special investigation reports, the Ombudsman invites the landlord to provide a learning statement.

Andy Hulme, Hyde Housing Association

We recognise that historically we haven’t always met some of our customer’s expectations, and we apologise to those customers where we could have done things better. We know the impact this can have and are committed to learning from these experiences to ensure we do better in the future.

While challenges remain for charities like Hyde, this report recognises our ambition to continue evolving and improving our services. We will continue to deliver homes and communities that meet the highest standards.

Providing homes and communities that people are proud of is central to everything we do. Over the past two years, we’ve taken significant steps to improve our services and strengthen relationships with our customers to achieve better outcomes.

This includes increasing investment in customers’ homes and adopting a more localised approach. We’re also supporting customers online to help them manage their homes more conveniently, alongside the launch of our new Customer Service Centre and digital offering, which is enabling our colleagues to resolve around nine in ten customer enquiries at the first point of contact.

To ensure timely resolutions, we’ve also doubled the number of colleagues handling complaints and brought our repair service in-house. As a result, most customers now receive their repairs in around three days and customer satisfaction with our repairs teams is sector leading at over 95%.

We’ve engaged with the Housing Ombudsman Service throughout this process, sharing extensive information about the changes we’ve made. We value timely actionable insights and remain committed to engaging with the thriving communities that we serve.