Haringey London Borough Council (202201601)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202201601

Haringey Council

9 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 handling of the replacement of the resident’s back door. 

Background

2. The resident is a tenant of the landlord and occupies a house (the property). There are mental and physical health vulnerabilities present in the household which the landlord was aware of.
3. The resident emailed the landlord on 22 December 2021 to report that she was experiencing a “significant amount of draft” which was coming in from “mostly the door”. She said that the door had been inspected twice previously and its contractor had previously found that the door was buckled, which needed assessing by a surveyor. The resident said that she had not received any communication since then about the door, despite her attempts to chase the repair, and her living room and kitchen were “freezing”.
4. The landlord responded to the resident at stage one of its complaints procedure on 18 January 2022. It said that its previous inspections had not found that the door needed replacement and it would investigate the source of the draughts before updating her. The resident escalated the complaint later that day highlighting that the landlord had already carried out historical inspections and should have raised the matter to a surveyor. She disputed that the door replacement had been deemed unnecessary, asserting that she had been told otherwise.
5. The resident received a repair visit in the interim and she raised her dissatisfaction with this to the landlord on 28 January 2022 as the operative sent the wrong trade for the repair. It apologised for this in its final stage complaint response on 18 February 2022, explaining that it had assumed her door was timber when it was in fact UPVC. The landlord confirmed that the replacement of the back door had been authorised and this had a target date of 18 March 2022 for completion.
6. The resident subsequently chased the landlord for updates on the replacement of the back door on several occasions between 21 February and 22 April 2022 before bringing the complaint to the attention of the Ombudsman on 28 June 2022. She informed this Service that, despite her repeated contact, the back door had not been replaced. The resident wanted the landlord to acknowledge its failures in communicating about, and handling, her back-door replacement.

Assessment and findings

7. There was evidence that the resident reported defects with her back door in March 2020 to the landlord. In her email on 22 December 2021, she referred to inspections which occurred prior to the Covid19 pandemic which found that the back door required further assessment by a surveyor. Given the historical nature of these events, and that there was significant interval between these and her contact on 22 December 2021, these historical events will not be considered in this investigation. This investigation will focus instead on the landlord’s response to her recent repair report on 22 December 2021.
8. The resident’s tenancy agreement with the landlord confirms that it is responsible for the repair and maintenance of the structure of the property which includes the external doors. Its repairs handbook for residents confirms that non-emergency repairs – those which do not put a person or property at risk – are categorised as ‘agreed appointment’ repairs. For these repairs the landlord is to offer an appointment to suit the resident which it can keep within 28 days.
9. When a landlord receives a report of a defect, its first action should be to inspect the issue, particularly when there is an indication of a longstanding or recurrent problem. However, there was no evidence of it carrying out any inspection of the back door. An inspection would have identified that the back door was UPVC, not timber, and enabled it to dispatch the appropriate tradesperson to the property on 25 January 2022. This omission, therefore, led to a delay in resolving the repair and additional inconvenience for the resident. Furthermore, the lack of an inspection meant that the cause of the reported draughts, and resultant coldness in the property, remained unidentified.
10. A landlord must ensure that its properties meet the Decent Home Standard, a criterion of which is that the property provides a reasonable degree of thermal comfort. It should, therefore, have made efforts to satisfy itself that the property met this criterion. Consequently, it was unreasonable for the landlord not to carry out an inspection of the property after the resident’s report of her living room and kitchen being “freezing”. This was a failure on its part, given that it had agreed to carry out an investigation of the draughts in the property as its proposed resolution to the complaint in its stage one response.
11. The landlord confirmed, in its final stage complaint response on 18 February 2022, that it would replace the resident’s back-door, noting that she had been previously informed about this. It was a further failure by the landlord that there was no evidence of it keeping this agreement, nor of it informing the resident of any change to this. This was evident from the resident chasing the landlord for updates on the replacement of the door on 21 and 23 February, 18 and 30 March, 6,11, 19 and 22 April 2022.
12. The landlord provided evidence of its contractor attending the property on 1 March 2022 to overhaul and seal gaps in the door. It advised the Ombudsman on 20 July 2022 that it completed works to the door on 1 March 2022 and that its inspection of the door found that no replacement was needed, only works to maintain the door. This was inconsistent with the information provided to the resident, as the landlord agreed to chase the replacement of the back door on 21 March 2022, after the work done on the door on 1 March 2022, and there was no evidence of it advising her that the replacement was not necessary.
13. It may be reasonable for a landlord to postpone replacement of an item which it can still economically repair. A landlord has a duty to ensure that it makes the best use of its resources for the benefit of all its tenants. However, it would be expected to inform the resident of any change to proposed repairs and confirm when it considered that work was completed, in order to manage the resident’s expectations. There was no evidence that the landlord did this, which led to excessive effort on the resident’s behalf to pursue a repair which it considered to be complete.
14. In conclusion the landlord exhibited several failings in the handling of this repair:
    1. There was no evidence that it carried out an investigation into the draughts and coldness reported by the resident, as proposed in its stage one complaint response.
    2. It did not follow through with its agreement to replace the back door.
    3. It did not communicate with the resident to confirm that it later decided that the door did not require replacement.
15. The above failures were likely to have led to excessive expenditure of effort by the resident to pursue her repair, left her uncertain as to what work she could expect, and left her original report of her experiencing draughts and coldness in the property unresolved. This is because there was no evidence of any substantial investigation or proposed remedy to this.
16. Therefore, the landlord will be ordered to carry out an inspection of the property, including the back door, to identify the source of the draughts and carry out remedial work as appropriate. It should provide written confirmation to the resident of what work it will undertake following this inspection. The landlord should also pay compensation of £300 to the resident for the detriment caused to her by its inconsistent response to her repair report and failure to follow through with the resolution provided in its complaint response.
17. The above award of compensation is in accordance with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance, available to view online, which provides for compensation of £250 to £700 for instances of failure involving a resident repeatedly having to chase responses and seek correction of mistakes, necessitating unreasonable level of involvement by that complainant.

Determination

18. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in its handling of the replacement of the resident’s back door.

Orders

19. Within four weeks the landlord should confirm to the Ombudsman it has complied with the following orders:
    1. Arrange to inspect the resident’s property to identify any remedial works that are its responsibility to complete.
    2. Provide the resident with written confirmation of what it will do, and when, to address any defects identified in the above inspection.
    3. Pay the resident £300 compensation for its failures in the handling of the replacement of her back door.

Recommendations

20. The landlord should:
    1. Review its procedures for keeping residents updated about repairs to ensure they are aware of progress and manage their expectations.
    2. Review its procedures for the management of repairs to ensure these are carried out in a timely manner and minimise the effort required of residents to progress these.