Ealing Council (202005837)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202005837

Ealing Council

31 March 2022

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 response to the resident’s reports of disrepair causing maggots to appear in his bathroom.
2. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the subsequent complaint.

Background and summary of events

3. The resident is a leaseholder in a two bedroom maisonette.
4. On 23 June 2020, the resident made a formal complaint regarding maggots found in his bathroom. The resident said that he and his wife were distressed to find maggots crawling out of the toilet and bathroom vents. The resident sealed off the vents as per landlord advice and collected samples to show the landlord. The resident said he had paid a pest control company himself to take care of the same issue the year before because the landlord did not attend to the matter and it became gradually worse. The resident said it was a matter of urgency and could be a hazard under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS).
5. The landlord responded on 1 July 2020 by email. The landlord said that the vents that the resident had sealed off were electric extractor fans and were his responsibility to maintain as they were not shared with other properties. The landlord said it did not offer a treatment for maggots. The landlord said if the resident could remove the coverings and provide photographic evidence, the landlord could establish if it was a communal or individual vent system. If it was a communal vent system, the landlord would have responsibility for the repair.
6. The resident replied promptly and said that he was aware of his responsibilities and that this time the maggots were coming from a pipe outside of his property. The resident said that using the bathroom was claustrophobic without air ventilation and asked the landlord to investigate urgently.
7. The resident did not hear further from the landlord during July and August 2020. The resident sent an email chasing action to the repairs manager on 15 July. On 28 July and 28 August, the resident contacted the landlord through the Chief Executive’s office saying that he was being ignored. The resident said that his complaint should be escalated since he had received no response.
8. On 4 September 2020, the Chief Executive’s office sent an email to the resident saying that his complaint was at stage one and that the complaints team would contact him the following week. A similar email was sent on 14 September 2020 again confirming that the complaint was in progress at stage one.
9. On 16 September 2020 and then on 12 October 2020, the resident contacted this service regarding the outstanding disrepair issue. This service sent letters to the landlord on 5 November 2020 requesting a 15 day response and then on 10 December 2020 requesting a 10 day response from the landlord to the resident regarding his complaint.
10. On 5 January 2021, following unsuccessful attempts to contact the landlord by phone, this service issued a warning letter to the landlord saying that if it did not take action to address or resolve the resident’s complaint then it would consider making and publishing a Complaint Handling Failure Order (CHFO).
11. The landlord responded to this service on 14 January 2021 and provided the following explanation of what had happened. The landlord said that “his complaint was not (sic) logged informally as we believed the ventilation he referred to be his responsibility as a leaseholder and as there was no indication of repairs being required to the roof. It would have fell to (the resident) to pursue treatment for the maggots. However when the query was passed to our Home Ownership Team to confirm this was not picked up. So we apologise for this oversight and have extended our apologies to (the resident). Due to this failure we have now logged his complaint formally and we will provide a full response into to the issues raised to you by (the resident) before 20 January 2021.”
12. On 20 January 2021, this service again attempted to contact the landlord to get an update on the resident’s complaint but no response was received.
13. On 10 February 2021, this service issued a CHFO to the landlord and concluded that the resident’s complaint had ‘unreasonably stalled.’
14. On 17 February 2021, the landlord responded to the resident’s complaint at stage one. The landlord acknowledged there had been delays in responding to the resident and apologised that ‘in the process of trying to ascertain’ whether the extractor vent in question was communal or individual the ‘complaint stalled’. The landlord said that it would seek to learn from what had happened.
15. The landlord said that it would undertake an inspection to establish the cause of the maggot problem. The landlord said that it would inspect the roof if it was unable to identify the cause the problem. The landlord said the resident would also be visited by the pest control team.
16. The inspection took place on 29 March 2021. It was found that due to no cover on the roof outlet, which the landlord said would normally be the residents’ responsibility, debris was gathering in a redundant air flow box in the vent on which the maggots were feeding. The landlord cleared the debris and said 100mm of pipework also needed to be renewed connecting the bathroom and toilet extractor fans. Before this work could be carried out an asbestos test was needed as it was thought there may be asbestos present in some of the panelling. The landlord agreed to carry out the necessary work to replace the cowl on the roof outlet as part of resolution to the resident’s complaint.
17. On 15 April 2021, the resident contacted the landlord saying that he had not been given a date as promised for the works identified by the inspection to be carried out. On the same day, the resident also contacted this service saying that the landlord had not provided further response to his complaint. Letters were sent by this service to the landlord on 21 April 2021, 20 May 2021 and again on 17 June 2021 escalating the complaint and asking the landlord to respond at stage two.
18. On 18 June 2021, the landlord sent a stage two complaint response to the resident. The landlord apologised for the delays and offered £150 compensation. The landlord said that the delays in response had been an ‘inexcusable service failure.’ The landlord said that there had been a backlog of repairs cases caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. The landlord said that there had been a delay in carrying out the repairs after the inspection in March as there was a need to do an asbestos test on the panelling. It said this test was ‘not followed up’ due to the repairs backlog and said this would be prioritised following the stage two response.
19. On 23 June 2021, the resident escalated his complaint to stage three. The resident said that the amount of compensation was insufficient. The resident said that the continuing lack of ventilation in the bathroom was causing damp and mould which had damaged his bathroom.
20. The asbestos survey was carried out on 25 June 2021 and no asbestos found.
21. On 26 July 2021, the landlord issued a stage three complaint response to the resident. The landlord increased the compensation offer to £250 and offered £100 of decoration vouchers in addition. The landlord confirmed that no asbestos had been found and that repair work would be completed within 4-6 weeks. The landlord upheld the complaint, apologised for delays and said that carrying out the repairs had been complicated and delayed by the need to co-ordinate multiple contractors.
22. The repair works identified following the March inspection were completed on 6 September 2021.
23. A surveyor working on behalf of the landlord carried out a post-work inspection on 15 September 2021. A job order was raised to replace the extractor fans. It is the surveyor’s opinion that the debris allowed in by the missing cowl on the roof may have caused the fan motor unit to stop working correctly and contributed to the damp and mould in the bathroom. The landlord said that it would normally be the leaseholder’s responsibility to carry out the repairs but that it would do so without recharge on this occasion given the complaint.

