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London Borough of Hackney (202201032)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202201032

London Borough of Hackney

15 September 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 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 resident’s reports of the loss of his heating and hot water.

Background

  1. The resident is a tenant of the landlord of a flat, and he reports that he is vulnerable and has medical conditions, having had brain surgery due to a stroke.
  2. The resident reports that he had major surgery for his conditions in January 2022. On 22 January 2022, he advised the landlord that he had no heating or hot water in his property. It attended the property on 28 January 2022 and found a fault with his boiler, but it was unable to fix this. The landlord advised that it would re-attend with replacement parts, but it then missed two appointments to repair the boiler on 30 January and 2 February 2022. Subsequently, the resident made a stage one complaint about this on 3 February 2022, while also complaining about being without heating and hot water since reporting the fault, as he urgently needed a warm home for his health conditions.
  3. On 28 February 2022, the landlord contacted the resident and apologised for the delays and a missed appointment in repairing the fault with his boiler. Although it explained that it had not attended because the replacement parts had not arrived, it acknowledged that it should have kept him updated on this. The landlord advised that, once repairs were complete, it would apologise in full and offer the resident compensation for the delays and inconvenience with it seeking the parts that day and alternative options if there were further delays.
  4. The landlord then installed a temporary hot water cylinder in the resident’s property on 5 March 2022, as it was due to take up to two weeks for a new unit to be delivered for this. In its subsequent stage one complaint response on 11 March 2022, it explained that this would remain in place until a new heating unit could be installed that it had authorised to be installed, apologising for its lack of communication and for not responding to this quickly enough.
  5. However, the new unit did not arrive as scheduled, and the resident therefore escalated his complaint on 14 April 2022. He advised the landlord that he was still without any permanent heating in his property and had to resort to using an electric fan heater that was expensive to run to heat his property. The resident was also unhappy with the delays and that appointments had been missed.
  6. The landlord responded to the resident on 9 May 2022 in its final stage complaint response. It apologised for the repair delay and explained that this was caused by his boiler being a specialist unit with a significant waiting period for replacement parts. The landlord confirmed that the new unit had been installed on 6 May 2022. It offered £300 total compensation to the resident in recognition of the 15-week repair delay with £150, the two missed appointments with £50, and £100 for his time and trouble in trying to contact it.
  7. The resident was not happy with this resolution, complaining to this Service of the significant delays, his increased electricity bills due to the electric fan heater which had not been included in the compensation offer, and the major surgery impacted by the handling of his loss of heating and hot water. Lastly, he also had to seek the assistance of his occupational therapist, local councillor and the mayor’s office in order to progress the matter by chasing the landlord for the repairs, as well as doing so himself. The resident therefore wanted an increase in the compensation offered by it.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The Ombudsman, under the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, cannot investigate complaints that concern matters where the resident is seeking an outcome that is not within the Ombudsman’s authority to provide. The resident has complained about the effect of the loss of the heating and hot water upon his ill-health, but this is not something that we can consider as we do not have the authority to determine liability or award damages for ill-health in the way that a court or insurer might, and so this is outside the scope of this investigation. However, we can look at whether the landlord’s response to his reports about his vulnerability caused him distress and inconvenience, which is therefore considered below.


The landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of the loss of his heating and hot water

