Dacorum Borough Council (202121576)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202121576

Dacorum Borough Council

5 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

The complaint is about the landlords handling of:
1. Repairs to the rear-door and kitchen window.
2. Repairs to the front door.
3. The associated complaint.

Jurisdiction.

What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. This is governed by the Housing Ombudsman Scheme. When a complaint is brought to the Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated. After carefully considering all the evidence, in accordance with the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the following aspect of the complaint is outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction: The landlord’s handling of repairs to the front door.
The Ombudsman cannot consider this issue as part of the current complaint investigation. This is in accordance with paragraph 42 (a) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme which states that the Ombudsman will not investigate complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, are made prior to having exhausted a landlord’s complaints procedure unless there is evidence of a complaint handling failure and the Ombudsman is satisfied that the member has not acted within a reasonable timescale.
As this is a separate issue to the complaint raised with the landlord through its complaints process, this is not something on which this Service can adjudicate on at this stage, as the landlord needs to be provided with the opportunity to investigate and respond to this aspect of the complaint first. The resident will need to contact the landlord and, if appropriate, raise a separate complaint to get these matters resolved. If the resident remains dissatisfied once he has received the landlord’s final response to his complaint, he may be able to refer the matter to the Ombudsman for investigation as a separate complaint.

Background

The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord.
The resident has explained that he first reported in 2019 that the rear-door and window in his property had ‘dropped’ to the extent he could see daylight through the gaps. Repair records show that a number of attendances took place to repair these into 2020. On 22 February 2021 the resident contacted the landlord to explain that he had made numerous repair requests and although repairs had been carried out, the problems always recurred within a short period. He therefore asked the landlord to replace the rear-door and window. The resident contacted the landlord about this repair throughout 2021, and the landlord attended the property on at least three occasions (the records are not entirely clear).
The resident raised a formal complaint on 10 October 2021, stating that despite contacting the landlord in February 2021, the repairs remained outstanding. Furthermore, despite being informed his door would be replaced, a contractor who had attended that day had stated that it was able to be repaired. As a resolution, the resident stated that he wanted the rear-door and window to be ‘fixed’.
The resident further contacted the landlord on 12 October 2021 and 3 November 2021, as he had not received a formal response to his complaint. Subsequently, the landlord escalated his complaint on 3 November 2021 as it ‘felt that an independent review would be best’.
The landlord provided its stage two response on 8 December 2021. It stated that repairs to the rear-door and window had been carried out on 1 December 2021. However, its surveyor was investigating reports from the resident that an issue with the rear-door and window remained.
On 9 December 2021, the landlord’s contractor identified that the rear-door and window could not be adequately repaired due to a wall needing to be repaired or replaced, as the bricks had become loose meaning that a ‘good fixing’ could not be secured. Once this had been done, the landlord said it would replace the back door and window due to the challenges it had faced repairing these.
Between 1 February 2022 and 19 May 2022, the resident contacted the landlord on a number of occasions regarding the rear-door and window repairs, with the landlord attending the property on several occasions. The wall was repaired on 19 May 2022, the rear-door was installed on 31 May 2022, and the window was installed on 5 June 2022. However, the rear-door was installed without a cat flap (as had been in place in the original door) and it took a further week to fit one. This was not fitted in line with the manufacturer’s instructions, and was the wrong way round. It took a further week to rectify this.

Assessment and findings

Policies and procedures.

The landlord’s repairs policy states that priority three repairs are those that are non-urgent and where the repair does not cause immediate inconvenience or pose any danger to the resident, but cannot wait for programmed maintenance. These repairs should be completed within 20 working days.
The landlord’s complaints policy states that at stage one of the complaint procedure, a response should be provided within 15 working days. At stage two of the complaint procedure, a response should be provided within 20 working days.

Scope of investigation.

