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Southern Housing Group Limited (202008692)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202008692

Southern Housing Group Limited

6 October 2021


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:
    1. The landlord’s handling of the resident’s Right-to-Buy application for his property.
    2. The landlord’s handling of the associated complaint.

Background and summary of events

  1. The complaint has been brought to the Ombudsman by a resident on behalf of his wife who was a tenant of the landlord from 1987 until 2020 when the property was purchased. Both husband and wife will be referred to as ‘the resident’.
  2. The landlord wrote to the resident to provide an RTB2 document to confirm receipt of his application to purchase his property under his Right-to-Buy (RTB) on 24 October 2019. This acknowledgement recorded that it received his application on 4 September 2019.
  3. The resident raised a formal complaint with the landlord on 13 November 2020 about the length of time it took to process his RTB purchase of his property. He relayed that he was still yet to complete the purchase, despite commencing the process in June 2019, when he first submitted his application. The resident said that the intervening 17 months was an unacceptable timeframe for the purchase, despite any challenges posed by the corona virus pandemic. He said that the purchase was straight-forward, and it would have been reasonable for him to expect it to have completed by Christmas 2019. The resident highlighted that he had continued to pay rent and service charges, which would have been more expensive than paying his mortgage, and therefore requested a “significant refund of rent” for the “unjustifiable delay”.
  4. The landlord wrote to the resident on 25 November 2020 to acknowledge the complaint, noting that his desired resolutions were:
    1. A significant refund of rent
    2. An explanation for the delay
    3. Confirmation of the completion of the sale, or an expected date for this.
  5. The resident replied to the landlord later on 25 November 2020 to confirm that his purchase of the property had now completed but he still wished to pursue the complaint.
  6. The landlord provided an update to the resident on 11 December 2020 in which it advised that it had gathered information relating to delays with purchase in 2020, which were attributed to the solicitors. It said that it was awaiting further information relating the delay from June 2019 onwards.
  7. The resident called the landlord on 28 January 2021 to request an update on the complaint. 
  8. The landlord advised the resident on 5 February 2021 that it had found that the “main bulk of the delay” had occurred at the solicitor stage during the processing of anti-money laundering checks. It relayed that each party’s solicitors had been in contact with each other on 10 March 2020 and its solicitors subsequently chased information from his until they received incomplete information on 4 May 2021. The landlord’s solicitor subsequently requested further information on 6, 11, 14 and 29 May 2021 before complete information to satisfy money laundering checks was received on 1 June 2021.
  9. The landlord relayed to the resident that its solicitor had drafted documents on 9 June 2021 and had liaised with his solicitor throughout June to August 2021. They chased a response from his solicitor at the end of September as a transfer had yet to be approved. After the transfer was approved in mid-October 2021, and completion of the sale was set up for 9 November 2021 before postponed until 16 November 2021.
  10. The landlord advised the resident that it was still awaiting further information about his report of delays from June 2019 onwards.
  11. The landlord issued a stage one complaint response to the resident on 11 February 2021. This response repeated the information it provided to him on 5 February 2021, and it found that, based on this, it could not offer a rent refund. The landlord, however, offered a goodwill gesture of £50 for the resident’s experience and the inconvenience caused.
  12. The resident escalated his complaint to the final stage of the landlord’s complaints process on 22 February 2021. He refused the compensation it offered in its stage one complaint response as he considered it “an insult”. The resident challenged the landlord’s explanation that delays had been caused by his solicitor; he contended that its solicitor had been responsible for some delays and their responses to his questions had been “glib almost sarcastic”.
  13. The resident questioned the quality of the landlord’s recordkeeping, giving examples of outstanding repair jobs and the misplacing of his original RTB application as evidence of poor recordkeeping on its part. He considered the 18 months taken to complete the purchase of the property was excessive, suggesting that four months would have reasonable. The resident challenged the landlord’s assertion that the delay was attributable to his solicitors, saying that this did not make sense. 
  14. The resident requested an update from the landlord on his complaint escalation on 15 March 2021, to which it replied the following day to apologise for the delay in acknowledging this.
  15. The landlord issued its final stage complaint response to the resident on 12 April 2021 in which it noted that it provided the RTB application form to him on 19 June 2019. It suggested that the initial application which he said he made in June 2019 was lost in the post as it did not receive this; it confirmed it had carried out checks with the team that handled incoming post to confirm this.
  16. The landlord found that, after it received the subsequent RTB application from the resident on 3 September 2019, it found that there was a delay between this date and 24 October 2019, when it provided the RTB2 form which confirmed his Right-to-Buy the property. It confirmed that it exceeded the four weeks timeframe in which it should have provided the RTB2 form after receiving the application. The landlord apologised for this delay and advised the resident that he had a statutory right to request a rent refund for the rent he paid during the period of delay. It calculated this to be £306.63, based a daily rent rate of £14.60, which it offered to pay him without the need for him to request this through an ‘Operative notice of delay’ form which was ordinarily required.
  17. The landlord did not find that it had delayed in any other part of the process and informed the resident that, following it issuing the RTB2 form on 24 October 2019, it had eight weeks in which to issue an S125 offer notice. It confirmed that it issued this on 22 November 2019, which was within the permitted eight weeks timeframe.
  18. The landlord confirmed that it then received notification from the resident’s solicitor that they were acting on his behalf on 2 January 2020 and it provided a timeline of correspondence between its and the resident’s solicitors between 4 February 2020 and 16 November 2020 during the conveyancing process. It found that there were two instances of undue delay, one instance where correspondence took six working days to be responded to, and one instance in which 12 working days was taken.
  19. The landlord advised that it had spoken to its solicitor about these incidents and obtained an assurance that they would improve their service. It noted that there were occasions where the resident’s solicitor had also been slow to respond. The landlord also confirmed that it had examined the language used by its solicitor and noted that although some language was “abrupt”, it said this was “common in this field” and did not find any language to be “unacceptable or untoward”. The landlord offered to speak to the resident over the telephone to discuss its findings and confirmed that this was its final response to the complaint.