Assessment and findings

Response to report of disrepair

24. Under section 8 clause 5 of the lease, the landlord has a responsibility to “use its reasonable endeavours to keep the Estate in reasonable repair and condition.” The lease also states that the landlord must also “keep the Reserved property in good and substantial repair and condition and whenever necessary rebuild and reinstate and renew and replace all worn or damaged parts.”
25. In addition to the obligations of the lease itself, the landlord has a responsibility to ensure that the property is free from hazards under the HHRS and a repair duty under Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act.
26. The landlord says that when the resident first reported the maggot problem, it was unclear if the repair was its responsibility or the residents. The landlord said that if the issue was found to be in a communal area it would have responsibility for the repair but if the cause of the issue was contained individually within the residents home it would have been his responsibility.
27. The landlord’s initial response at the beginning of July 2020 was to ask the resident to provide photographic evidence so that it could better determine whether it had repair responsibility. This was reasonable but once the resident had confirmed that the pipe in question went from his property through the upstairs flat and to the roof space at the end of July 2020, the landlord should have attended to investigate further as it eventually did on 29 March 2021. This was a delay in investigating of 8 months and a serious service failure.
28. The landlord should instead have immediately worked with the resident to ascertain the cause of the problem. Carrying out an inspection straight away to help identify the cause of the problem would have gone a long way to reduce the long delays experienced by the resident. It is probable that by allowing the bathroom to remain in a state with significantly reduced ventilation for a period of approximately nine months from June 2020 to 29 March 2021, the damp and mould problems were made significantly worse. The presence of damp and mould has been confirmed by a surveyor working on behalf of the landlord in September 2021 as well as reported by the resident.
29. The landlord has said it would seek to learn from this service failure but it has not provided details of what changes have been made to its process or procedures.
30. There were further delays in the repairs process itself following the inspection in March. The landlord said that an asbestos test was required but the necessity of carrying out the test was not ‘followed up’ due to a backlog in repair requests caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. The landlord itself described the service failures as ‘inexcusable’ in its stage two response. The need for an asbestos test was identified by April 2021 but the test was not carried out until after the stage two complaint response on 25 June 2021. This was a further delay of approximately three months from beginning of April until the end of June 2021.
31. The landlord agreed to carry out the required repairs without recharge to the resident despite finding that the cause of the maggot issue was likely to be debris entering the vent from the roof which it said would normally have been the resident’s responsibility. However, it is not clear that the missing cowl was the resident’s repair responsibility. The cause of the issue was eventually found to be two floors above the resident’s demised premises close to the roof which is acknowledged to be a communal area for which the landlord is responsible. It was therefore reasonable for the resident to expect the landlord to carry out the repair.

