London & Quadrant Housing Trust (L&Q) (202223386)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202223386

London & Quadrant Housing Trust (L&Q)

21 December 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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of:
1. Damp and mould in the property.
2. Repairs to the bathroom ceiling following a collapse.
3. The resident’s complaint.

Background and summary of events

Background

The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord whose tenancy at the property began on 9 May 2011. The property is a 3 bedroom end of terrace house.
Since moving into the property, the resident’s household has grown and at the time of complaint was made up of 2 adults and 5 children. 3 of the children have special educational needs (‘SEN’), 1 has asthma, and 1 was described by the resident as “acutely allergic to mould”.

Scope of the investigation

It is apparent that the resident previously raised issues with damp and mould in the property in September 2020, which were investigated by the landlord at that time. The resident’s complaint which is subject to this investigation was raised on 7 January 2022 following initial reports of damp and mould made on 18 October 2021. Due to the time elapsed between these reports, this investigation will consider only events from 18 October 2021 onwards.
The resident has expressed concerns regarding the effect of exposure to damp and mould on her and her children’s health. The Ombudsman is unable to draw conclusions on the causation of, or liability for, effects on health and wellbeing. Claims for personal injury must be decided by a court, which can consider medical evidence and make legally binding findings. However, consideration has been given to the general distress and inconvenience which the situation may have caused the resident and her family.
As her desired outcome of her complaint, the resident asked the landlord to move her family to a “suitable safer home”. The landlord’s rehousing panel considered her for a direct offer of rehousing on medical grounds and wrote to her on 14 December 2022 to advise that she did not meet the threshold for this. Whilst it is understandable the resident was dissatisfied with this outcome, the rehousing assessment did not form part of her stage 1 or stage 2 complaint and so will not be assessed in this report.

