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Haringey Council (202107523)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202107523

Haringey Council

23 August 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 resident’s reports of damp and mould at the property, and its handling of associated repairs.

Background

  1. The resident has been the landlord’s tenant since March 2014, occupying the 2-bedroom house with her 2 sons then aged 6 and 10. The first evidence provided of her raising damp issues with the landlord, is in 2016, but she says the issue was present when she moved in. The tenancy commenced on an introductory tenancy in 2014 and has since progressed to a secure tenancy.
  2. The resident submitted her complaint to the landlord on 26 October 2020, having requested a damp survey on 26 November 2019. She said that the survey had been carried out in February 2020 but that she had heard nothing since.
  3. On 9 November 2020, the landlord upheld the resident’s stage 1 complaint. It apologised, cited the covid lockdown in partial mitigation and promised swift resolution by scheduling outstanding remedial works. These were listed in detail, and included removing and replacing internal plaster, mould-washing, filling an external wall crack, easing and adjusting a window and repainting to make good after these works. A skirting board was to be removed and refitted, and external foliage implied to be obscuring or affecting the wall crack was to be removed. The landlord confirmed in its complaint response that these works were raised by the surveyor in February 2020, but acknowledged and apologised that this had not previously been communicated to the resident. The landlord promised further contact by 13 November to arrange the works.
  4. The complaint was escalated in December 2020 following no further progression on the case. A further survey then took place on 2 February 2021, which reconfirmed the required works, which were scheduled to commence on 18 February 2021. This did not happen however and the landlord issued its final response on the same date. The final response again accepted service failure and again apologised. This time, the landlord offered compensation for delay under its compensation policy, totalling £166.00. The landlord also requested the resident’s availability for a further surveyor visit which took place on 26 February 2021. Following this survey a works order was raised for the required works to be “restarted”.
  5. On 12 May 2021 the resident contacted the landlord to chase for an update on the works. Receiving no response, she brought her complaint to the Ombudsman (25 June 2021). In her complaint to the Ombudsman, the resident stated not only that these works remained outstanding but also that she had suffered damage to personal belongings, that her health had suffered and that a planned mutual exchange had fallen through, because of the damp and mould.
  6. The landlord reported to this Service, in April 2022 that works had completed earlier that month (14 April 2022), with the exception of some re-decoration works.

