Central and Cecil Housing Trust (202121654)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202121654

Central and Cecil Housing Trust

17 January 2023

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. Response to concerns raised by the resident about repairs to the bathroom in 2018.
   2. Complaint handling.

Background

2. The resident has had an assured tenancy with the landlord since 1995. The property is a first-floor studio flat in a purpose-built low-level block. The landlord has no vulnerabilities recorded for her.
3. Repairs logs from the landlord indicate reports of leaks from the resident’s shower in August 2016 and March 2017 damaging the communal hallway. A repair was then logged on 2 July 2018, when the resident says the shower tray and floor were removed. Work began on the shower on 10 July 2018, with a dehumidifier being left running beforehand. The resident was unhappy with the delay but was advised that the works were more major than a repair. The resident requested reimbursement for daily gym membership she had paid in order to use a shower. She was told by the landlord that this could not be done but alternative arrangements would be made. There is no evidence this was ever followed up.
4. Following further concerns from the resident, the landlord apologised for the delays and arranged for a new contractor to contact the resident to finish the work on 1 October 2018. The job was finished on 11 October 2018. The landlord has since advised that the resident submitted a complaint on 27 November 2018 and was told a response would be issued by 21 December 2018. When approached by this Service in October 2019, the landlord said it had had no complaint from the resident.
5. The resident made a further complaint to the landlord on 22 September 2020 and detailed delays and problems with the heat, noise and additional electricity cost incurred due to the dehumidifier. She was unhappy about not being put in a guest flat and problems logging the complaint. She said she felt humiliated asking the landlord for shower facilities, was 17 days without the shower and three months with an unsafe bathroom due to holes in the floor and wall.
6. A stage one complaint response on 9 October 2020 apologised for the delay in recognising the formal complaint and found negligence and a lack of quality control in the repairs. The landlord upheld the complaint and offered compensation of £150, which was later increased to £400 to include service breakdown, lack of a shower, cost of the public shower and additional electricity costs. The resident remained unhappy, and a panel hearing was held on 12 April 2021. The panel upheld the complaint on both the repair and complaint handling and increased the compensation offered to £575. This was increased to £625 due to a further delay in the payment being made in April 2022.
7. The resident has told the Ombudsman she is dissatisfied with the level of redress offered by the landlord, which she feels does not reflect the delay, inconvenience and distress she experienced and said she was seeking £1,500. She also said she had had difficulties in raising the complaint with the landlord.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation 

8. The matters complained about took place in 2018 and the formal complaint from the resident was logged in 2020. This would normally make the case outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction as in accordance with paragraph 42 (c) of the Scheme, complaints should be raised within a reasonable time, usually six months, of an event occurring. However further enquiries found that the resident had attempted to make complaints in 2018, which were acknowledged but not logged formally by the landlord at that time. Accordingly, the landlord has treated the complaint as made in time, and this Service has investigated them as such.
9. There is mention in the resident’s email of 24 August 2021 of other complaints regarding disputed rent arrears and a former housing officer, but these have not been brought to this Service. Accordingly, this report has focussed on the bathroom repairs from 2018 and the associated complaint only. It is open to the resident to bring these other complaints to this Service, if she remains dissatisfied, once she has completed the landlord’s formal complaints procedure.

Concerns raised by the resident about repairs to the bathroom in 2018

10. In accordance with the tenancy agreement, the landlord agrees to keep in good repair and proper working order any installation in the flat provided by it for sanitation and for the supply of water including basins, sinks, baths. Information provided by the landlord online says that the landlord manages repairs to the services to properties including water, baths, sinks, heating and hot water. Urgent repairs are defined as materially affecting a resident’s comfort and may be causing some damage to the building fabric. Examples of urgent repairs include minor plumbing leaks which, it says, will be completed within five working days.
11. The landlord’s compensation policy says that compensation may be considered when a repair is not completed on time, the service has not been carried out in line with the landlord’s policy or standard, or a room cannot be used due to lack of repair. It explains that payments of up to £150 can be given in cases of service failure where there has been a high level of disturbance and impact. It adds that the landlord may pay compensation for the loss of a room if the room is unusable for a week or longer.
12. In this instance, there is no dispute by the landlord that the repair was delayed and was initially of a poor standard. The panel hearing, which the resident did not attend, found that there was a lack of quality control regarding the refurbishment of the bathroom and the work was finished to a poor standard. Further, the landlord had failed to offer adequate alternative bathroom facilities, despite the resident requesting this. The resident ended up paying for facilities at the local gym, and the landlord acknowledged that it should have understood the resident’s needs better. The landlord said it recognised the disruption and frustration felt by the resident, and that she had been let down by contractors without notice and left with building materials in the property.
13. This suggests that the landlord took the resident’s concerns on board and was able to recognise where its service had fallen short. The landlord has explained that there were some difficulties contacting the resident to arrange appointments, as she preferred to use email, but could only access this via her local library. This is appreciated, but there is no evidence of the attempts to contact the resident, so this is not considered as mitigating the landlord’s delay in resolving the repair.
14. The issue for this investigation therefore is not whether there were delays and a lack of service as this is not disputed by the landlord, but if the compensation offered was appropriate. In considering this the Ombudsman takes into account whether the landlord’s offer of redress was in line with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles: Be Fair, Put Things Right and Learn from Outcomes as well as our own guidance on remedies.
15. The resident has said that she had to top up her electricity pre-paid meter with £30 as directed by the builder to cover the additional cost of the dehumidifier. She also said she went to the gym to use the shower on one occasion, although did not say how much this cost. The resident acknowledged that the landlord asked for the costs but by this time she was at her friend’s house, where it is assumed she was able to make use of the shower, so she did not progress this. Added to this was the distress and inconvenience of having no shower in the property and the understandable embarrassment the resident has expressed at having to repeatedly discuss this with the landlord staff.
16. In this instance, the panel awarded £575 which was broken down as follows:

