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Notting Hill Genesis (202122700)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202122700

Notting Hill Genesis

03 October 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:
    1. Handling of works to the resident’s bathroom.
    2. Complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord. The property is a flat.
  2. In January 2020 the landlord’s contractor renewed the resident’s bathroom. On 2 February 2020 the resident complained about the completed renewal works, including the landlord’s communication and the behaviour and actions of its contractors. In her view, the bathroom had been left in worse condition than before. She also said that she had not been asked about any vulnerabilities in the household before the work commended and that the contractor had installed a fluorescent light which she could not have due to a neurological condition.
  3. In its stage one complaint response on 23 March 2020, the landlord apologised for its poor communication and the behaviour of its contractors, which it said it would report back to the contractor’s senior management team to monitor.  It explained that it did notify the contractors of any residents with vulnerabilities but that it had no vulnerabilities recorded for the resident’s household. It asked her to contact her housing officer (HO) with that information so it could update its records. It awarded £250 compensation for the stress and inconvenience caused and a £40 decorating voucher. It also agreed to action various remedial works in the bathroom that included installing a close couple toilet, replacing the fluorescent light with an LED version, repairing holes in the wall, overhauling the bathroom door, relocating the wall heater, and replacing the bathroom flooring. It also asked the resident to provide quotes for replacing the flooring in the hallway with a view to either partially or fully reimbursing the cost.
  4. On 24 March 2020, the landlord informed the resident that the agreed works would have to be postponed due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Between July 2020 and December 2020, the resident exchanged a number of emails with the landlord requesting a start date for the work. As she had still not been provided with one by 4 December 2020 she escalated her complaint. In its stage two response, dated 15 January 2021, the landlord apologised for the poor service she had received and said it would “urgently” arrange for the agreed works to be completed, to cover the cost of flooring in the hallway of her flat and also awarded compensation totalling £700 which comprised:
    1. £250 compensation for the delays experienced.
    2. £250 compensation for stress and inconvenience.
    3. £100 compensation for poor communication.
    4. £50 for failure to complete repair.
    5. £50 for the delay in responding to Stage 1 complaint.
  5. During February 2021 the resident exchanged a number of emails with the landlord discussing the details of the repairs. However, on 7 March 2021 the resident advised the landlord that she had been called away due to a family bereavement and so the landlord put the work on hold and awaited further contact from the resident. The resident said she contacted her HO in June 2021 to ask when the repair work could start and was advised that she would be told the plan of action. However, she did not receive a plan.
  6. In September 2021 the resident emailed her new HO twice to ask when the repairs would be carried out. Although the HO responded to the second email on 20 September 2021 to ask for more information about the complaint, the email went to the resident’s junk folder so she did not see it until 24 November 2021. In the meantime, the resident had emailed the landlord’s complaints email address, that she had used to make her original complaint in 2020 to complain about the lack of contact and lack of progress with actioning the repairs. However, as the landlord stopped using that email address in “late October 2021” it said that it did not receive that email.
  7. On 24 November 2021 the resident forwarded the landlord the original complaint findings and agreed actions and asked for it to let her know urgently when the repairs would be carried out and the compensation paid. As she received no response she emailed again on13 December 2021. She spoke to the landlord on 23 December 2021 and it asked for bank details to pay the previously agreed £700 compensation and advised it would chase up repairs with the assets team.
  8. The resident sent the landlord her bank details on 5 January 2022 and asked again for a date for the repairs to be carried out. The resident contacted this Service on 10 January 2022 as the landlord had not agreed a date to carry out the agreed repairs and had not paid the £700 compensation. The outcome she sought was for both to be actioned and for further compensation to be paid for the additional delay in completing the repairs since the stage two response in January 2021.

Assessment and findings

Handling of works to the resident’s bathroom.