The resident has stated that the repairs to the rear-door and window have been ongoing since 2019. The Ombudsman appreciates that this is a longstanding issue. However, whilst this information provides context to the case, generally the Ombudsman does not consider events that were not brought to the attention of the member as a formal complaint within a reasonable period, which would normally be within six months of the matters arising, in line with paragraph 42 (c) of the Scheme. In this case, the formal complaint was made in October 2021, and for this reason, the Ombudsman’s investigation focuses on events from 2021 onwards.
Generally, the Ombudsman’s investigations consider events up to the point of the final response to the complaint. However this investigation also takes into account events following the final response. This is because the landlord only provided one formal complaint response, which meant that the resident’s concerns were not fully considered in line with the complaint policy, and as the repair was ongoing for sometime after the final response, which is intrinsically linked to the matters being investigated.

Repairs.

In his complaint to this Service, the resident has explained that he had ongoing problems with the rear-door and kitchen window in his property, which took the landlord over 500 days to resolve. He states that the complaint process failed him, and he had to contact senior staff before the matter was finally resolved. He says, ‘I feel that I should be compensated for the stress, frustration, anxiety, the many days of unpaid time off work (before the door was replaced) and worry that I would lose my job, the inconvenience of many phone calls and emails, being passed from one person to another, back to the original person, staff not getting back to me, increase in energy bills (before they went up in April).’
As per the landlord’s policy, when non-urgent repairs are reported it should attend within twenty working days to complete the repair. The evidence provided to this Service shows that the resident reported in February 2021 that the gaps in the rear-door and window had reoccurred and previous repairs had not resolved the matter. However, the landlord did not attend the property until 7 May 2021 where it inspected the rear-door. Therefore, the landlord did not attend the property within its obligations and did not provide the resident with an explanation as to why it had delayed the repair. At this visit it was noted that both the window and rear-door had not been fitted correctly, and required repair.
After an attempted repair on 24 May 2021 which the resident reported did not resolve the issue, he continued to report the repairs in communications with the landlord in June and July 2021, expressing concern that the rear-door and window had still not been fixed, and that he was not being updated. During this time period the landlord did not reattend the property, and there is little indication that timely action was taken to ensure that an effective remedy was found, or that the resident was kept informed. This lack of communication regarding the repair would have caused frustration and inconvenience to the resident; it was clearly a pressing issue that the resident wanted to resolve and the landlord should have communicated about the repair and what it was doing to address this.
The landlord did not visit for an assessment of the repairs to be completed until September 2021. The resident has noted that on 23 November 2021, the landlord stated that the door needed ‘new hinges and packing’; however, the resident informed it that this had already been completed on two separate occasions and proved unsuccessful. Repairs were not attempted on the door until December 2021, but again did not resolve the issue. At this point it had been ten months since the resident had made the landlord aware that the repairs carried out in 2019 and 2020 had not fixed the problem, and asked for a remedy.
The records indicate that it was at the December 2021 visit that the landlord decided to replace the rear-door and window, however there is no evidence that it informed the resident of this decision at the time. Neither is there any indication of the landlord then taking this forward in good time. The resident has explained that ‘out of the blue’ the landlord contacted him on 1 February 2022 to arrange to measure up for a new rear-door and window, which was the first time he was made aware of the plan to carry out this work. He explains that he tried to contact the landlord on several occasions following this for an update, but received no replies. The evidence available does not demonstrate that the resident was kept updated over the following months, and the resident himself reports that he made several contacts in April 2022 to try and obtain information on the repair.
It was not until June 2022 that the work to replace the rear-door and window was complete, 17 months after the resident first contacted the landlord about the issue. Whilst this Service acknowledges that on occasion repairs may take multiple attempts to resolve, the landlord has not provided an explanation for the significant delay in this case. It is acknowledged that on 12 May 2022 the landlord did state that there were delays in installing the door due to a shortage of PVC, which was unavoidable. This explains to some extent the delay in replacing the rear-door and windows after they were measured up in February 2022, but does not account for the year it took to get to that point.
Whilst landlords are entitled to attempt repairs before replacing items such as doors and windows it should also use the contextual background of previous repairs to help guide its next steps on finding a solution for the resident. In this case, the records show that numerous repairs had been attempted prior to 2021 and these had not resolved the issue. The repair records are very brief, and lack detail such as information about when repairs were completed, if the repair was completed, the outcome of the work, and if any further work needed to be arranged. It is unclear why the landlord continued to complete the same or similar repairs within a short period of time, despite the repairs failing.
In addition, the resident reported on two separate occasions that contractors had attended his property unannounced. As per good practice landlords should provide residents at least 24 hours’ notice prior to an appointment.
Overall, the failings in this case led to the resident having to have excessive involvement to try and progress the repairs, time and trouble in doing so, inconvenience, frustration and distress at the delays and lack of communication, and an extended period with inadequately sealed rear-door and window in his home.
To remedy this the landlord should pay the resident £450 compensation in recognition of the impact its failings had. This compensation is in line with the Ombudsman’s Remedies guidance (published on our website). The guidance suggests amounts of over £100 for cases where there has been service failure which adversely affected the resident, but no permanent impact. It should be noted that in general, the Ombudsman does not make orders for compensation to reimburse a resident for their time off work, loss of wages or loss of employment whilst repairs are carried out. However, the £450 does take into account the inconvenience of multiple attendances.
Orders are also made to address the repair and communication issues.

