Haringey Council (202118411)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202118411

Haringey Council

28 June 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

The leaseholder complains about the landlord’s handling of the application of contact restrictions.

Background

The landlord’s Unreasonable Complainant Conduct (UCC) Policy as was in place at the time of the matters complained about sets out that in some cases, complainants could make inappropriate demands on time and resources and refuse to accept decisions and recommendations in relation to their complaints. When complainants behave in this way it would consider their conduct to be unreasonable. Examples cited included an unwillingness to accept reasonable explanations and final decisions, and bombarding the office or an individual with multiple contacts. The landlord may change or restrict access to services to manage the impact of such conduct
Where a complainant exhibited early signs of unreasonable conduct the landlord would consider if they had support needs that were contributing to the unreasonable conduct. It would then, depending on the nature or severity of the conduct:
1. Write or talk to the complainant and advise them of the behaviour that was of concern.
2. Inform them of its limits and boundaries.
3. Provide clear guidance about what it would consider to be reasonable.
4. Advise them what will happen if the conduct does not improve.
5. Signpost (where appropriate) to an advocate or support person.
If the unreasonable conduct continued, this would be managed by changing or restricting the ways that the landlord interacted with and/or delivered services to complainants. For example:
1. Who they had contact with.
1. Restricting the subject matter of communications.
2. Limiting when and how a complainant could contact the landlord.
The policy stated ‘It may be appropriate to restrict a person’s access to a single staff member (the sole contact point) who will exclusively manage their complaint and interactions with the office. Complainants who are restricted to a sole contact person will be given the contact details of one additional staff member who they can contact if their primary contact is unavailable…The person named as the sole contact…will be reviewed at the end of each six months.’ The landlord may also decline further communication or restrict subject matter, for example:
1. Refuse to respond to correspondence that raises an issue that has already been dealt with.
1. Restrict the complainant to one complaint per month.
Where it had been decided to implement the UCC policy the landlord would write to the complainant advising the following:
1. That the landlord proposed to change or restrict access.
1. The details of the change or restriction.
2. The reasons for the change or restriction.
3. The period that it applies for.
4. That they had a right of appeal.
All cases would be reviewed at least every six months and not more than 12 months after the change or restriction was introduced or extended.
The landlord’s complaint policy set out that it would not accept complaints about matters that should be addressed via an appeals process.

