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One Housing Group Limited (202110107)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202110107

One Housing Group Limited

14 April 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 handling of the sale of the resident’s property and her subsequent complaints.

Background and summary of events

  1. The resident is a shared ownership leaseholder with the landlord. The property is a flat. Shared ownership sales are usually managed and marketed by a landlord for the first two to three months (the nomination period). In that period sales are restricted to potential shared ownership buyers. After the period expires a shared owner is allowed to sell their property on the open market.
  2. The resident emailed the landlord on 29 January 2020 enquiring about the process of getting a valuation to sell her property. Correspondence and activity proceeded until October 2020, when the landlord emailed the resident confirming her flat was now listed for sale, and being advertised.
  3. The resident emailed the landlord in January 2021 enquiring what the sales process was now that the nomination period had ended. The landlord responded stating that as it had not found a buyer, the resident could take the property to the open market. 
  4. A chronology provided by the landlord states that the resident informed it she had found a buyer for the property on 25 March 2021. It states that it emailed her and left a voicemail to discuss the next steps (a copy of this email has not been provided for this investigation). The resident later explained, in an email to her MP in July 2021, that she “found a buyer and made urgent attempts to engage with the home sales team who were extremely slow to respond, and the buyer withdrew their offer”. 
  5. The resident emailed the landlord to raise a complaint on 20 April 2021. She explained that she was dissatisfied with the landlord’s handling of the sale. She said she had only had three viewings since the property was listed, the landlord had repeatedly not responded to her emails, and the property was not listed on its website. She said she had lost a property she had reserved to buy due to what she saw as the landlord’s inaction. She asked for “more information on what is being done to market my property, and how many inquiries have been made by potential buyers.”
  6. The landlord emailed the resident on 21 April 2021, it apologised for the delayed response and said due to staff sickness and leave it had a backlog of enquires. It said it would allocate a dedicated staff member to progress the sale. It had received 51 enquires about the property and asked to know how many viewings there had been. It had sent follow up emails to all enquirers, and said the property would be added to its website.
  7. Following further contact by the landlord and assurances of better service the resident withdrew her complaint. However, she emailed the landlord again on 17 May 2021 renewing her complaint. She complained that despite the promises she received she had received no further contact by the relevant sales team.
  8. The landlord sent its stage one complaint response on 2 June 2021. It acknowledged and apologised for the lack of communication with the resident, and explained its poor service to that point was due to staff leave, sickness, and general lack of staff. It explained the steps it was taking to alleviate staffing issues, and confirmed it had arranged for the property to be listed on its website.  It said again that it would follow up with people that had expressed interest. It offered £25 compensation due to “the delay in response” and an additional £25 for its “service failure in complaint handling”.
  9. The resident escalated her complaint on 15 June 2021. She complained that the previous complaint response contained drafting errors (the template text had not been removed), and acknowledged the landlord’s staffing challenges but did not accept that as an acceptable excuse for the poor service she had received. She also explained that she had had feedback from a prospective buyer about difficulties dealing with the landlord.. She reiterated the impact the delayed sale was having on her and her family.
  10. The resident emailed the landlord on 30 June 2021 querying why the deposit for her property was listed on the website as 10%, rather than 5% for many of the other properties were. The landlord responded the same day and explained there were a variety of reasons for differing deposits.
  11. The landlord sent its stage two response on 13 July 2021, following an earlier call with the resident. It explained that it understood the resident’s complaint to be “The lack of service … from the Home Purchase Team. Your property is still on the market and you need to urgently sell”, and that the outcomes she wanted were “Your property to be removed from our online portals and re listed on Share to Buy and Rightmove; Your property listing to show a minimum 5% deposit and not 10% which it currently is showing; You would like to be updated frequently by the home purchase team on the interest in your property”. The landlord said it had investigated the complaint, and apologised for the lack of communication from its home purchase team. It explained how the team’s backlog of work had arisen and impacted on the service the resident received, and set out how it was trying to improve the situation. It gave contact details for a new point of contact for the sale, and said it would re-list the property in the manner the resident had asked, with a 5% deposit in order to generate further interest. It offered an additional £100 compensation as a gesture of goodwill, and signposted the resident to this Service if she remained dissatisfied. 
  12. Following the resident escalating her complaint to this Service and her MP, the landlord emailed her on 22 July 2021. It reiterated the actions it had taken and said it would pay for professional photography to help the marketing. It added that it wanted to increase its compensation offer from £100 to £250 for the delay and inconvenience caused to her. 
  13. The resident has recently told this Service that her property is still not sold and said that she has experienced further difficulties communicating with the landlord.