Complaint Handling.

The records show that the landlord did not provide the resident with a formal stage one response to his complaint. This has been evidenced as the landlord stated that the complaint was closed by an employee who ‘does not usually deal with complaints’ and in turn, the ‘manager should have provided the response’. Furthermore, the landlord did not seemingly seek to rectify the mistake it had made in closing down the complaint without a formal stage one response, despite identifying this failure on 12 October 2021, which was 15 working days before the landlord escalated the resident’s complaint to stage two of its process. It is expected that when a landlord identifies a failing in its service, it should act to rectify this mistake promptly; however, the landlord did not seek to rectify its mistake by providing a stage one response. The landlord did not act in line with its complaint policy here meaning that the resident’s complaint was not fully considered.
Compounding this failing, the landlord’s stage two response did not meaningfully engage with the resident’s complaint and did not provide detailed responses to the issues raised. The landlord did not address his concerns about why the repairs had been delayed and why the rear-door and window was not being replaced. The incomplete responses from the landlord would have caused the resident further frustration. The landlord’s responses were also not in line with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (published on our website) which sets out guidance for landlords on how to address complaints. The Code states that each response must confirm the decision on the complaint and the reasons for any decisions it made, the landlord did not complete this at any stage and the landlord’s position remained unclear throughout the complaints process, with the landlord only providing appointment dates and information being relayed from contractors instead of being explored by the landlord itself.
In consideration of the above, the landlord should pay the resident £200 compensation as a remedy to the frustration caused by its poor complaint handling. This is in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance, which suggests awards of £100 and over where the landlord has failed to acknowledge its failings and/or has made no attempt to put things right, but there has been no permanent impact on the resident.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s reports of repairs to the rear-door and window.
In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in its handling of the associated formal complaint.

Orders

Within one month of the date of this report landlord is ordered to:
1. pay the resident £650 compensation comprised of:
  1. £450 compensation as a remedy for the failings in the handling of the repair
  2. £200 compensation as a remedy for the failings in the handling of the formal complaint.
  3. It is the Ombudsman’s position that compensation awarded by this Service should be treated separately from any existing financial arrangements between the landlord and resident and should not be offset against any arrears.
1. Carry out a review of the handling of this repair, identifying ‘what went wrong’, the reasons for the delays and poor communication, and what actions have been/will be taken to avoid a recurrence in the future. A copy of the review should be provided to this Service
2. If it has not already done so in the last 12 months, conduct a staff training exercise to ensure that all relevant staff are able to respond to complaints in line with the landlord’s own complaint handling policy, as well as the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.

Recommendations

It is recommended that the landlord review its record keeping practices, to ensure that repair records provide a reasonable level of detail.