Assessment and findings

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns about damp and mould

  1. The report does not consider matters in relation to the mutual exchange or to damp-related personal property damage or health issues, as these were not raised in the resident’s complaint to the landlord. Additionally, health issues are not described or evidenced, and do not in any case fall within the Housing Ombudsman’s jurisdiction or competence.
  2. The landlord, in responding to the Ombudsman, has failed to provide as requested, either notes or copies of internal phone calls or other communications, or a copy of the resident’s tenancy agreement, merely providing a front page without any terms and conditions. The report will return later to the lack of copies or notes of internal communications. As the landlord has accepted from the outset that the work in question was both necessary, and its responsibility, it has not been necessary to consider the tenancy terms (or indeed the statutory framework); but failure to provide the tenancy agreement on request is still disappointing and unhelpful.
  3. While the complaint refers to earlier damp reports noted for context, this report concentrates on the history only from 26 November 2019, when the resident made the request that started the sequence events ending in her present complaint.
  4. It is unnecessary to assess whether events up to and including the landlord’s final response, amounted to service failure, because to the landlord’s credit, it has accepted that it did. Detailed findings around those failures are therefore set out below only in order to inform any redress decision, rather than to revisit that question.
  5. The landlord had a responsibility to consider the well-being of its tenants, staff and contractors when making decisions about repairs during the corona virus pandemic. It was reasonable to reduce potential exposure to harm from the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. However, the resident had requested a visit to assess the damp problem the previous November, no surveyor visited until February 2020 and the landlord accepts in its stage 1 response that the subsequent lack of action could not be entirely excused by the pandemic. Indeed, since its stage 1 complaint response expressly promises swift scheduling of the works with attendance by contractors wearing “PPE”, it is clear that the landlord accepted that these works should not be further postponed because of the pandemic. 
  6. To whatever extent the delays were nevertheless explained or excused by the landlord’s pandemic response, it entirely failed at any time to communicate this to the resident. The landlord accepts in its stage 2 final response, that it failed in proper communication with the resident as well as in unacceptable delays to necessary works.
  7. The landlord confirmed, in both its communication to the resident and on its own system notes, that the works required had been identified by the surveyor at his first visit on 3 February 2020. However, it offered no explanation for arranging two further surveyor visits – on and 2 February and 26 February 2021 – instead of appointments to actually execute the works its surveyor had raised. The landlord’s records of the surveyor’s reports from those further visits give no indication that the surveyor found that they were necessary, merely recording his finding that works he had previously ordered had not been done. Nor does the landlord’s stage 2 and final response to the resident on 18 February 2021, which asks the resident to provide availability for a further surveyor visit February, suggest any explanation.
  8. In the absence of any copies of internal written communications, or notes made at the time of any internal calls or conversations, there is no evidence that the landlord had any good reason for the repeated surveyor visits simply to reconfirm what was already known after the first visit. Equally, the absence of such records means there is no evidence explaining failures to carry out works after the surveys, or for other failures identified.
  9. The landlord’s reply to the Housing Ombudsman’s request for these documents simply reads “N/A”, presumably for “not applicable”. If the landlord meant that none exist, this must mean that, even after the case was identified as problematic by the complaint, either no proper records were kept, or such communication simply did not happen, that individuals merely noted the repair log and presumed others would read it and act on those notes. The lack of records here indicate a record keeping concern on this case that has contributed to the landlord’s overall failures in resolving the issues at the property.
  10. The landlord has suggested no reason for asking the resident, on 18 September 2021, to provide further photographs of the damp and mould she complained of, when these had been requested and immediately provided as long ago as 3 December 2019, and the landlord’s records show that it was aware works to remedy the issue had since been found necessary but not completed.
  11. The landlord accepted, in its reply to the Ombudsman on 28 April 2022, that steps promised to remedy the issue had not been completed between its own stage 2 response on 18 February 2021, and the resident’s complaint to the Ombudsman on 25 June 2021. It also accepted that substantial parts were not completed until April 2022, with some making-good remaining outstanding. No explanation has been provided for this, either in the landlord’s response to the Ombudsman or in its records.
  12. Finally as to the repair process itself, the landlord’s response to the Ombudsman denies missing any appointments, but its own records contradict this, confirming missed appointments on 18 February 2021 covered in paragraph 7 above, and again on 27 October 2021 when it records that an operative was ill and it was unable to reach the resident by phone to inform her. The log records only one call attempt.

The landlord’s application of its Compensation Policy & Procedure

  1. The policy is expressed as discretionary. Discretion should be exercised in a fair, rational, consistent and transparent way. The landlord accepted at its stage 2 response, that the discretion arose and should be exercised in this case. Detailed assessment of whether compensation should have been paid, is therefore omitted from the report. It is sufficient to say that several factors at rule 4 of the policy, stated as reasons why it may be right to pay compensation, clearly applied to a significant degree.  
  1. The landlord’s stage 2 final response offered a total of £166.00 compensation, calculated in line with the appendix to its Compensation Procedure, as:

a.            a one-off payment of £10;

b.            3 weeks delay at £2 per day, which was incorrectly stated as £36 instead of the correct £42; and

c.            12 weeks further delay “since stage one complaint” at £10 per week and sub-totalling £120.