62 days for the loss of bathroom at 1/3 of the rent   £318.62

Costs for using the shower elsewhere    £50

Expenses for dehumidifier     £50

Service Failure       £150

Total £568.62 rounded up to      £575  

17. The resident sought compensation for having no shower facilities for 27 days, for a further two months when there was a substandard bathroom, as well as anxiety and stress caused by the situation. In recognition of this, the landlord offered the resident compensation and its apologies. It is noted that the landlord acknowledged the service failure and the lack of communication. It paid a higher sum for the additional heating than was requested, and what is likely to be more than the cost of a single day’s access to the gym facilities. It also calculated the refund of rent for a longer period than the resident had asked. The amounts it offered were well explained, in line with its compensation policy, and broadly in line with what the Ombudsman would expect in these circumstances.
18. The Ombudsman appreciates the particular distress caused by being without a shower during the summer months, particularly with a dehumidifier in the property for several days. However, the sum already awarded in respect of the repair appears reasonable in all the circumstances.

Complaint handling

19. The landlord’s complaints policy says that complaints will be responded to within 10 working days. If not resolved at this stage, the appeal review stage complaint will be responded to within 20 working days.
20. The first stage response acknowledged that the resident’s initial complaint had not been responded to in a timely manner. The landlord has provided evidence that the resident’s first complaint was submitted in November 2018, 23 months before the stage one response. However, the complaint response did not offer an additional sum of compensation for this additional service failure relating to the complaint handling. The final response letter following the panel hearing increased the offer overall to include costs incurred by the resident but did not make a particular award in respect of the excessive delay in relation to the complaint response.
21. No evidence has been presented to indicate the resident chasing the complaint between December 2018 and August 2020, save an enquiry via this Service. It appears that rather than being delayed in the usual sense, this complaint “slipped through the net” and received no attention during this extended time. Further, when asked by the Ombudsman in October 2019, the landlord said it had no complaint for the resident. It later found the earlier communication and provided copies of both the resident’s email and the reply confirming that a response would be made.
22. The landlord was transparent in admitting its error and acknowledging that, while it had not deliberately ignored the initial complaint, this had caused inconvenience and distress to the resident. The landlord said that it had now trained front line staff to ensure communications were logged and complaints dealt with responsibly.
23. That said, the landlord did not offer an additional payment in respect of its service failure around the complaint handling. In effect, the £150 already offered for the repair’s failings would be payable had the complaint been dealt with inside the published timelines, and it was considerably outside of these. It is therefore appropriate that the sum of £150, being the maximum for a service failure, be paid to the resident to reflect the inconvenience and frustration caused by its delay in dealing with her complaint.
24. It is noted that an additional sum of £50 was paid due to the delay in the £575 compensation being paid to the resident. The first evidence seen by this Service that the resident had accepted the compensation was when she submitted her bank details on 5 November 2021. That being the case, the £50 already paid in respect of the delay up to the payment in April 2022 seems reasonable.
25. In summary, this investigation has found that a further £150 should be paid to the resident in respect of the landlord’s complaint handling. The sum of £625 already paid for the repairs and late payment of the compensation is reasonable redress for that element of the complaint.

Determination

26. In accordance with paragraph 53 (b) the member has offered redress to the complainant prior to investigation which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves the complaint about its response to concerns raised by the resident about repairs to her bathroom in 2018.
27. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme there was service failure in respect of the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders

28. The landlord should take the following action with four weeks of the date of this report and provide evidence of this action to the Ombudsman:
    1. Pay the resident compensation of £150 to reflect the impact on her as a result of its complaint handling failures.