Summary of events

The complainant is a leaseholder who does not reside at the property. The property in question is a flat on the third floor.
In January 2020, the leaseholder made a complaint that the landlord had not been taking action nor responding to the complaints they had made in November 2019. In an email dated 9 January 2020, the landlord accepted that there had been occasions where it had, ‘…fallen short of what you should expect, particularly when waiting for responses to some of your enquiries.’ The email also referred to efforts made to try and resolve concerns that the leaseholder had raised. The email stated, ‘With all this mind, I wanted to suggest that we give you a single point of contact to direct any further enquiries to. This will avoid you having to navigate the organisation and ensure we respond in good time...This should help as I must admit I found it tricky to follow the various emails that have been going back and forth and to unpick which of the issues are unresolved.’ The email gave the single point of contact (SPOC) details and concluded by stating that the formal complaint would be responded to shortly.
On 5 August 2020 the leaseholder emailed leasehold services, titled ‘My ref: 121 – Repairs charged – April 2017 to March 2017’ referring to, ‘…the issues surrounding charge request from Repairs Service over the past few years causing confusion and unnecessary inconvenience to me as well as yourselves.’ They said that they were going to conduct a reconciliation of the accounts and to help with this asked the landlord two questions:
1. ‘To the list attached [referring to a list of repairs charged to the building for 2017/18] was there any credits/part credit relating to any of the invoices listed, in other words an invoice withdrawn from payment, If yes please advise invoice number and amount.’
1. I understand I have paid what was due by direct debit, please advise was the final amount after all payments £175.23 as shown on attachment, if different please advise.’
In reply on 25 August 2020 leasehold services provided a statement of the leaseholder’s service charge account for the financial period 2017-2019 which it said should answer question ‘a’. It confirmed that £175.23 ‘was charged to the actual 2017/18.’
On 5 October 2020 the leaseholder emailed leasehold services reminding it that they were awaiting a reply.
On 25 October 2020 the leaseholder emailed leasehold services thanking it for its reply but stating that it did not answer their two questions. They asked:
1. ‘From the attachments I have sent with this email, please could you indicate what job numbers have been withdrawn from payment and where you have altered the payment?
2. The final amount was £ 172.23 on the attachment provided. If £ 175.23 is now different, please could you state what caused it and the job number it relates to?’
Leasehold services replied on 5 November 2020 saying that it was not aware of any repairs ‘to have been removed.’ It said they were all repairs that were carried out in the 2018/19 period.
The leaseholder made a formal complaint in relation to their reference ‘121’ on 12 December 2020, on the basis that the landlord had failed to provide a reasonable response to the questions they had asked, and stating that they had only received one reply in August 2020. They asked for a response to their 25 October 2020 questions.
Separately, the leaseholder had also emailed leasehold services on 5 August, titled ‘My ref: 210 – Repairs charged – April 2018 to September 2018’, referring to mistakes by the repairs service, explaining that they would be carrying out a reconciliation, and to assist with this asked for a response to two questions:
1. ‘To the list attached was there any credits/part credit relating to any of the invoices listed, in other words an invoice withdrawn from payment, If yes please advise invoice number and amount.
1. I understand I have paid what was due by direct debit, please advise was the final amount after all payments £82.39 as shown on attachment [referring to list of repairs charged to the building April 2018 to September 2018 showing proportion of leaseholder’s costs as £82.39], if different please advise.’
In response on 12 August 2020 leasehold services said, ‘The £82.39 relates to repairs from April 2018 to September 2018. Repairs for this period would be charged in in the Actual 2018/19.’
In reply on 13 August 2020 the leaseholder said that a reply to the two questions asked would be helpful. They said they were concerned too many mistakes were made by the repairs service.