Summary of events

The resident submitted an online complaint form to the landlord on 18 October 2021. She expressed dissatisfaction with numerous repair issues in the property including mould. She said she did not feel safe living in the property anymore and suffered from anxiety and PTSD.
The landlord raised an order to its contractor on 19 October 2021 asking it to inspect the property for mould and report back any follow on works required. It closed the resident’s complaint on 21 October 2021 under its ‘right first time’ procedure.
The landlord’s contractor inspected the property on 28 October 2021. It:
1. Identified a leak from the bathroom on the first floor, causing damp on the ceilings of the hallway and W.C. below.
2. Determined that the mould was caused by condensation and that overcrowding within the property was adding to this.
3. Said the resident had been “following all mould prevention advice”, but that it had gone through this with her again anyway.
4. Attempted to book in a “clean and shield” of mould affected areas following inspection but said it had been unable to reach the resident to arrange this.
On 5 January 2022, the resident reported that the first floor bathroom ceiling was bowing and the plaster had collapsed. The landlord attended the same day but said it was unable to carry out repairs until an asbestos survey of the ceiling had been completed.
The landlord requested an asbestos survey of the living room walls in the property on 6 January 2022.
The resident submitted another online complaint form to the landlord on 6 January 2022. She expressed dissatisfaction that the ceiling could not be repaired until the asbestos survey was complete and said her children were scared to use the bathroom in case it collapsed further. She also referred to there being “mould all over the house” which had damaged belongings including her sofa and curtains. The resident raised concerns about her and her children becoming ill due to exposure to mould and/or asbestos.
The landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint by email on 7 January 2022. It emailed the resident again on 21 January 2022 advising that it needed a 10 working day extension to provide its stage 1 complaint response as it was still gathering information from various departments.
On 28 January 2022 the landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response. It apologised that the resident had not been contacted about the asbestos survey of the bathroom ceiling and said it had asked its contractor to arrange this “as a matter of urgency”. The landlord also said it would arrange to inspect the entire property to address all outstanding repair issues.
The landlord repeated its contractor’s findings that the mould was due to condensation and gave the resident advice on heating and ventilating the property, wiping down condensation, and removing mould. The landlord advised the resident to direct any claims for damaged belongings to its insurers and provided details of how to do this. It offered the resident £150 compensation for distress and inconvenience and £200 compensation for time and trouble due to the fact that “repairs and communication should have been managed more effectively and more swiftly”. An additional £60 was award for another matter which is not subject to this investigation.
The resident responded by email on the same day to express her dissatisfaction with the stage 1 complaint response. She said the offer of compensation did not reflect the value of items she had lost due to the mould or the stress, anxiety and health concerns caused by the situation.
The landlord inspected the property on 4 February 2022. It raised a request for an asbestos survey of the bathroom ceiling and agreed it would provide the resident with a decoration voucher.
On 8 February 2022, the landlord advised the resident that it had escalated her complaint to stage 2 of its complaints process. It said it was currently dealing with a backlog of stage 2 complaints and that these were being allocated to complaint handling staff in date order.
On 14 February 2022, the landlord told the resident that an asbestos survey was arranged for 4 March 2022 and an appointment was booked for 23 March 2022 to repair the bathroom ceiling.
The landlord attended to repair the bathroom ceiling on 23 March 2022, but was unable to carry out any work as an asbestos survey had only been completed for the living room walls. This incident was repeated on 5 July 2022.
The landlord’s contractor closed the job for an asbestos survey to the bathroom ceiling on 22 August 2022 stating it had been unable to gain access to the property.
On 13 October 2022, the local authority’s environmental health department contacted the landlord. It said the resident had contacted it about the outstanding repair to the bathroom ceiling and asked the landlord to provide an update. The landlord responded advising that work orders had been raised but its contactor had been unable to gain access to the property.
On 28 November 2022, the resident emailed the landlord expressing concern about new mould patches appearing in the property. She said these had been painted over several times but continued to appear and her furniture and flooring needed replacing due to mould damage. The resident also expressed dissatisfaction that she had been waiting for nearly a year for her bathroom ceiling to be repaired. She said the condition of the property was affecting her mental health and she didn’t want any of her children ending up “in hospital or worser”.
In response to this, the landlord chased up the asbestos survey of the bathroom ceiling and this was completed on or around 15 December 2022. After receiving the results, the landlord contacted the resident on 30 December 2022 to inform her that an appointment had been made to repair the bathroom ceiling on 27 January 2023.
On 6 January 2023, the local authority’s housing standards department contacted the landlord after being approached by the resident about her living conditions in the property, including the damp and mould and ceiling repair, it asked for the landlord’s intentions with regards to these issues. The landlord responded advising that an appointment was in place to repair the bathroom ceiling. Its response made no mention of the damp and mould issues.
The repair to the bathroom ceiling was completed as scheduled on 27 January 2023. Later that day, the resident contacted the landlord to express her dissatisfaction with the work. She described it as “half a job” saying that the landlord had just skimmed over the existing mouldy plaster board rather than reboarding the ceiling.
On the same day, the resident emailed the landlord separately to advise that she had moved 3 of her children out of one of the bedrooms as she felt the mould was affecting their health. She said she had been forced to throw away clothes and her furniture had been “ruined” by the mould which she described as “spreading like a rash”.
The landlord raised a new job to its damp and mould contractor on 30 January 2023 asking it to reassess the property and carry out a mould wash. The resident declined this as she said a mould wash had been carried out the previous year and she was concerned about the impact on her and her children’s health. The landlord instead suggested household products that she could use as an alternative and provided some “useful information” on preventing condensation, damp and mould.
On 31 January 2023, the landlord provided the resident with details of its insurers and how to make a claim for items she said had been damaged by the mould.
The resident instructed solicitors who wrote to the landlord on 13 February 2023. The solicitors provided a list of alleged items of disrepair in the property, which included damp and mould in all rooms. They proposed that an independent surveyor be instructed to inspect the property and provide a report.
The landlord inspected the property on 14 February 2023. Its report noted “Various items and belongings preventing good ventilation within the property. Various objects surrounding the property externally also”. It identified an area of external brickwork that needed repointing and that the resident reported some guttering missing to the rear of the property. Repairs were raised to address these.
After being contacted by the resident for assistance, the Ombudsman wrote to the landlord on 8 March 2023 asking it to provide a stage 2 complaint response to the resident by 5 April 2023.
On 23 March 2023, the landlord visited the resident to provide her with advice on obtaining a transfer of property through the local authority (based on medical grounds and overcrowding) or mutual exchange. It asked if it “could provide any further support for any other issues which she declined”. On this occasion the landlord noted that the property was “uncluttered and fairly tidy so no concerns there”.
An independent surveyor, instructed by the landlord’s solicitors, inspected the property on 28 March 2023 and noted that “there was an excess quantity of stored goods within the premises”. They concluded that the mould growth throughout the property was “the result of condensation due to lack of adequate ventilation”. The surveyor identified several unrelated repair issues and concluded that “once the repair works are completed it is considered that the property will provide reasonable accommodation for the foreseeable future”.
On 5 April 2023, the landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response. It said that:
1. It had not yet received a copy of the independent surveyor’s report (which was not drafted until 19 April 2023) but would respond to their recommendations accordingly.
2. It had raised another order for a mould wash but the resident had again communicated that she was not willing to have this carried out. It offered her reassurance that the chemicals used in the wash would “quickly dissipate with adequate ventilation in the property” and urged her to reconsider.
3. Claims for damaged belongings fell outside of its complaints process and should be directed to its insurers. It provided details of how to do this.
4. It was offering her £50 compensation for the delay in responding to her complaint at stage 2, bringing its total offer of compensation to £460.

