Walsall Housing Group Limited (202125063)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202125063

Walsall Housing Group Limited

26 September 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 repair and replacement of the resident’s bathroom radiator.

Background

2. The resident is a tenant of the landlord.
3. In October 2020, the resident reported that his bathroom radiator needed repairing to the landlord. The landlord inspected the radiator and put in a repair order for it to be replaced. The resident explained in his later complaint that he was told the repair would take two weeks.
4. There is no evidence of any further contact between the resident and landlord, or repair activity, until the resident contacted the landlord in September 2021, reporting that his radiator was yet to be replaced. The landlord responded by inspecting the radiator on 15 November 2021 and replacing it on 2 December 2021. On the same day as the replacement the resident made a complaint about the delay, stating that he wanted an explanation as to why it had occurred, and compensation for the extra expense he had incurred running other radiators to heat the bathroom. He also wanted compensation for the stress and inconvenience of the ongoing issue. He explained that his partner had multiple health problems and disabilities which had caused her to be more affected by the lack of heating. The landlord responded to the complaint, explaining that the pandemic had resulted in delays across all of its services, and that it had recruited extra staff to help. It apologised for the delay completing the repair, which it said it had done on 2 December 2021, but did not uphold the complaint because it had completed the repair in “a timely manner” from when the resident had chased the matter up on 30 September 2021. The landlord highlighted that it encouraged residents to get in contact for repair updates.
5. The resident remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response, stating that as the landlord had agreed that the service had been poor, he should have been compensated accordingly. He asked to escalate his complaint.
6. The landlord’s documents show that the situation was discussed internally following receipt of the resident’s escalated complaint. The documents state that due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the national lockdown that occurred in November of 2021, the landlord cancelled all but urgent repairs for health and safety reasons. A message was placed on its website explaining this. The landlord made a business decision not to contact its individual tenants with outstanding repairs due to the lack of available staff at the time, and that “the onus [was] on customers to call back if they deemed it was urgent enough.”
7. The landlord declined the resident’s request to escalate his complaint. It explained that as it had already addressed each of the issues in its first response, and there was no new information to investigate or discuss, there were no grounds to escalate further.
8. In his complaint to this Service the resident explained that he wanted an apology from the landlord, as well as compensation for the added expense, stress and inconvenience that the delay had caused.

Assessment and findings

9. The landlord’s repairs policy confirms that it is responsible for repairing the property, including the installations that supply the space heating. Its policy states that routine repairs (which do not cause immediate inconvenience) will be completed within a maximum of one month.
10. There is no doubt that the covid lockdowns in 2020 heavily impacted on most landlords’ ability to meet their repair obligations. In this case the landlord’s internal documents show that in November 2020, very shortly after the resident reported the radiator repair, the new lockdown impacted on the landlord to such an extent that it felt it needed to cancel all but the most urgent outstanding repair jobs. It said that it placed a message on its website explaining this. We have not seen evidence of this message for this investigation, but have no reason to doubt the landlord’s recollections. However, there is no evidence indicating that it considered or made any other effort to communicate the cancellations to those affected, and, indeed, its documents state that it left it to its tenants to make contact again to chase their outstanding repairs. There were certainly other channels by which it could at least consider doing so, such as mass email or letter drops, which, if not possible during the actual November lockdown, could or should have been at least considered after the lockdown was lifted at the start of December 2020. The landlord’s decision to cancel almost all its repairs was reasonable, in the specific circumstances. Relying only on a message posted to the website, and not considering other ways to update affected tenants, including the resident, either during the lockdown or soon after when the situation started to become better, was not reasonable by any applicable standard.
11. Notwithstanding the landlord’s poor communication, it is not clear why the resident waited such an extensively long time before chasing the matter, especially as he had explained he had been told the repair would only take around two weeks. In his complaint to the landlord the resident explained how he and his family had been affected by the matter, and sought compensation for “the stress and extra expense I’ve had to go through for 14 months.” It is already clear that that the landlord cancelled the repair work, and did not inform the resident, but any tenant experiencing unresolved repair issues would usually be expected to follow the matter up in a realistic timeframe of a few weeks to a month, especially when the repair is an important one. Accordingly, holding the landlord responsible for the whole of the 14 month delay would not be reasonable.
12. In the landlord’s complaint response it said the repair had been delayed by covid, and that it had recruited extra staff to help deal with “all of the work that was stopped during the second national lockdown which came into force in England on 5 November 2020.” However, that was not an accurate explanation. The landlord’s documents show that the resident’s repair had been cancelled, not delayed. The complaint response makes no reference to the true situation. Following from that it was unreasonable not to escalate his complaint, because an inaccurate explanation had been provided, and a further consideration would have hopefully identified and corrected that.
13. In its complaint response the landlord explained that, following the resident’s contact on 30 September 2021, the radiator was repaired by 2 December 2021, in a “timely manner”. That was over two months to complete the repair, yet the landlord’s published timescale is a maximum of one month. It is not clear, therefore, how the landlord came to that conclusion. In the absence of any evidence explaining the extra month, the time taken to complete the repair was not timely, and this should have been acknowledged and remedied in the complaint, which is something else an escalated investigation would likely have addressed.
14. Overall, the landlord’s decision, forced by necessity to cancel repairs, was understandable. How it explained and communicated its decision was not extensive enough, given the impact it would have on its tenants and that they would all have different communication needs, and there is no evidence of it considering whether other communication channels could be employed. That was a significant failing, but the landlord cannot be held wholly accountable for the subsequent year-long wait for the repair. The landlord’s handling of the subsequent repair when re-reported by the resident was further delayed with no apparent cause (which was not identified during the landlord’s complaint investigation), and the explanation provided for the original delay did not truly reflect what had happened in November 2020.

Determination (decision) 

15. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in respect of the complaint. 

Orders

16. In light of the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident by the failings found in this investigation, the landlord should apologise, and must pay £400. This should be paid to the resident within four weeks of the date of this report.
17. Evidence of compliance with these orders must be provided to this Service by the payment deadline.