On 5 October 2020 the leaseholder sent a reminder that they were awaiting a reply.
On 25 October 2020 the leaseholder emailed leasehold services thanking it for the 25 August 2020 reply, but stating that it did not answer their questions. They asked:
1. ‘From the attachments I have sent with this email, please could you indicate what job numbers have been withdrawn from payment and where you have altered the payment?
1. The final amount was £82.39 on the attachment provided. If £82.39 is now different, please could you state what caused it and the job number it relates to? ‘
Leasehold services replied on 5 November 2020 saying that it was not aware of any repairs ‘to have been removed.’ It said they were all repairs that were carried out in the 2018/19 period.
The leaseholder then made a second formal complaint about a lack of reasonable response to the questions they had raised in relation to their reference ‘210’, saying there had been no response other than in August 2020, and asked for a response to the questions in their 25 October 2020 email.
Also on 5 August 2020 the leaseholder emailed leasehold services, with the title ‘My ref: 510 – Repairs charged – January 2018 to March 2018’, referring to mistakes by the repairs service, explaining that they would be carrying out a reconciliation, and to assist with this asked for a response to two questions:
1. ‘To the list attached was there any credits/part credit relating to any of the invoices listed, in other words an invoice withdrawn from payment, If yes please advise invoice number and amount.
1. I understand I have paid what was due by direct debit, please advise was the final amount after all payments £ 116. 93 as shown on attachment, if different please advise.’
On 12 August 2020 the landlord replied stating, ‘The £116.93 refers to your proportion for repairs to your block between January 2018 to March 2018. This amount was charged to the Actual 2017 /18 Service Charge.’
In response on 13 August 2020 the leaseholder stated, ‘I am aware repairs January 2018 to March 2018 would be charged in the following year 2019/20. They explained that they were concerned that too many mistakes were being made by the repairs service.
On 5 October 2020 the leaseholder emailed leasehold services reminding it they were awaiting a reply.
On 25 October 2020 the leaseholder emailed leasehold services thanking it for the 25 August 2020 reply, but stating that it did not answer their questions. They asked:
1. ‘From the attachments I have sent with this email. please could you indicate what job numbers have been withdrawn from payment and where you have altered the payment?
1. The final amount was £116.93 on the attachment provided. If £116.93 is now different, please could you state what caused it and the job number it relates to?’
Leasehold services replied on 5 November 2020 saying that it was not aware of any repairs ‘to have been removed.’ It said they were all repairs that were carried out in the 2018/19 period.
The leaseholder then made a third formal complaint with their reference ‘510’ about a lack of reasonable response to the questions raised, saying there had been no response other than in August 2020, and asked for a response to the questions in their 25 October 2020 email.
Separately, on 17 November 2020 the leaseholder emailed a Resident Liaison Officer stating that they had not responded to an email dated 19 July 2019 asking a number of questions about fire doors (with the leaseholder’s reference ‘131’), and requesting a reply. They followed this up on 2 and 18 December 2020.
On 22 December 2020 the leaseholder made a formal complaint about the failure to reply to several emails regarding their reference ‘131’. They asked for a response to the six questions they had posed. The complaint team responded the next day, apologising that no response had been forthcoming since July 2019 and answering the six questions.
That same month the landlord informed the leaseholder that the three complaints they had made about the service charge issue would not be processed as the leaseholder had not followed the request of only contacting the SPOC. It stated, ‘Homes for Haringey have asked you on 2 occasions: 09 Jan 2020 and 01 April 2020 that you email [the SPOC] to ensure we answer your correspondence and to help manage your contact. This requested has not been followed…I am not clear what information you are missing but would like to remind you once again, that I am your sole point of contact and if you would like to request information please do so directly with me.’