Assessment and findings

Damp and mould

The resident made her first report of damp and mould, which will be considered by this investigation, on 18 October 2021. On 19 October 2021 she raised the fact that some of the children had SEN and one was asthmatic, sometime later she also advised that one of them had been diagnosed with an allergy to mould. These concerns were present throughout her correspondence with the landlord – in which she frequently expressed anxiety about the health impacts of living with damp and mould in the property. The resident also made mention of her own mental health saying that the living conditions were making her depressed and affecting her anxiety and PTSD.
The landlord’s repairs policy says that for vulnerable residents it is “able to adjust our service standards where a delay would put them at risk because of their condition”. There is no evidence that this was considered in relation to any of the issues raised in this complaint.
Repeated failure by the landlord to consider vulnerabilities in this manner were highlighted in the Ombudsman’s ‘Special Report’ on the landlord which was published in July 2023 . Whilst this was after the landlord’s final complaint response to the resident, the report examined complaints made to the landlord between March 2019 and October 2022 – which would have included this case had the landlord provided its stage 2 response in the appropriate timeframes.
The landlord appropriately raised an order to its contractor to carry out an inspection of the property and the contractor attended on 28 October 2021, which was a reasonable time frame. During its inspection the contractor identified a leak from the bathroom causing damp to the ceiling of the downstairs toilet. It is unclear from the landlord’s records exactly when the leak was resolved, only that it was no longer an issue by the time of its own inspection carried out on 4 February 2022.
Other than this, the contractor did not identify any repair issues and attributed the mould to condensation in the property, which overcrowding was adding to. The contractor’s report records that it provided the resident was appropriate advice on preventing and cleaning mould but noted that she had already been following this. The contractor also recorded that it had been unable to carry out a “clean and shield” of mould affected areas as it had not been able to contact the resident to arrange this.
In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord reasonably agreed to inspect the property itself to assess “all issues raised”. The landlord also provided information and advice on condensation and mould. This was delivered in an appropriate manner without inferring blame or appearing paternalistic – in keeping with the recommendations contained in the Ombudsman’s “Spotlight on: Damp and Mould”.
The landlord also directed the resident to make a claim to its insurers for any items damaged by the mould. This was in keeping with its compensation policy which states that “where damage or alleged injury occurs because of our or our contractor’s negligence, we will refer the issue to the Insurance Team. This includes damage to customers’ personal possessions”. Appropriate information was given to enable the resident to make a claim on several occasions during the period of the complaint.
The landlord’s inspection of 4 February 2022 identified several repair issues in the property, but none of these could reasonably be considered to be contributary to damp and mould – being primarily electrical in nature.
Following this inspection, there is no evidence that the resident continued to raise issues relating to damp and mould with the landlord until she made a report on 28 November 2022. Environmental Health also contacted the landlord on 13 October 2022 about repair issues reported to it by the resident, and damp and mould was not amongst these indicating that the issue may have subsided over the warmer months.
After the resident’s report of new mould patches appearing on 28 November 2022, the landlord responded on 6 December 2022 to advise that it had passed copies of a previous damp and mould inspection to its surveyors to assess. However, the landlord failed to provide an update on this, and the resident contacted it multiple times throughout December 2022 and January 2023 to express her concern about the damp and mould, dissatisfaction at a lack of response to her emails and intention to seek legal advice.
It was during this period, on 27 January 2023, that the resident informed the landlord that she had removed 3 of her children from one of the bedrooms in the property due to the level of concern she had about the mould affecting their health. She later advised that “I’m using 2 bedrooms 4 children in a tiny box room and my oldest son sleeping on a mattress on my bedroom floor”. She described the lack of space and privacy this afforded her children, resulting in arguments, stress and poor sleep.
The lack of engagement from the landlord led the resident to contact the local authority’s housing standards department – which emailed the landlord on 6 January 2023 asking for details of action it was taking to address several issues in the property including damp and mould. The landlord responded on 20 January 2023, but its reply made no reference to the damp and mould issues and there is no evidence any action was ongoing in this regard from its records.
On 30 January 2023, the landlord raised an order to its contractor to reassess the property and carry out a “mould wash”. The resident told the landlord that she was unwilling to have the mould wash completed as it had been done previously and not provided an effective solution. This is supported by the contactor’s report from 28 October 2021, which indicated that mould had returned to areas it had previously treated.
The resident also raised concerns about the impact of the chemicals on her children due to their health conditions. The landlord displayed appropriate understanding of this and attempted to suggest household products and alternatives such as vinegar which the resident could attempt to use to wash down the mould herself.
Due to her continued dissatisfaction with the landlord’s response, the resident instructed solicitors who wrote to the landlord on 13 February 2023 alleging disrepair in the property – including the damp and mould. The landlord appropriately decided to have an independent surveyor assess the property to respond to the claim, and this was arranged for 28 March 2023. Although this represented a delay of around 6 weeks, the landlord’s records indicate this was due to difficulties in arranging an appropriate appointment for all parties.
The independent surveyor’s findings mirrored previous inspections. They attributed the damp and mould to condensation due to poor ventilation and did not note any repair issues which could reasonably be considered to be contributing to the matter.
In its stage 2 complaint response, the landlord informed the resident it had raised a further order for a mould wash and reassured her that the chemicals used would “dissipate” with appropriate ventilation. This order was closed due to “no access” on 8 May 2023, indicating that the resident continued to decline.
In summary, the landlord carried out reasonable investigations into the resident’s reports of damp and mould using its own staff, contractors and an independent surveyor. Although some minor repair issues were identified, findings of all inspections indicated that the damp and mould was caused by condensation, likely exacerbated by the overcrowding and associated level of possessions in the property.
The landlord gave appropriate advice in a manner which avoided attributing blame and attempted to arrange mould washes which the resident declined. The landlord also visited the resident to assist with her rehousing application to the local authority and to offer of any further support required, which was declined.
However, the landlord failed to appropriately handle the resident’s reports of new mould appearing on 29 November 2022. It failed to respond to her emails in a timely manner and did not provide any updates or details of actions it intended to take on the matter until it raised a new order to its contractor on 30 January 2023. This led the resident to approach both the local authority and a solicitor for assistance, feeling that she was “being ignored” by the landlord. When considering the distress and inconvenience caused, due to the vulnerabilities in the resident’s household and the impact on her children’s sleeping arrangements, this represents maladministration.

