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Thames Valley Housing Association Limited (202104887)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202104887

Thames Valley Housing Association Limited

14 May 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:
    1. The resident’s reports of noise transference from her neighbour’s property.
    2. The associated complaint.

Background

  1. The resident is a tenant of the landlord. She is represented in the complaint by a family member. For ease of reference, both the resident and her representative will be referred to as ‘the resident’ in this report. The resident occupies a flat in a converted house. Her neighbour (Mr A) occupies the property above hers. The resident reported to the landlord on 23 March 2020 that Mr A had removed carpet from his property and laid laminate flooring which caused excessive levels of noise to be transferred to her property.
  2. The landlord asked for the resident to keep noise incident diaries on 10 May 2020, opened an antisocial behaviour (ASB) case on 30 July 2020, and received noise diaries and video recordings of the noise from her on 19 August 2020. The resident raised a complaint on 23 October 2020 as she was dissatisfied with the landlord’s progress in tackling the noise nuisance. The landlord issued a stage one complaint response to the resident which stated that it could not enforce the laying of carpet by residents but advised that it would write to Mr A to ask him to reduce the noise. The landlord offered the resident compensation of £150 in acknowledgement of the delay in dealing with her noise reports and complaint.
  3. The ASB case was closed by the landlord on 26 April 2021 with the request for the resident to provide four weeks’ audio recordings before the case could be

re-opened. The landlord issued a final complaint response to the resident on 29 April 2021 before providing a revised final response to the resident on 2 July 2021 after intervention from the Ombudsman. It offered further compensation of £250 and acknowledged that it had delayed in addressing her concerns. The landlord confirmed that it was considering enforcement action to secure Mr A’s cooperation with replacing the laminate in his property with carpet.

  1. The landlord’s records between 6 and 26 July 2021 showed that it was against Mr A’s conditions of tenancy to lay laminate flooring and the landlord’s solicitor wrote to him to confirm that it would be taking legal action if he did not comply with its request to remove the laminate flooring.
  2. The resident brought the complaint to the Ombudsman as she was dissatisfied that the landlord had not considered in its responses to her that Mr A had breached his tenancy and had not taken effective steps to address this with him in a timely manner. She was also unhappy with the way in which her noise reports had been managed and wanted the landlord to confirm a timetable for any formal action it would take in response to her reports.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The resident stated that the occurrence of noise transference over an extended period had an impact on her health. The Ombudsman acknowledges that the situation affecting her property would have been distressing for the resident and we do not doubt her comments about her health. However, it is beyond the remit of this Service to determine whether or not the reported noise nuisance, or the landlord’s response or lack of, had a direct impact on the resident’s health. Furthermore, the Ombudsman does not have the legally-binding powers to award ‘damages’ for injury in the way that a court might. Therefore, the resident may wish to consider seeking independent legal advice on making a personal injury insurance claim if she feels that her health has been impacted by any action or lack of action by the landlord. The Ombudsman will determine, in this assessment, whether the landlord acted in accordance with its obligations and whether its actions were reasonable in the circumstances of the case.

Policies and procedures

  1. The landlord’s ASB policy states that it considers conduct capable of causing housing-related nuisance or annoyance to any person to be ASB. It provides “extreme noise that is persistent” as an example of this. This policy states that the landlord will respond to reports of ASB in a timely manner, based on the risk of the behaviour to the resident.
  2. The landlord’s complaints policy confirms that it considers an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack by action by the organisation, affecting one or more residents to be a complaint. If it is unable to resolve a complaint immediately, it will log a formal stage one complaint, which will be responded to within ten working days. If the resident remains dissatisfied then it is to escalate the complaint to the final stage and will respond to this within 20 working days. If it is unable to keep to these timeframes it is to keep the resident informed and agree a new timeframe for response.
  3. The landlord’s compensation policy provides for discretionary compensation to be offered when there has been a failure of service. Its guidance on awarding compensation provides for payments of between £51 and £160 for a ‘medium failure’ such as a failure to respond to ASB over a considerable period. This guidance provides for payments of £161 to £350 for ‘high failure’ such as mishandling an ASB case leading to exacerbation of tenant relations or continually not following through with ASB procedure when it has been notified.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of noise transference from the neighbour’s property.