Assessment and findings

  1. The landlord’s compensation policy states:
    1. It will offer between £25.00 and £250 for inconvenience.
    2. It will offer compensation for “Lost opportunity e.g. if a tenant has lost the opportunity for a housing transfer because of an OH administrative oversight”.
  2. The landlord’s complaints handling policy states: it should provide a “full, objective and proportionate response”.
  3. The resident outlined further issues to this Service that were not included in her complaint to the landlord, including fire safety concerns, increased service charges and heating charges. These issues will not be assessed in this investigation, as in accordance with paragraph 39 (a) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the Ombudsman will not investigate complaints which “are made prior to having exhausted a member’s complaints procedure”. This is because the landlord has not been given the opportunity to rectify the issues. The investigation will therefore focus on the landlord’s handling of the sale of the resident’s property.
  4. The landlord has not provided policy or procedures, or similar guidance establishing its service standards for its sales process. Because of that it is not possible for this investigation to assess its actions against what it was obliged by its procedures to do in providing its sales service to the resident, both during and after the nomination period. Furthermore, while the landlord acknowledged it had provided a poor service to the resident, and explained how staff shortages and similar problems had contributed to its problems, it did not show that it had considered the impact of its failings on the resident and the sales of her property. This was a significant omission, especially given that the resident had explained how and why she believed the landlord’s actions had affected the sale. It was counter to both the landlord’s complaint policy, which calls for a full and objective response, and also not in line with the Ombudsman’s Complaints Handling Code, which explains that in its complaint response a landlord should “address all points raised in the complaint and provide clear reasons for any decisions, referencing the relevant policy, law and good practice where appropriate.”
  5. Following its stage two response, the landlord increased its compensation offer to £250 for the delays in responses and the inconvenience caused to the resident. That amount was in line with the landlord’s compensation policy, which states that offers of £50-£250 will be made for inconvenience, including for lost opportunities, which could arguably include the resident’s perceived loss of potential buyers. It also conforms to the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance for instances when a landlord has repeatedly failed to respond to correspondence from the resident and when there is a “failure to meet service standards for actions and responses”. On the face of it therefore, the landlord appears to have at least partly remedied its failings, but with the uncertainties about what it should have done and what it did do (as set out above), it is not possible for this investigation to robustly assess whether the remedies and compensation it offered were appropriate to the scale of its service failures. That shows at the very least that there was further service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint, and uncertainty about the scale of the landlord’s failings in its handling of the sales process.

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in respect of the complaint.

Orders and recommendations

  1. In light of the failings identified in this report, with no clear indication of them having been appropriately remedied, the landlord is ordered to:
    1. Pay the resident £200 compensation. This compensation is in addition to the £250 already offered to the resident by the landlord, which should now also be paid, if it has not already been.
    1. Conduct a full case review of its handling of the sales process for the resident, setting out the service standards and other obligations relevant to the process and measuring its service against them. The review must also give clear consideration of the impact alleged by the resident on her and her family, and on the sale of her property. The compensation already offered by the landlord must be reviewed to assess whether it remains proportionate to the findings of this case review, and any resulting compensation or other remedy gap addressed. The review must cover at least the same period covered in this report (up to July 2021), and the landlord should consider extending it to the present day if the resident has continued to report problems to it about the sale of her property.
  1. Evidence of payment of the compensation must be provided to this Service within four weeks of this report.
  2. The case review must be provided to the resident and this Service within six weeks of this report.