Cornwall Housing Limited (202113354)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202113354

Cornwall Housing Limited

27 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:
    1. The landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of her wet room being defective.
    2. The landlord’s handling of the associated complaint.
    3. The landlord’s response to the resident’s report of damp and mould.

Background

  1. The resident is a tenant of the landlord and commenced her tenancy on 19 October 2020. The landlord was aware that she had a mental health vulnerability and physical disability.
  2. The landlord made a number of disabled adaptations to the property at the commencement of the resident’s tenancy, of which one was the installation of a wet room. In November 2020 she reported that her toilet was leaking which was attended by the landlord’s contractor. The contractor found that there was no leak from the toilet and identified that the water present around the toilet was from the shower. The resident reported the pooling of water again on 12 April 2021, and on 13 May 2021 she highlighted that this was because the wet room floor was misaligned, which it acknowledged on 1 June 2021.
  3. The resident raised a stage one complaint with the landlord on 11 June 2021, requesting compensation in accordance with her ‘right to repair’. It replied to her on 13 August 2021 to offer £100 compensation. The resident rejected this offer and the landlord advised that the matter would be referred to its tenants panel for consideration. After receiving no update from the landlord, she escalated her complaint on 15 December 2021. The resident’s MP intervened by contacting the landlord on 26 January 2022, and the Ombudsman also did so on 28 January 2022.
  4. The resident’s complaint was declined for consideration by the tenants panel and it subsequently provided a stage one complaint response to her on 14 February 2022. This response upheld her complaint and offered her compensation of £175. However it said that it had not received a prior report about damp and mould in the property and would arrange for an inspection of this. The landlord confirmed that, since it had upheld her complaint, this was its final response to the complaint.
  5. The resident informed the Ombudsman in March 2022 that she continued to be dissatisfied with the landlord’s response as the defect with her wet room dated back to the start of her tenancy. She was also dissatisfied with the level of compensation it had offered her. Furthermore, no date for the commencement of the work had been provided to her.
  6. In November 2022 the resident forwarded to this Service an email from the landlord in which it confirmed that the works needed had been assigned to a contractor to arrange as soon as was acceptable to the resident. It also offered her increased compensation of £940.44.

Assessment and findings

The landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of her wet room being defective

  1. The landlord’s tenancy agreement with the resident confirms that it is responsible for the repair and maintenance of the structure of the property. Its repairs guide confirms that to “re-screed concrete floor” is the landlord’s responsibility to carry out, with a completion timeframe of 20 working days.
  2. The resident reported the water issue on 12 April 2021, therefore the landlord should have completed this repair by 10 May 2021 to comply with its 20 working-day timeframe. However, having had no response, the resident needed to re-report this repair on 13 May 2021. The landlord’s records for 16 June 2021 confirmed that it was aware that the wet room floor required relaying to prevent the water problem. There is a record of the landlord attempting to arrange for the repair of the floor on 11 January 2022, but this was refused by the resident until it had agreed a suitable compensation offer for its delay.
  3. The landlord, therefore, delayed excessively in carrying out the repair and no explanation was offered for the eight-month delay between 12 April 2021 and 11 January 2022. This was a failure by the landlord to carry out repairs in accordance with its policy. On receiving the report of the repair on 12 April 2021 it should have carried out an inspection to assess the hazard posed by the pooling of water on the wet room floor in light of the resident’s disability. A landlord has a responsibility to ensure that it mitigates potential hazards in its properties, particularly when the resident is vulnerable. There was no note of an inspection by the landlord until 11 August 2021, four months after the initial report.
  4. The landlord therefore, not only failed to carry out the repair in line with its policy, it also failed to in its responsibility to ensure that the wet room was safe for the resident to use, considering her physical disabilities. Its email to the resident in November 2022 confirms that the work was not yet complete even at that point. The compensation it offered was, however, more proportionate to the scale of the delay and service failure, but there is no explanation of how the £940.44 was calculated, or specifically what it was for. There is also no explanation of what specific work needed to be done, or why the compensation was offered so long after the landlord closed the complaint. These further omissions mean that the overall poor handling remains unremedied, and orders are made below to address that.
  5. It is noted that the resident refused to allow access for the repair when the landlord attempted to arrange this on 11 January 2022. While the resident’s dissatisfaction with the landlord’s service was understandable, it is a condition of the resident’s tenancy agreement that she provides access for the landlord to complete repairs. And, while it did delay in doing so, it was appropriate for it to attempt to complete the repair, in line with its responsibility under the tenancy agreement.
  6. In her complaint to the landlord the resident sought compensation under the Right to Repair scheme. It is unclear if this was a qualifying repair under the scheme. A qualifying repair is one which would cost less than £250 to complete and there was no evidence that this repair qualified.