  1. In fact, at the date of the stage 2 response it had been over 16 weeks since the stage one complaint, and not 12. So even if it had been correct to count the initial 3 weeks at £2 per day only from the date of the complaint, the additional £10 per week after that, should still at the time of the stage 2 complaint have been awarded for 13 weeks rather than 12, even if rounding the additional part week down instead of up.
  2. In fact, there is no reason explained for awarding this compensation only from the date of the stage one complaint.
  3. There is an apparent disconnect between the repair types described in the Repairs Handbook and in the Compensation Procedure. These are categorised at page 12 the Handbook as “(i) Out of Hours; (ii) Emergency; (iii) Agreed Appointment; and (iv) “Planned”. The Compensation Procedure at its appendix at page 7, instead categorises them as “(i) Emergency; and (ii) to (iv) respectively Priorities A to C”.  The Handbook states “plastering large areas” – a key element of the repairs in this case – as an example of “planned” repairs, and more minor plastering as “agreed appointment” repairs. Mould-washing is not mentioned. But the landlord has accepted in its application of the compensation procedure, that the appropriate categorisation for compensation purposes was “Priority A”.
  1. A fair balance between landlord and resident in this case (giving benefit of the doubt to the landlord as to whether the plastering works were major or minor where its own acceptance of “Priority A” may suggest the former), will therefore accept the relevant work as “planned” for purposes of assessing delay but as “Priority A” for purposes of placing monetary value on the delay. 
  2. Page 11 of the Repairs handbook says that a visit to assess planned works will happen within 28 days of the resident’s initial report. The initial report and request were made on 26 November 2019, so it should have happened no later than 24 December 2019, and in all the circumstances it is arguable that compensation should have run from then. In fairness to the landlord taking into account the need for time to actually carry out works then identified, the intervening holiday period it may perhaps have been fair to allow a further 28 days after that. Compensation according to the landlord’s own policy should therefore have been calculated to run from no later than 21 January 2020.
  3. Having accepted that compensation was payable for the delays set out in the stage 2 response, the landlord calculated compensation up to the date of that response.  Knowing that those delays continued and no completion date for the works was yet known, it made no provision, in that response, for further compensation to continue until the date of completion, and did not even consider whether that might be appropriate.
  4. Compensation offered at the time of the stage 2 response should, in line with the policy appendix at page 6, have considered an element for the missed appointment the day it was written, but the Ombudsman acknowledges that this omission may have happened because the author was not yet aware of it.
  1. In line with the policy appendix at page 6, where it is accepted by the landlord that its failure to provide the service due, was exacerbated by serious communication failure, compensation should also have been considered for failures to respond to correspondence within a reasonable time or at all, or to provide follow-up replies as promised.
  2. The landlord appears to have applied its discretion as to compensation arbitrarily, with no explanation for the limits applied as to dates compensation was offered from and to, and neither explanation for elements not included, nor evidence that they were considered. It has then miscalculated as described above, to make an incorrect offer to the resident’s detriment, even based on the dates and elements it said were included.
  3. In all the circumstances of the case, the Ombudsman considers it reasonable and proportionate for the landlord to pay compensation of £1292, broken down as follows:

a.      £10.00 one-off delay payment;

b.      £42.00 being £2 per day delay payment for the first three weeks from 21 January 2020;

c.      £1210.00 being £10 per week delay payment for 121 weeks from 11 February 2020 until 9 June 2022, being the date by which it told the Ombudsman final outstanding works would be complete;

d.      £30.00 being £15.00 for each of two missed appointments, one before and one after its final response to the resident.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of damp and mould in the property.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. The landlord to pay the resident £1292 in compensation, within four weeks of this report, ensuring that this Service is provided with evidence of compliance by the same date. This amount to be inclusive of any compensation already paid on the case.
  2. It is ordered that the landlord within 28 days confirms to the Ombudsman whether it completed final making good works by 9 June 2022. If these works have not completed, the landlord to consider further compensation payments of £10 per week until their completion.

Recommendations

  1. It is recommended that the landlord confirm to the resident whether its surveyor identified any need for further or different ventilation at the property.
  2. It is recommended that the landlord review its Repairs Handbook and its Compensation Policy with a view to standardising its categorisation of types of repairs to be consistent across both documents.