On 17 December 2020 the leaseholder emailed the SPOC, copying in two other staff members, saying that they had no right not proceeding with the three complaints, and that it was clear the SPOC did not know what the complaints were about.
The landlord acknowledged this on 3 January 2021. It said that it had reviewed the case and noted that the leaseholder had emailed leasehold services directly, which did respond to the questions asked on 25 August and 5 November 2020, along with three invoices showing a list of repairs charged to the building. Therefore, the landlord considered that the leaseholder had already received a reasonable response. The landlord reminded the leaseholder that it had asked them in January 2020 to contact the SPOC with any complaints or questions to enable the landlord to respond in an effective and timely way, and asked that the leaseholder follow this request. The landlord said that should the leaseholder contact any other individual they may not respond. It said, ‘Having reviewed your correspondence with Homes for Haringey, and our responses to you, my view is that we have addressed your concerns and that your reluctance to accept this, and then make further complaints about the same issue, could be deemed as unreasonably persistent.
On 5, 7, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22 and 25 January 2021 the leaseholder sent emails to a number of different staff members.
On 29 January 2021 the landlord wrote to the leaseholder noting that they had continued to email various departments, despite providing them with a SPOC. It said that it had used this approach due to: The tone of some of the leaseholder’s emails; the leaseholder reframing correspondence and misleading statements made; refusal to accept responses; sending in correspondence to teams directly and to incorrect service teams; sending over 50 emails over a 6-month period ‘with continuous questions added to the first email to keep the interaction going’, and; emailing in a scattergun approach that was difficult to manage.
The landlord was therefore imposing an immediate restriction on all email correspondence. This was a restriction on the subject matter of communications where it considered it had addressed the enquiries and would not reply to any further correspondence about these. Neither would it reply to requests for information already sent or emails that were not clear. The SPOC for any new issues would remain, and emails sent to other officers directly would not be responded to. It said that the restriction would be reviewed in line with policy after 6 months, and that the leaseholder had a right to appeal.
In reply the leaseholder sent a letter dated 4 February 2021 in which they refuted each paragraph of the landlord’s letter in turn, and in essence stated that the reason for their numerous contacts with the landlord was because it failed to provide reasonable responses to their queries, and that this was not indicative of unreasonable behaviour on the part of the leaseholder, but rather failings on the part of the landlord. They said that they would continue to make contact with the service areas rather than the SPOC. They concluded, ‘If your services responded to the queries, then my emails would have easily been reduced to less than 10 emails over the period of six months except for any reminders sent or maybe a stage 1 complaint.’ They said that they were appealing the decision.
On 4 March 2021 the landlord responded to the appeal, saying that the matter had been reviewed and it had found that the restrictions were reasonable and in line with policy. It said, ‘Based on the volume and content of the correspondence from [the leaseholder] and the responses sent by officers, these restrictions have been applied appropriately.’ The review had noted that the option of support/advocacy had not been discussed with the leaseholder, and a recommendation was made in this regard. The landlord invited the leaseholder to let the SPOC know if they would like to access support.
On 5 March 2021 the leaseholder emailed the landlord stating that they found the decision unfair, unreasonable, and not truthful, and requested a copy of all supporting evidence presented to the decision maker
The landlord responded on 9 March 2021 saying that it had no further comments to make and the decision was unchanged, referring the leaseholder to this Service.

