Midland Heart Limited (202100495)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202100495

Midland Heart Limited

5 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 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 response to the resident’s report of his electrical storage heater causing high heating costs for his property.

Background and summary of events

2. The resident is a tenant of the landlord of a one-bed property.
3. On 23 October 2020, the resident reported to the landlord that his storage heater was not working as no heat was coming from the top vent.
4. On 5 November 2020, the resident informed the landlord that the heater was faulty and was constantly on, which resulted in him receiving electricity bills of £1,200 per month. He said that it needed to contact his electricity supplier as the fault lay with the landlord for not repairing the heater despite several visits to the property.  
5. On 12 November 2020, the resident contacted the landlord to say that its operative attended his property on 10 November 2020 and informed him that his storage heater required replacement. He said that the heater was faulty as this had incurred excess electricity costs amounting to £1,200 per month. The landlord asked the resident to provide his electricity bills to assess the electricity usage.
6. The resident informed the landlord on 26 November 2020 that his electricity supplier was happy to provide his bills to it. It contacted the supplier later that day to request they provide it with his electricity bills. 
7. The resident raised a stage one complaint with the landlord on 26 January 2021. He said that he had since received a court order requiring him to pay his electricity bill and he provided it with the documentation that he had received about this. He also said that it had sent the same operative to his property on three occasions to inspect the storage heater and, on all three occasions, the operative had said that the heater needed to be replaced, but then had advised it that no replacement was necessary. The resident said that he had made a recording as evidence of this and also of the operative being “ill-mannered” and “racist”.
8. The landlord’s records from 26 January 2021 showed that it had spoken to the operative who had visited the resident’s property. The operative said that they had “never said anything about a new heater”.
9. The landlord’s records from 28 January 2021 showed that it had reviewed the documentation sent by the resident and this did not include an electricity bill. 
10. The landlord emailed the resident on 2 February 2021 to acknowledge his complaint. It asked him to provide the recording of its operative saying that his storage heater needed to be replaced and exhibiting racist conduct. It also asked him to confirm his desired resolution.
11. On 8 February 2021, the resident emailed the landlord to confirm that he had a video that showed the operative had “lied”. He said that he was “not showing [it] [his] hand” and would be sending the video to his solicitor if required. The resident asserted that the high electricity bill that he had received was the landlord’s fault and therefore its responsibility to “sort out”.
12. The landlord’s records on 11 February 2021 showed a statement from its operative who had said that they had attended the property several times, overhauled the storage heater, and that they found this to be working each time. They relayed to it that the resident had mentioned his high electricity bills several times and had attributed this to the storage heaters. The operative relayed that the resident had said that the heater was too hot and that he had therefore switched this off at the wall. They advised him that this would incur more costs by the heater heating up and cooling down. The operative confirmed that the off-peak electricity supply was working due to all the other heaters and the hot water working correctly.
13. The landlord issued its stage one complaint response to the resident on 11 February 2021. It acknowledged that he had reported on 23 October 2020 that his storage heater was not producing heat. The landlord confirmed that it had attended the resident’s property on 10 November 2020 to overhaul the heater, which it had found to be working. It noted that he had relayed to its operative that he had found the heater to be too hot and that he had therefore switched this on and off at the wall. The landlord advised that this would incur more power costs due to the heater cooling down and heating up.
14. The landlord confirmed that. although the storage heater was an older model, this would not be replaced as this was in working order. It confirmed that it had also checked the resident’s electricity supply and found that the off-peak supply was working correctly, as evidenced by the other heaters and the hot water working correctly.
15. The landlord noted the resident’s report of its operative’s behaviour, and that he had said that he had video evidence of this. It said that it had attempted to contact him to obtain this but had not been able to make contact. The landlord asked the resident to send this video recording to it so that it could address the report of the operative’s behaviour. It did not uphold his complaint as it could find no evidence of a service failure.
16. The resident called the landlord on 15 February 2021 to voice his dissatisfaction with its stage one complaint response and to request that his complaint be escalated to the final stage of its complaints process. He maintained that the operative was “racist” and had “abused” their position, and he had a video recording as evidence of this. The resident said that he would be getting a private electrician that week to prove that the storage heater was faulty.
17. The landlord spoke to the resident on 16 February 2021 to arrange for an independent electrician to inspect the property on 22 February 2021.
18. On 19 February 2021, the landlord contacted the resident to say that it had not received the video evidence that he had of the operative saying his heaters needed to be replaced and asked him to provide it with this.
19. The electrical installation condition report produced for the property on 23 February 2021, following the independent electrician’s inspection there on the previous day, confirmed that the property’s electrical installation was satisfactory and was “well maintained by contractors”.
20. The landlord emailed the resident on 5 March 2021 to confirm that his complaint had been escalated to the final stage of its complaints process. It apologised for the delay in acknowledging the complaint and explained that this was due to staff absence. The landlord advised the resident that it would provide its final stage complaint response to him by 6 April 2021.
21. On 6 April 2021, the landlord wrote to the resident to confirm that it was not escalating his complaint to the final stage of its complaints process. It explained that it did not see that there was any additional information to support the escalation of the complaint to the final stage. The landlord confirmed that it had attended the resident’s property to inspect the storage heater, which it had found to be working, and had found no issue with his heaters. It therefore would not be replacing the heaters. The landlord encouraged the resident to contact his energy suppliers to discuss his energy bills.
22. The resident contacted this Service on 8 April 2021 to advise that his heating was constantly on and did not turn off, resulting in him being charged £1,300 a month for heating. He held that the landlord had previously sent two operatives who had both advised him that the heater was faulty, but that it would not replace this. The resident said that he had sent a video recording to the landlord of a third visit from its operative who had confirmed that the heater was broken. He relayed that it had apologised to him and agreed to replace the heater, but that it had not done so.