Assessment and findings

Policies and procedures

  1. The landlord’s Right-to-Buy procedure confirms that once an RTB1 application for a RTB purchase of a property is received, it is to record the date of receipt. This is because the RTB2 form confirming the resident’s right to purchase the property must be issued to them within four weeks if they have been a tenant for over two years. Once the RTB2 document has been sent to the resident to confirm their admittance to the RTB scheme, it must provide a Section 125 Offer Notice within eight weeks.
  2. The landlord’s complaints policy provides for a two-stage complaints procedure with a response to be provided to the resident within ten working days at stage 1. If the resident remains dissatisfied, the complaint may be reviewed by a senior manager, if the only reason for escalation is dissatisfaction with a compensation claim. Otherwise, the complaint is to be considered at the final stage by a complaint review panel.
  3. The landlord’s compensation policy provides for payments of compensation of up to £50 for instances of poor service.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s Right-to-Buy application for his property

  1. The RTB scheme is a legal process with statutory timeframes and obligations for both a landlord and applicant. The Ombudsman cannot investigate the legal merits of a landlord’s decisions, or determine any disputes about the evidence on which a landlord has relied to make its RTB decisions and offers (such as the level of rent refund). Such disputes, ultimately, would need to be resolved by the courts. Because of that, in line with paragraph 39(i) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, this investigation focuses on a broader consideration of whether the landlord followed the relevant processes, rather than on its actual decisions.
  2. The resident has maintained that he initiated the RTB purchase process in June 2019. It is not possible to determine what happened to this application as there was no evidence of this being sent by, or of this being chased by, the resident. Similarly, there was no evidence of the landlord receiving this. It was reasonable therefore, for it to suggest, in its final response to the resident on 12 April 2021, that this had been lost in the post.
  3. The landlord acknowledged, in its final response to the resident on 12 April 2021, that it had exceeded the timeframe specified in its RTB procedure above in issuing the RTB2 document to the resident by 24 days. It was therefore appropriate for it to provide a refund of rent for the 24 days’ delay in providing this. Its offer to provide this refund without requiring the submission of the RTB8 form was a reasonable response from it to reduce any delay in making payment of the compensation to the resident.
  4. The landlord, therefore, investigated the matter reasonably and confirmed it would feed back to its solicitor about their performance. It also made an appropriate offer of redress to the resident which recognised its identified delay in the handling of his RTB application. There was no evidence of any other failure on the landlord’s part in its handling of the resident’s RTB application.

The landlord’s handling of the associated complaint

  1. The resident raised his formal complaint with the landlord on 13 November 2020. The landlord did not issue its stage one response to him until 11 February 2021. This was 51 working days in excess of the ten working-day timeframe specified in its complaint policy above. The landlord’s stage one complaint response recognised the inconvenience that may have been caused by this and it offered compensation of £50 for this. However, this complaint response failed to address the period between June 2019 and September 2019 during which the resident reported there had been a delay in the handling of his RTB purchase.
  2. The landlord’s final response was provided to the resident on 12 April 2021, 32 working days after his request to escalate the complaint on 22 February 2021. While there is no timeframe provided in the landlord’s complaints policy above for the handling of complaints at the final stage, further involvement was required by the resident on 15 March 2021 before it acknowledged his complaint escalation. The landlord would be expected to acknowledge the complaint and inform the resident of the progress of this to manage his expectations and limit any uncertainty or distress caused or the need for further involvement.
  3. Therefore, there was an unreasonable delay in the landlord issuing its final stage response to the resident and its stage one complaint response did not fully address his complaint.

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 55(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord offered redress to the resident prior to investigation which resolves the complaint about its handling of his Right-to-Buy application for his property satisfactorily.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of the associated complaint.

Reasons

  1. The landlord made an offer of redress that was reasonable to recognise its acknowledged failures in the handling of the resident’s RTB purchase of his property.
  2. The landlord did not fully respond to the resident’s complaint at stage one and further involvement was required of him to progress his complaint at the final stage, which was not responded to within a reasonable timeframe.

Orders

  1. The landlord is ordered to:
    1. Pay further compensation of £75 to the resident. This is in addition to the £50 it already offered him in its stage one complaint response, and the £306.63 it offered in its final response.
    2. This payment should be made within four weeks of this report. The landlord should update this Service when payment has been made.