Complaint Handling

32. In addition to the acknowledged avoidable delays within the repairs process, there is considerable evidence of service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint overall. The resident repeatedly chased a response to his complaint in the period from August 2020-January 2021 and did not receive a satisfactory response. Although the resident received confirmation from the Chief Executive’s office that the complaint was underway, no response was issued which eventually led to the issuing of a CHFO by this service.
33. The landlord acknowledged in its stage one response that its response to the resident’s complaint ‘stalled’ in the process of trying to ascertain whether it was the resident’s responsibility to carry out the repair.
34. The landlord said in January 2021 that the complaint had been ‘logged informally’ while the Chief Executive’s office told the resident in September 2020 that the complaint was underway at stage one. This evidence of internal confusion is partly the reason why the Housing Ombudsman strongly discourages the use of an ‘informal’ complaints process. Although it is recognised that it can be beneficial to resolve complaints quickly and sometimes without recourse to writing a letter in response, the complaints process should be clearly defined and the use of terms like an ‘informal complaint’ is normally unhelpful in providing a resolution. There is no reason why the resident’s concerns that his reports were being ignored should have been handled as anything other than a formal stage one complaint.    
35. The issue of a CHFO in February 2021, should have highlighted to the landlord the importance of carrying out any outstanding repairs and responding to any outstanding complaint matters in a timely fashion which it clearly failed to do.
36. The customer journey through the complaints process should be a normal procedural matter for the landlord which does not require prompting from any external organisation. The landlord was prompted six times in writing to respond to the resident’s complaint by this service. This includes three times after the issuing of a CHFO. It is of serious concern that the landlord did not ensure that complaint handling was closely monitored after the issuing of a CHFO. The stage three final complaint response was sent on 26 July 2021, over a year since the resident’s initial report of an issue.

Compensation

37. The highlighted service failures above are recognised by the landlord but it has not taken satisfactory steps to put right what has gone wrong. Although the compensation offer has been increased to £250 plus £100 decoration vouchers, this does not provide adequate redress for the prolonged disruption and inconvenience to the resident of reduced ventilation in the bathroom or for the time and trouble taken in making his complaint over the course of the year.
38. Housing Ombudsman guidance suggests payments of between £250-700 where there has been considerable delay in providing service to a resident such as responding to a report of disrepair. The maximum payment is appropriate in this case. There was an eight month delay in investigating the residents initial reports and a further three month delay in carrying out the asbestos test to allow the necessary repair work. A payment of £50 per month for these delays would be reasonable compensation with an additional £150 for the acknowledged failures in complaints handling. 

Determination (decision)

39. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s response to the resident’s report of maggots in his bathroom.
40. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the subsequent complaint.

Reasons

41. There was substantial delay in both the investigation of the cause of the resident’s maggot problem and carrying out subsequent repair work. The landlord was continually prompted by both the resident and this service to provide responses at each stage of its complaints process even after a Complaint Handling Failure Order had been issued.

Orders and recommendations

42. It is ordered that the landlord offer the resident a total of £700 compensation in recognition of the severe repair delays and failures in complaints handling minus any compensation already paid.