  1. When the resident’s bathroom was renewed in January 2020 the landlord or its contractor should have communicated with the resident so that she was given reasonable prior notice of the start date and any other applicable timeframes. The work should have been completed to an appropriate standard, its contractors should have acted appropriately at all times and any vulnerabilities in the household should have been considered. Whilst the Ombudsman has not seen the evidence relating to the landlord’s communication with the resident prior to the works, it is noted that the landlord’s complaint response acknowledged that its communication standards had not been up to the required standard throughout.
  2. Once the resident raised her complaint about the communication, standard of work, damage to her flooring and walls and the behaviour of the contractors, on 2 February 2020, the landlord took appropriate, albeit delayed, steps to investigate the resident’s concerns. This included liaising with the resident, contacting the contractor, inspecting the property and compiling a list of the work that needed to be carried out to raise the standard of works to an acceptable level.
  3. In its stage one complaint response the landlord acted appropriately by acknowledging, and apologising for the poor communication, unacceptable behaviour of its contractors and the standard of the work completed. It’s compensation payment of £250 was reasonable, as it was in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance, which suggests amounts of £50-£250 for service failure, where the impact on the resident may include distress and inconvenience, time and trouble, disappointment, loss of confidence, and delays in getting matters resolved.
  4. The landlord also acted appropriately by agreeing to carry out works to bring the bathroom up to the standard that it should have been completed to originally, awarding a £40 decorating voucher and asking the resident to provide it with a quote for the damaged area of flooring. In addition, its explanation that it had not taken the resident’s vulnerability into account as it had no record of this was reasonable. It also invited the resident to provide this information to the HO so that her records could be updated. However, this Service will be recommending that it reviews its procedure when starting any renewals or other major works, to include a stage where it checks whether the resident’s household has any vulnerabilities that it is not aware of and updates its records accordingly.
  5. Once the UK lockdown was announced in March 2020 it was reasonable that the landlord put the works on hold as there were restrictions on what repair work landlords could carry out. The Ombudsman accepts that member landlord’s experienced an unprecedented impacted on service delivery at this time which in most cases meant a suspension of all non-essential services. However, as the landlord had agreed that it would complete the repairs as soon as restrictions were lifted, when the resident contacted it on 9 July 2020 to ask for a date for the repairs to be carried out, as restrictions had been lifted, it would have been appropriate for the landlord to have arranged for the works to be carried out promptly. However the landlord failed to do so and this resulted in the resident escalating her complaint on 4 December 2020, as despite her emailing the landlord repeatedly for updates for almost 5 months, it had not provided her with a start date for the works.
  6. The landlord has provided this Service with email records from that time period, which show that although the resident’s HO was taking appropriate steps to try to get a start date for the resident, by emailing both the landlord’s assets team and the contractor, there was often a delay in responses from both and sometimes no response at all, resulting in the resident emailing the HO again and the HO having to email them repeatedly. This was further service failure by the landlord in respect of its handling of works to the resident’s bathroom. The only action that appears to have been taken during this period was when one of the contractor’s employees visited the resident’s property on 21 September 2020, but was unable to action anything as two other employees did not turn up.
  7. In the landlord’s stage two complaint response on 15 January 2021 the landlord acted appropriately by apologising for its poor service and delays in carrying out the agreed work. The compensation it offered, which totalled £700 was reasonable, as it was in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance which suggests amounts of £250-£700 for cases where has been considerable service failure or maladministration, examples of which may include a complainant repeatedly having to chase responses and seek correction of mistakes, necessitating unreasonable level of involvement by that complainant, and failure over a considerable period of time to act in accordance with policy – for example to address repairs.
  8. Although the compensation payment was reasonable at the time it was awarded on 15 January 2021, when the resident came to this Service on 10 January 2022 the work had still not been carried out and the compensation payment had not been paid and it is not clear if this has now been paid or the work completed. Therefore, this Service will be ordering the landlord to pay the agreed £700 compensation, if it has not already done so, and to carry out the work if it has not already done so. This Service also considers it appropriate that the landlord should pay additional compensation for the continued delays in carrying out the work since its stage two response, with the level to be calculated at the same rate as the landlord’s previous compensation offer.