Assessment and findings

Agreement, policies and procedures

23. The landlord’s tenancy agreement with the resident confirms that it is responsible for the repair and maintenance of the installations in the property for the provision of space heating and heating water.
24. The landlord’s repairs webpage confirms that it will attend to an emergency repair within 24 hours. It defines an emergency repair as one which poses an immediate health, safety or security risk. Non-emergency repairs are to be offered on an appointment basis.
25. The landlord’s complaints, comments and compliments policy provides for a two-stage complaints process. At the first stage of this process, it is to provide a written response to the resident within ten working days and at the second stage it is to respond within 20 working days. This policy confirms that a complaint will be escalated to the final stage if it there is evidence that the landlord has not followed its complaints process or if an element of the complaint had not been addressed previously.

The landlord’s response to the resident’s report of his electrical storage heater causing high heating costs for his property

26. The landlord has an obligation to repair and maintain the installations in the property for the provision of heating, as confirmed by the above tenancy agreement. As there was no immediate health, safety or security risk reported to it by the resident when he told it that not heat was coming from the top vent of one of his storage heaters on 23 October 2020, it attended this within a not unreasonable timeframe by attending on 10 November 2020 to carry out repairs to the radiator. This is because the landlord’s above repairs webpage confirmed that it would offer such non-emergency repairs on an appointment basis.
27. When a landlord receives a report of an issue, its first response should be to investigate the matter. In response to the resident’s report on 12 November 2020 that his heaters were causing him to be charged excessively for electricity usage, it was reasonable, therefore, for it to request his electricity bills to enable it to investigate this. It is noted that, despite the landlord contacting the electricity supplier directly on 26 November 2020, there was no evidence that any electricity bills were supplied to it. It would not be expected to act on the resident’s report of excessive electricity usage without first examining the evidence to support this, and it made reasonable efforts to obtain the information from the supplier, as well as from directly from him by asking him for his bills on 12 November 2020.
28. In response to the resident’s report that the operative who had attended his property had told him that his storage heater required replacement, of which he had video evidence, it was reasonable for the landlord to request this to enable it to investigate. To date there is no evidence that this recording was supplied to it despite it requesting this from him on 2, 11 and 19 February 2021. In the absence of this evidence, it was reasonable for the landlord to rely on the information provided by its operative on 11 February 2021, which did not support the resident’s claim that they had advised that the heater needed to be replaced.
29. It was also a reasonable step taken by the landlord on 22 February 2021 to have the resident’s property inspected by an independent electrician, in order to obtain objective evidence of the electrical usage problem reported by the resident. As their subsequent electrical installation condition report of 23 February 2021 for this inspection found that the electrical system was “well maintained” and identified no faults, it was reasonable for the landlord to conclude that there was no new evidence to support the resident’s complaint, and to decline to investigate this at the final stage of its complaints process.
30. In conclusion, the landlord made reasonable efforts to obtain evidence of the storage heater cost issue reported by the resident. In light of the lack of supporting evidence to support his complaint about this from him or from its and an independent electrician’s investigations of the issue, it was reasonable for it to conclude that there was no evidence of failure on its part in respect of this, and for it to decline to consider the complaint further.

Determination (decision)

31. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in its response to the resident’s report of his electrical storage heater causing high heating costs for his property.

Reasons

32. The landlord made reasonable efforts to investigate the storage heater cost issue reported by the resident, and it was appropriate for it to conclude that there was no evidence of failure on its part in respect of this when neither he nor its and an independent electrician’s investigations could provide any evidence of the issue.