  1. The resident first notified the landlord on 23 March 2020 about noise transference from Mr A’s property due to his removing his carpet and installing laminate flooring. There was no evidence of a response from the landlord until nearly two months later on 10 May 2020 when it asked her to keep a noise diary. The landlord opened an ASB case on 30 July 2020 and evidence was submitted by the resident on 19 August 2020. There was no evidence of any action by the landlord until the resident raised a stage one complaint on 23 October 2020 and it responded on 17 December 2020 to uphold her complaint based on the length of time it had taken to provide a resolution to her concerns.
  2. The landlord’s stage one complaint response offered the resident £130 compensation broken down as £50 for failure of service, £50 for time and trouble and £30 for poor complaint handling. It confirmed that a housing officer had now been allocated to her to deal with her noise nuisance concerns. The landlord, however, misdirected itself and the resident in its stage one response by stating that it could not enforce the use of carpets in its properties. This was a failure by the landlord as it failed to consider that Mr A’s tenancy agreement prohibited him from laying laminate flooring. This error prolonged the resolution of the issue as this prevented the landlord from taking enforcement action against Mr A to resolve the issue sooner.
  3. The landlord closed the ASB case on 26 April 2021 after speaking to Mr A’s upstairs neighbour about noise and writing to him to reduce the noise levels in his property. The case was closed pending further evidence of four weeks’ recordings from the resident on the Noise app. This was unreasonable of the landlord as it had already received evidence from the resident of the noise in the form of noise diaries and recordings from her on 19 August 2020 and she had informed it that her circumstances made use of the Noise app impractical for her. It was not reasonable to request further evidence when it could take action against Mr A under the terms of his tenancy agreement.
  4. The landlord issued its final response to the resident on 29 April 2021, in which it confirmed that it had asked Mr A to fit carpets in his property or face further action. This response relayed that it had experienced difficulty in securing Mr A’s cooperation with this. The landlord omitted to confirm whether it still required evidence of the noise transference from the resident. This lack of clarity led to her sourcing independent sound recording equipment at her own cost to record the noise between 6 and 12 May 2021.
  5. The landlord, ultimately, did not act in a timely manner and delayed unreasonably in addressing the noise nuisance reported by the resident. It provided incorrect information in its stage one complaint response, caused unnecessary inconvenience by unreasonably requesting more evidence on 22 April 2021, and failed to provide clarity on its actions until its revised final response on 2 July 2021. The landlord offered in total, across its stage one and revised final responses, £200 compensation for its handling of the noise nuisance reports and £180 for its handling of the complaint. The complaint handling will be discussed further below.
  6. The Ombudsman’s remedies guidance (published on our website) provides for awards of compensation between £50 and £250 in cases where there has been service failure by the landlord which had an impact on the complainant but was of short duration and may not have significantly affected the overall outcome for the complainant. Examples include failure to meet service standards for actions and responses but where the failure had no significant impact. In this case there was a significant delay in the landlord taking appropriate action against the neighbour as well as miscommunication with the resident. However, this did not affect the overall outcome as the landlord has now started tenancy enforcement action against the neighbour.

The landlord’s handling of the associated complaint

  1. The landlord provided its stage one complaint response to the resident on 17 December 2020, 39 working days after her initial complaint on 23 October 2020. The landlord did not provide its final stage complaint response to the resident until 29 April 2021, 78 working days after she expressed dissatisfaction with its stage one complaint response on 7 January 2021. These timeframes were considerably in excess of those stated in its complaints policy above. Furthermore, its original final complaint response did not fully consider the full timeframe of the resident’s reports of noise nuisance.
  2. The landlord offered, in total, £180 across its stage one and final responses for its handling of the resident’s complaint. When considered in conjunction with the award made above for her inconvenience and distress in the handling of her noise nuisance reports, this was a reasonable offer that was in accordance with the landlord’s compensation policy and the Ombudsman’s own remedies guidance, as set out above.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 55(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord offered redress to the resident prior to investigation which, in the opinion of the Ombudsman, resolves the complaints concerning the resident’s reports of noise transference from her neighbour’s property and its handling of the associated complaint satisfactorily.

Recommendations

  1. It is recommended that within the next four weeks the landlord should:
    1. Pay the resident the £200 it already offered her for its handling of her reports of noise transference, if it has not done so already.
    2. Pay the resident the £180 it already offered her for its handling of her complaint, if it has not done so already.
    3. Write to the resident to update her on the progress of its actions with Mr A and if possible provide timescales for the next steps.

22. It is also recommended that the landlord should carry out refresher training with its staff on its ASB procedures and the terms of its tenancy agreements.