The landlord’s complaint handling

  1. The landlord’s customer feedback and complaints policy provides for a two-stage internal complaints process. At the first stage of this, it is to contact the resident within three working days of the receipt of the complaint to discuss this. The landlord should then provide a written response to the resident within a further ten working days. When it is unable to complete actions to resolve the complaint within ten working days, it should contact the resident to agree an extension. The policy states that it will not extend a complaint more than once.
  2. The landlord’s customer feedback and complaints policy goes on to state that, when a resident is unhappy with the outcome of their stage one complaint, they may escalate it for review by its tenant panel. This is the final stage of its complaints procedure.
  3. There were several failings by the landlord in the handling of the resident’s complaint. She raised her stage one complaint on 11 June 2021 about seeking compensation for the delayed work to her wet room floor. The landlord did not provide a response to the issues she raised until 13 August 2021. This was significantly in excess of the ten working-day timeframe specified in its policy for a stage one complaint response.
  4. During this delay the resident had to prompt a response from the landlord by contacting it on 12 July and 11 August 2021. While the landlord did explain to her on 30 July 2021 that it was still awaiting information on her request for compensation, there was no unprompted contact from the landlord to keep the resident updated on progress or to discuss an extension to the complaint.
  5. The response the landlord provided to the resident on 13 August 2021 did not identify that this was a response at stage one of its complaints procedure. It provided no information on how she could escalate her complaint if she was dissatisfied. This was not in compliance with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) which all member landlords are required to comply with. This specifies that complaint responses should always confirm the stage at which the complaint is being responded to and provide details of how to escalate the matter.
  6. There followed an extended delay for the escalation of the complaint. After the resident expressed dissatisfaction with the landlord’s compensation offer on 13 August 2021, it advised her a week later that it would seek a review of the compensation offer with its tenant panel. This should have constituted an acknowledgement of the escalation of the complaint, in line with its policy. However, the landlord did not formally acknowledge that it had escalated the complaint and there was no evidence of its further consideration of the complaint before the resident explicitly requested the escalation of the complaint on 15 December 2021. Even then, the landlord did not acknowledge receipt of the final stage complaint until 31 January 2022, approximately six weeks later, after intervention from the Ombudsman.
  7. The landlord’s tenant panel then noted, on 11 February 2022, that it had not issued a full stage one complaint response and declined to consider the complaint at the final stage. This resulted in it issuing a full stage one complaint response on 14 February 2022. This was eight months after the resident initially raised her complaint and was a significant and excessive delay.
  8. The Code states that a landlord should accept a complaint unless there is a valid reason not to do so, and a landlord’s complaints policy should clearly set out the conditions in which a complaint will not be accepted. The landlord’s customer feedback and complaints policy sets out no conditions in which a complaint will not be escalated to the final stage. Yet, the landlord’s stage one complaint response on 14 February 2022 stated that, as it had upheld the resident’s complaint, this was its final response to the complaint. This was confusing, as upholding the complaint did not necessarily mean that was the end of the matter, and there remained the option of a review by its tenant panel at the final stage, which may have provided greater insight into the complaint.
  9. The lack of consideration of the complaint was demonstrated by the landlord’s stage one complaint response not providing any explanation for the excessive delay in carrying out the works, nor did it explain why the complaint response had taken such a long time to be issued. One of the Ombudsman’s complaint handling principles is to learn from outcomes. While the landlord acknowledged that there had been delays, there was no evidence that it had identified the reasons for its failures and what changes it would make to prevent these reoccurring.
  10. The complaints process is one in which a landlord may take the opportunity to learn from any failures. It is also an opportunity for it to rebuild the tenant-landlord relationship. The unreasonable refusal by the landlord to escalate the complaint hampered both the prospect of identifying any room for improvement in its service, and the change at improving the relationship between itself and the resident.
  11. Overall, the landlord’s handling of the complaint was not timely, not in accordance with its policy, and unreasonably created barriers to the resolution of the complaint.

The landlord’s response to the resident’s report of damp and mould

  1. No evidence of the resident reporting issues with damp and mould to the landlord has been presented for this investigation. This issue was not mentioned in the complaints, nor are there any records of her reporting this in its records. Therefore, the first evidence there was of the landlord being informed that the resident had an issue with damp and mould was when this Service relayed her complaint to the landlord on 28 January 2022.
  2. When a repair is reported to a landlord, it must be provided the opportunity to address the issue. Then, if the resident is dissatisfied with its response, they may raise a complaint about its actions. It was reasonable, therefore, for the landlord to propose, in its stage one complaint response on 14 February 2022, to carry out an inspection of her property to assess the extent of the damp and mould, once it became aware of the matter. This was in line with the landlord’s repairs guide.
  3. There is no evidence of a failure in the landlord’s response to the resident’s report of damp and mould. The landlord should proceed to carry out the proposed inspection of the property to identify any remedial works required and complete these works as relevant and appropriate.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was maladministration by the landlord in:
    1. Its response to the resident’s reports of her wet room being defective.
    2. Its handling of the associated complaint.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in its response to the resident’s report of damp and mould.

Orders

  1. The landlord should:
    1. Within four weeks of this report, pay the resident the £940.44 compensation it offered in November 2022 for its handling of the wet room repairs.
    2. Also within four weeks, pay the resident £175 compensation for its poor complaint handling.
    3. Within four weeks, confirm that the required repairs to the wet room are now complete and a post-work inspection has been done. If they are not complete, provide an action plan setting out exactly what work remains to be done, and a deadline for completion within six weeks of this report.
    4. Within six weeks, carry out a review of its complaints handling procedures and confirm to the Ombudsman what steps it has taken, or will take to ensure that complaints will be handled in accordance with its policy and the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code. Evidence of this must be provided to the Ombudsman and the resident by the deadline.