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Livv Housing Group (202125462)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202125462

Livv Housing Group

11 July 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 leaseholder 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 reports of damp and mould within the leaseholder’s property.

Background

  1. The complaint was brought by a leaseholder, who rents her property to a tenant. The property is a two-bedroomed maisonette, within a building comprised of similar properties. The landlord is the freeholder.
  2. An initial report of damp and mould within the property was made by the leaseholder to the landlord, at the beginning of December 2021. The landlord misplaced the report and did not action it. There is no record of the initial report made by the leaseholder, however it is not disputed by the landlord that she did make a report around this time.
  3. Having not received a response to her report, the leaseholder raised a stage one complaint on 15 December 2021. She said that there were damp internal walls in the property, thought to be caused by a leak from an external walkway. In response, the landlord undertook an investigation into the repairs on 22 December 2021 and identified that a walkway above the property had been retaining large quantities of water, and “potentially” identified a weakness which may have caused damp issues within the flat. The inspection also identified high levels of dampness in the bathroom wall, close to the ceiling. A work order was raised on the same day to undertake repairs to the walkway, and an email was sent to the leaseholder to communicate this information and the outcome of the inspection.
  4. The landlord’s sent its stage one response on 24 December 2021. It upheld her complaint that there had been delays to the investigation and repairs due to an initial lost repair report. It laid out a plan for undertaking the necessary remedial works and subsequent investigation and stated that this would be in the new year. The response was sent to the property address, rather than to the leaseholder’s home address. Vouchers totalling the amount of £100.00 for redecoration costs were also sent to the tenant, rather than the leaseholder.
  5. The landlord’s internal emails show that it started making arrangements for the repairs on 12 January 2022.  
  6. The leaseholder escalated her complaint on 17 January 2022, stating that the works remained incomplete. She referred to the walkway not being properly repaired “a couple of years ago” and requested more information on when the repairs would be completed. She explained she was dissatisfied with the amount of compensation offered (the £100.00 in decoration vouchers), and that the stage one response letter had only just arrived having been addressed to the property rather than her own home address. She asked what the landlord intended to do about: the high damp readings in her home, bathroom replastering, and damp-proofing for the walls.
  7. Work appears to have started on the repairs on 20 January 2022. A subsequent inspection of the works on 10 February 2022 highlighted ongoing issues with the repairs and another work order was raised. The new work order covered repairs to the walkway, plus repairs to the leaseholder’s property, including replastering the affected bedroom and bathroom walls, and redecorating.
  8. The landlord sent its final complaint response on 14 February 2022. It upheld the leaseholder’s complaint, stating that there had been initial communication errors, and that there had been errors forwarding correspondence to her correct address. It laid out an action plan for resolving the remaining issues and offered £100.00 compensation for its customer service failure.
  9. The leaseholder has brought this issue to this Service due to remaining dissatisfied with the speed in which the works have been undertaken and the amount of compensation offered by the landlord.

Assessment and findings

  1. This investigation centres on the issues raised by the leaseholder with the landlord in December 2021 and January 2022, and the landlord’s actions up until the end of its complaints process in February 2022. Any repair issues that may have arisen after that period would need to be raised with the landlord as new complaints, even if they appear to be related to the issues considered in this investigation.
  2. No copy of the leaseholder’s lease has been provided for this investigation, so its specific terms and conditions are not known. However, in general, leaseholders are responsible for repair issues arising within the walls of their property, and for decorating inside the property. Conversely, freeholders (in this case, the landlord) are responsible for maintenance and repair of the structure and fabric of the building, and common areas. Basic plasterwork on the walls inside a property is usually considered to be part of the structure for which the landlord is responsible. The landlord’s repairs policy sets out these same general conventions.
  3. The landlord has a 28 day repair response timeframe for routine repairs. However, it should be noted that not all types of repairs will fit into this responsive repair framework, due to their nature, scale, and complexity.
  4. While we do not know the details of the leaseholder’s original report, (at the start of December 2021) in her second report on 15 December she explained she believed the damp and mould in her home was due to a communal walkway above the flat. Under general lease terms, damp and mould inside a flat would usually be the leaseholder’s responsibility to resolve. However, as the potential source of the problem had been reported to be the walkway, it was appropriate for the landlord to attend and inspect it. It did so promptly and shared the outcome of its first inspection with the leaseholder. Its initial response to the report was, therefore, in line with its policies and obligations and was reasonable.  
  5. In its first complaint response the landlord explained that it would start repairs in the new year, which the evidence shows it did. It then continued work after its initial efforts to repair the walkway were unsuccessful. More than one attempt to resolve a repair issue (such as leaks) can sometimes be needed due to the nature of the issue, and the work needed to resolve it. In some cases, different repairs may need to be attempted before the matter is resolved. This would not necessarily constitute a service failure by the landlord. The Ombudsman cannot comment on what repairs would be appropriate, and a landlord is entitled to rely on the opinions of its qualified staff and contractors when deciding what work to undertake. It appears in this case that that is what happened. The landlord undertook the work that its contractors recommended, including when further work and inspections were needed. It exceeded its 28-day timeframe, but the evidence shows it was working consistently to resolve the repairs, and so the time taken was not unreasonable in the circumstances.
  6. The leaseholder told the landlord that “apparently this walkway was repaired a few years ago whereby the tenant told me that there was some makeshift repair done to the walkway and they were fixing the problem extremely quickly.” However, nothing in the evidence indicates that the walkway issues were due to repair failings by the landlord previously.
  7. The landlord sent its first complaint response to the property address rather than the leaseholder’s home address, or emailing it to her. That delayed her receiving it and resulted in her having to contact the landlord in early January 2022 for updates. However, it had separately contacted her to explain the outcome of its initial inspection, so she was at least partly aware of its plans and actions. The delay understandably added to the leaseholder’s frustration with the landlord at the time, but there is no apparent significant impact from the delay, and the landlord commenced the repair work early in the new year, as it had said in its complaint response. The landlord acknowledged its mistake in its second complaint response, apologised, and offered compensation, which were proportionate and reasonable remedies.
  8. The landlord acknowledged that it had misplaced the leaseholder’s original repair report. It apologised and offered £100 compensation. It also offered to repair and redecorate the affected areas inside the property, and additionally provided vouchers as further compensation. As set out above, it was not obliged to make internal repairs or redecoration, as that is a leaseholder’s responsibility, and leaseholders would usually be expected to claim on their insurance for any damage — even if they believe the freeholder was responsible. Nonetheless, in the circumstances of the landlord believing the walkway may have caused the damp problems it was reasonable and appropriate for it to undertake the remedial work the leaseholder sought.
  9. Overall, there were failings in the landlord’s communications, insofar as it lost the first repair report, and misaddressed its first complaint response. It suitably acknowledged and remedied those failings. There were no failings in the landlord’s handling of the repairs.

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 55 (b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has made an offer of redress prior to investigation which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves the complaint satisfactorily.

Recommendations

  1. In its final complaint response, the landlord committed to “visit the site again this week to work out a permanent solution to the problem…to carry out internal repairs as follows: Bathroom – section of wall in and around window, replaster & tank wall, and redecorate room, Bedroom 2 – section of wall and ceiling replaster & tank walls, and redecorate room.” It is not apparent from the evidence when or if the landlord completed these actions. The landlord should consider providing a report to clarify this (to both the leaseholder and this Service). If it has not yet been able to complete the work, it should create a robust action plan to do so in a speedy and realistic timeframe, so as to provide reassurance to the leaseholder.