  9. In order to determine how much additional compensation should be paid, this Service has used the information provided to it by the landlord and the resident of the events after the stage two response was issued. Emails between the two parties in February 2021 show that they were discussing the finer details of what the agreed work would include. Sadly, on 7 March 2021, the resident advised the landlord that her mother had passed away and as such the resident was not at the property, but would contact the landlord at  a later date. The landlord put the work on hold and awaited further contact from the resident, which this Service considers to be an appropriate response. Any delay in carrying out the repairs would not include this time period, where the landlord was awaiting contact from the resident.
  10. The resident has advised this Service that she contacted her new HO in June 2021 to request a date for the work to start, but that the HO did not provide the information. However, neither the resident or the landlord have provided this Service of any evidence of contact being made in June 2021. The resident has advised this Service that she then emailed a second new HO on 1 September 2021, to request that the agreed actions from her complaint proceed. We have not been provided with this email. However, the resident did provide email correspondence from 20 September 2021, where she emailed her HO with the complaint reference number and stated that this email was a follow up email to one she had sent on 1 September 2021. The HO replied the same day to ask for more detail about what had been agreed. However, this reply went into the resident’s junk folder and she did not find it until 24 November 2021. In the meantime, on 1 November 2021, as the resident assumed she had not received a reply, she emailed the landlord’s complaint email address that she had made her original complaint to in February 2020. However, the landlord has confirmed to this Service that that email address had not been in service since late October 2021 so the landlord never received the email the resident sent on 1 November 2021.
  11. When the resident found the landlord’s 20 September 2021 response in her junk mail on 24 November 2021, she responded and forwarded the details of the original complaint and the landlord’s agreed actions, to her HO. As she failed to get a response she sent a follow-up email on 13 December and on 23 December 2021 the HO agreed to chase up the repairs and to pay the £700 compensation once the resident sent her bank details.
  12. As the Ombudsman does not have any evidence of any contact in June 2021, and only have email evidence of the resident contacting the landlord on 20 September 2021, (which mentioned  a previous email on 1 September 2021), which was then followed by a delay due to the landlord’s response going into the resident’s junk folder which the landlord cannot reasonably be held responsible for, it has not been possible to establish an exact date that the landlord should pay additional compensation from. Therefore, in the absence of an exact date this Service has determined a date to be used that is fair to both parties. This date is 1 October 2021, calculated as a reasonable timeframe after the resident’s established September contact. Any additional compensation for delays will be calculated from this date. However, if the resident is able to provide the landlord with evidence that she requested that the repairs be carried out in June 2021, then the landlord should calculate the additional compensation from the date in June 2021 that the evidence confirms.
  13. In its stage two complaint response the landlord awarded compensation of £250 for delays, £250 for distress and inconvenience and £100 for poor communication and this Service considers those amounts to be reasonable for the delay at that point, which, as the landlord could not be held responsible for the initial delays caused by the UK lockdown, covered the time period of 27 weeks from 9 July 2020 (when the resident contacted the landlord once restrictions were lifted)  till 15 January 2021 (when the landlord issued its stage two response). The £600 compensation divided by the number of weeks delay (27) gives us a weekly figure of the weekly compensation amount of £22.22. Please note that the £50 compensation it awarded for the delay in issuing its stage response has not been included in this calculation as additional compensation for its complaint handling failure will be addressed in the complaint handling section of this report. The £50 compensation it awarded for failure to complete the repair has not been included in the calculation as that was a one-off payment.
  14. Therefore, the amount of additional compensation the landlord is ordered to pay in respect of its service failures relating to how it handled the works to the residents bathroom, including her subsequent reports of dissatisfaction,  are to be calculated at £22.22 a week from 1 October 2021 to the date that the work was completed, unless the resident is able to provide evidence that she requested the work be completed in June 2021 (in which case it should be calculated from that date instead).  