  1. Under the resident’s tenancy conditions, it is the landlord’s responsibility to repair and keep in proper working order the systems in his home for heating rooms and providing hot water, i.e. his boiler. Its website confirms that an emergency repair is to make sure that there is no danger to the resident that should be attended within 24 hours. If the repair cannot be made, the landlord should give the resident a follow-up visit for the repair to be completed.
  2. The repair to fix the resident’s loss of heating and hot water should have been designated by the landlord as an emergency repair under its website, as this was necessary to ensure that there was no danger to him, especially due to the fault taking place during winter and his vulnerabilities. He reported the fault to it on 22 January 2022, and it attended this on 28 January 2022. This was a failure to meet the landlord’s website’s emergency repair response time obligation to attend within 24 hours, as it should have attended this by 23 January 2022 instead.
  3. The landlord did not dispute the fact that it then failed to attend two appointments to repair the resident’s boiler on 30 January and 2 February 2022. Nor did it dispute the fact that there was subsequently a further 15–week delay in it fixing his heating and hot water until 6 May 2022. The landlord acknowledged the time and trouble that the resident had gone through in order to contact it to try and get the issues resolved. It therefore awarded him £300 compensation for all of these failings on its part, under its complaints compensation guidance.
  4. This included £100 compensation for the resident’s time and trouble, under section 2.23 of the complaints compensation guidance, where compensation from £100 is recommended where a fault by the landlord has taken him a great deal of time and effort to challenge a decision which was ultimately found in his favour. £150 compensation was awarded for the 15-week repair delay, under section 10 of the guidance, where repairs that take an unreasonable time to complete due to avoidable delays are recommended to be awarded £10 per week for the impact on him. £50 compensation was also awarded for the landlord’s two missed appointments, under section 12 of its guidance, where £25 compensation is recommended to be awarded for a single missed appointment.
  5. Therefore, in relation to the resident’s time and trouble, the length of the repair delay that he experienced and the missed appointments, the landlord acted appropriately by offering the resident an amount of compensation that was in line with its complaints compensation guidance’s recommendations. This was also in accordance with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance’s recommendations of compensation for such failings from £50 and £250, and so this was proportionate to put these issues right.
  6. However, when the resident initially reported the fault with his heating and hot water, the landlord should have assessed what impact there could have been on his ill-health as someone who was vulnerable and had just had major surgery. He had advised it of this, including on 3 February 2022, and it should have assessed any risk of harm to him going forward until repairs were started and completed, especially as the fault took place during winter.
  7. The landlord should have also investigated whether or not there was a need to decant the resident to alternative temporary accommodation because of his vulnerabilities, while he was without heating and hot water at his property, and/or provide him with temporary hot water prior to 5 March 2022 and an electric fan heater at an earlier date. This is because he was worried about the impact of this on his ill-health, and he advised that he urgently needed a warm home for his health conditions, and that his occupational therapist, local councillor and the mayor’s office had also contacted the landlord about this to chase it for the repairs, as well as doing so himself. However, these failures to consider decanting the resident and/or to provide him with temporary hot water and heating sooner were not acknowledged by the landlord.
  8. Therefore, the landlord has been ordered below to pay the resident an additional £250 compensation, including £100 in line with section 2.2.1 of its complaints compensation guidance for his distress from its above failings, where compensation from £100 is recommended for such distress. The remaining £150 ordered includes compensation at the same rate as the £10 per week that it awarded him under the guidance for its 15-week repair delay, which is for it failing to assess any potential risk of harm to him during this period, under section 2.2.2 of its guidance.
  9. This is as a result of the resident being a vulnerable person who had just had an operation and was without heating and hot water in winter, and for the landlord failing to assess whether he should have been decanted into alternative temporary accommodation for the duration of the repairs, or given temporary hot water and heating sooner.
  10. The landlord also failed to acknowledge the resident’s concerns to it, including on 14 April 2022, about his increased electricity bill occurring from his use of an electric fan heater to heat his property while he was without the use of his boiler. It could have instead asked him for proof of his increased bills as evidence of his claim for it to consider reimbursing him for these. The resident was entitled to make a claim for any such quantifiable financial loss from a failure in service delivery under section 2.1 of the landlord’s complaints compensation guidance, for example, for the refund of reasonable avoidable expenses, as stated in the guidance.
  11. The resident should therefore have been advised of this by the landlord and the relevant details provided to him by it in order for him to make a claim to it for his increased electricity bill to be reimbursed. Additionally, he should also have been provided with details of its insurance section, in order to enable him to make a liability insurance claim to its insurers, for any impact on his ill-health and any other damages resulting from his loss of use of his heating and hot water, given that he complained that he experienced this.
  12. The total amount of £550 compensation ordered below, including the £300 compensation previously awarded by the landlord, is also in line with Ombudsman’s remedies guidance’s recommendation for compensation from £250. This is where there has been failure over a considerable period of time to act in accordance with policy including to address repairs, the resident repeatedly having to chase responses and seek the correction of mistakes, and it failing to address all relevant aspects of his complaint. This amount is therefore appropriate because of the landlord’s failings in these areas that it did not acknowledge or remedy, and so this and the other orders and recommendation below are necessary to put things right for him.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s reports of the loss of his heating and hot water.

Orders and recommendation

  1. The landlord is ordered to:
    1. Pay the resident the £300 compensation that it previously awarded him within four weeks, if this has not been paid to him already.
    2. Pay the resident an additional £250 compensation within four weeks in recognition of any distress that he experienced, its failure to assess any risk of potential harm to him, and it not considering temporarily decanting him or providing him with temporary heating and hot water sooner.
    3. Contact the resident within four weeks to take his claim for his additional electricity costs due to his use of an electric fan heater to heat his property while he was without heating for it to consider and respond to.
    4. Give the resident details within four weeks to enable him to make a liability insurance claim to its insurance section for his ill-health and any other damages that he incurred as a result of his lack of heating and hot water.
  2. It is recommended that the landlord review its staff’s training needs with regard to their application of its policies and procedures on urgently restoring or providing alternatives to essential services to vulnerable residents in winter, and on compensating them for the loss of these.
  3. The landlord shall contact this Service within four weeks to confirm that it has complied with the above orders, and whether it will follow the above recommendation.