Assessment and findings

When investigating a complaint, the Ombudsman applies its Dispute Resolution Principles. These are high level good practice guidance developed from the Ombudsman’s experience of resolving disputes, for use by everyone involved in the complaints process. There are only three principles driving effective dispute resolution:
1. Be fair – treat people fairly and follow fair processes;
1. put things right, and;
2. learn from outcomes.
Occasionally, the behaviour or actions of individuals can make it very difficult for landlords to deal with their concerns and complaints, and take a large amount of resource to manage. When this happens, it is fair and reasonable for landlords to consider the impact of the behaviour on its ability to do its work and provide a service to others, and whether contact restrictions are warranted. The Ombudsman encourages landlords to have a policy in place to manage any unreasonable/unacceptable behaviour and to set out what action should be taken when applying contact restrictions. In this case, the landlord had an appropriate policy in place, which it was required to follow when implementing contact restrictions.
The landlord first asked the leaseholder to use the SPOC in January 2020. However, this was not presented in terms of the leaseholder’s own behaviour being unreasonable, and the landlord had accepted that there had been some failings on its part. There is reference to the leaseholder being asked again on 1 April 2020 to use the SPOC, but the Ombudsman has not been provided with a copy of this request, and therefore it is not clear how this request was presented.
As such, there is no evidence that the request for the leaseholder to use a SPOC in January 2020 was due to unreasonable behaviour, or carried out in line with the UCC policy, or that they were warned that contacting other staff members may result in complaints not being accepted. As such, it was unreasonable for the landlord to decline to address the leaseholder’s three December 2020 complaints on the basis that they did not address these to the SPOC. This is compounded by the fact that the landlord did answer the complaint about the fire door issue around this same time, despite it not being directed to the SPOC. The landlord was inconsistent in its approach here and did not follow fair processes.
The 3 January 2021 email from the landlord was clear in relating the SPOC request to the leaseholder’s behaviour, noting that this could be deemed as ‘unreasonably persistent’, and asked that they use the SPOC. This email followed the UCC policy by advising the leaseholder of the behaviour that was of concern, and provided clear guidance about what would be considered to be reasonable, although it is not clear whether the landlord considered whether support needs were contributing to the unreasonable conduct. However, the email did not advise the leaseholder what would happen if their conduct did not improve.
As the leaseholder continued to contact a number of different staff members, it was in keeping with the UCC policy that the landlord wrote to the leaseholder setting out contact restrictions. While the leaseholder disagrees with the landlord’s assertion that their contact was unreasonable, the evidence available does suggest that the manner in which the leaseholder contacted the landlord could have proven difficult to manage.
For example, sending a number of very similar emails at the same time to leasehold services in August and October 2020 about what was essentially the same issue, could be time consuming and confusing for the landlord to deal with. The leaseholder explained in their 4 February 2021 letter that, ‘…to avoid confusion I do not mix queries that relate to mutable services hence, for example, one sends 10 emails to ten different services instead of one email incorporating all queries.’ However, in this case they had sent several emails, many of which were nearly identical, about the same issue (albeit different timeframes) to the same service, followed by three separate formal complaints. This could reasonably be described as excessive.
The landlord explained that it was imposing restrictions, in the main, due to the leaseholder refusing to accept responses, attempting to reframe correspondence and keep interactions going, and making misleading statements. It gave some examples of this, which included ‘Over 50 emails over a 6-month period from you about actual Service Charge (Statements), Fire doors, Estate monitoring, showing original emails with continuous questions added to the first email to keep the interaction going.’
It can be seen that the leaseholder did send a number of emails to leaseholder services as follow ups, and added in further questions. But to some extent this was due to the replies not providing a full response to the questions asked. For example, in its 25 August 2020 response to the leaseholder’s 5 August 2020 email (reference ‘121’)¸ while leasehold services did confirm the £175 figure, it did not answer the question about whether any invoices had been withdrawn from payment. However, it did answer this question in its 5 November 2020 email. The leaseholder then made a formal complaint stating that they had no response from the landlord other than its August 2020 email, whereas at this point leasehold services had answered the two questions posed.
As another example, while the leaseholder did send a number of emails about the fire doors, it can be seen that this was due to the landlord’s failure to respond until a stage one complaint was submitted.
Overall, the evidence available does go someway to supporting the landlord’s reasoning for imposing the contact restrictions, and ultimately this was done after the leaseholder continued to email a number of different staff after being asked not to on 3 January 2021. However, there is no indication that the landlord took into account the fact that at times its own actions, or lack thereof, had contributed to the number of contacts made by the leaseholder.
The landlord’s 29 January 2021 restriction letter did follow the UCC policy in advising the leaseholder of the reasons for the decision, what the restrictions would entail, the time period, and the right of appeal. However, no alternative contact was provided in case the SPOC was unavailable, as stipulated in the UCC policy.
The leaseholder’s appeal was then responded to in good time, with the recommendation of an offer of support being followed. In line with the complaint policy, it was reasonable for the landlord to decline the leaseholder’s subsequent further concerns about the matter and refer them to the Ombudsman.
The 29 January 2021 letter stated, ‘This restriction will be reviewed in line with our policy after 6 months from the date of this letter.’ There is no indication that this occurred, which is especially concerning as the landlord has confirmed with this Service that the leaseholder’s contacts had been more reasonable later in 2021.

Determination (decision)

In accordance with Section 54 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the application of contact restrictions.

Reasons

As there is no indication that the landlord had applied its UCC policy in 2020 or informed the leaseholder that it would not consider complaints if not sent to the SPOC, it was unfair of the landlord to refuse to consider the three December 2020 complaints.
It was not unreasonable for the landlord to implement contact restrictions after the leaseholder continued to contact multiple staff after its 3 January 2021 warning letter, however the reasons that the landlord set out for doing so did not take into account some of the reasons the leaseholder had for sending multiple emails. This was frustrating for the leaseholder.
The UCC policy was not followed in some areas, for example the 3 January 2021 letter did not warn of the outcomes of not adhering to the SPOC, and the contact restrictions were not reviewed after six months. These failings led to further frustration for the leaseholder.

Orders

Within one month of the date of this report the landlord must:
1. Pay the leaseholder £150 as a remedy for the frustration caused by the failings identified.
1. If it has not already done so, the landlord should carry out a formal review of the leaseholder’s contact arrangements, in line with the UCC policy.
2. If it has not already done so in the last 12 months, the landlord should carry out a staff training exercise on the use of the UCC policy.