Complaint Handling.

  1. The landlord has a two stage complaints process. Its complaints policy states that at stage one it says it will provide a formal written response within 10 working days and that if it is not able to it will send an action plan detailing the timescales for completing any outstanding actions. At stage two it says it will respond within 20 working days and that in exceptional circumstances if the timescale needs to be changed it will agree a new timescale with the resident. The landlord’s complaint procedure says that it should agree any follow up actions and timescales with the customer and monitor any outstanding actions and keep in contact with customer to make sure they are carried out
  2. When the resident raised a complaint on 2 February 2020, in line with its complaint policy the landlord ought to have provided its stage one response by 16 February 2020. As the landlord failed to do so and failed to acknowledge the complaint until 21 February 2020 there was service failure by the landlord in respect of its complaint handling, Although there was a further delay until 23 March 2020 before it provided its stage one complaint response, this Service considers that further delay to be reasonable as the landlord had taken appropriate steps to advise the resident on 21 February of the actions it was taking to investigate the complaint and kept her updated. The actions it was taking to investigate the complaint were also appropriate and included contacting its senior surveyor, liaising with the contractor and visiting the resident’s property to inspect the issues she had raised.
  3. The landlord’s stage one complaint response was very through and appropriately addressed all of the points the resident had raised, apologised for its (and its contractor’s) failings and appropriately awarded compensation for them. It also acted appropriately by agreeing to carry out work to the bathroom and hallway, offering a £40 decorating voucher and agreeing that it would reimburse towards the cost of reflooring the damaged area of the hallway. However, it would also have been appropriate for the stage one response to have been labelled as such and to have included clear instructions of how to escalate the complaint, as well as including contact details of who would be taking ownership of ensuring the actions were carried out, so that the resident knew who to contact if they were not carried out. The landlord failed to do any of those things in its stage one response and so the resident used her HO as her point of contact, which was not ideal as the HO changed over time. This Service will be recommending that the landlord adds clear guidance of how to escalate a complaint to stage two, to its stage one complaint responses.
  4. Once the resident escalated her complaint on 4 December 2020 the landlord should have provided a stage two complaint response within 20 working days, in line with its complaint policy. However, the stage two response was not provided until 15 January 2021, which was 27 working days after the resident escalated it. In its stage two complaint response the landlord took appropriate steps to apologise for its poor service, acknowledged that it had not carried out the agreed follow-on actions, offered compensation for its failings and agreed to carry out the repairs urgently.” It would have been helpful if it had also provided an explanation for the failings and explained what steps it was taking to ensure the failings would not be repeated in future. Once the stage two complaint response had been issued it should have also ensured that the follow-on actions were actually carried out, including payment of the compensation. When the resident approached this Service in January 2022 the work had still not been carried out and compensation had still not been paid.
  5. To summarise, as the landlord failed to provide either of its complaint responses within the timeframes stated in its complaints policy, failed to explain how to escalate the complaint in its stage one complaint response and failed to ensure that the follow up actions, including payment of compensation were carried out, there was maladministration by the landlord in respect of its complaint handling. It is noted that the landlord awarded £50 compensation in its stage two complaint response for its delay in issuing its stage one response.
  6. This Service considers that additional compensation of £150 would be reasonable and proportionate for the additional failings by the landlord in respect of its complaint handling. This is in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance which suggests awards of £50-£250 for cases where the impact to the resident can include distress and inconvenience, time and trouble, disappointment, loss of confidence, and delays in getting matters resolved. The delays in carrying out the work and the impact of that on the resident have already been addressed in the part of this report that refers to the landlord’s handling of works to the resident’s bathroom.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in respect of its handling of works to the resident’s bathroom.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in respect of its complaint handling.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. Within four weeks of the date of this letter the landlord is ordered to:
    1. Carry out the agreed work to the bathroom and pay the £700 previously agreed compensation, if it has not already done so.
    2. Pay an additional £150 compensation in respect of its maladministration in complaint handling.
  2. Either within four weeks of the date of this letter or within four weeks of it completing the agreed works to the bathroom, the landlord to pay additional compensation for its service failures in respect of its handling of works to the resident’s bathroom at the rate of £22.22 per week from 1 October 2021 to the date the repairs were completed. Unless the resident is able to provide evidence to the landlord that she requested this work to be completed in June 2021, in which case it should calculate the compensation from that date.
  3. In respect of the above order, the landlord to provide the resident (and this Service), with a clear breakdown of how the compensation has been calculated, including relevant dates.

Recommendations

  1. The landlord is recommended to ensure that complaint responses include clear guidance of how to escalate a complaint to the next stage of its process.
  2. The landlord is recommended to review its procedure when arranging planned works such as bathroom renewals, with a view to including a stage where it checks whether the resident’s household has any vulnerabilities that it is not aware of, and updates its records accordingly.