Repairs to bathroom ceiling

After attending an emergency callout for the ceiling collapse on 5 January 2022, the landlord established that an asbestos survey was required before repair work could be undertaken. An asbestos survey was requested the following day however this was for the living room walls only. It is unclear why this was the case.
It was not until 4 February 2022, when it carried out a full property inspection, as agreed in its stage 1 complaint response, that the landlord made a request for an asbestos survey of the bathroom ceiling. This represented a delay of nearly a month between the survey being required and correctly ordered.
The asbestos contractor completed the survey of the living room walls on 4 March 2022, however it appears there was a misunderstanding between it and the landlord – which believed the bathroom ceiling would be tested and so booked for the remedial work to be completed a few weeks later.
This led to the landlord attending on 23 March 2022 to repair the ceiling only to leave without carrying out any work due to the lack of asbestos survey. This is likely to have caused distress and inconvenience for the resident who would have been expecting the issue to be resolved on this date and had to be available to grant access to the property.
Here the case again reflected the themes of the Ombudsman’s ‘Special Report’ which described how “at times the resident would know more about the progress of the repair than the landlord, such was the poor communication and record keeping with contractors” .
The landlord’s records make reference to further appointments to repair the bathroom ceiling on 5 May 2022 and 5 July 2022. Whilst it is unclear whether the former appointment proceeded, the latter did, and the resident again granted access to the landlord which was unable to carry out any work.
It is apparent in communications between the landlord and its asbestos contractor that the contractor had been experiencing difficulty in contacting the resident to book an appointment. This eventually led to the contractor closing the order for a survey of the bathroom ceiling due to “no access” on 22 August 2022. There is evidence of similar difficulties in reaching the resident from other contractors and landlord staff throughout the landlord’s records.
Whilst this provides some mitigation for the delays in the survey being completed, the works order was open for over 6 months before the contractor closed it. Section 5.5 of the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (‘the Code’) states that following a landlord’s complaint response “outstanding actions must still be tracked and actioned expeditiously with regular updates provided to the resident”. The asbestos survey and remedial works to the bathroom ceiling were such actions and the landlord failed to maintain appropriate oversight to ensure they were completed in a timely manner.
The landlord’s records show it raised a further order for an asbestos survey of the bathroom ceiling on 6 September 2022. The survey was still not completed in a timely manner – taking until the middle of December 2022 to be carried out. This was despite the local authority’s environmental health department contacting the landlord on 13 October 2022 requesting details of the ceiling repair after the resident had raised concerns with it.
Overall, it took the landlord more than 11 months to have the bathroom ceiling surveyed for asbestos. This is not only an unreasonable delay to complete a fairly routine work order, but also left the resident and her family living in the property for a prolonged period unsure whether there was a potential risk to their health from the damaged ceiling.
This was also a theme within Ombudsman’s ‘Special Report’, which described the landlord as “slow to respond to hazards” and said that “residents suffered excessive and unexplained delays, sometimes over a period of years while living with the disrepair”.
The resident expressed in her communications with the landlord the level of anxiety this created. She described her fear that her family were potentially breathing in “harmful toxics” and that her children were “to scared to even go into a bath worrying there gonna get ill or the ceiling falling through”. The resident said her children did not feel safe in the house as they feared being injured and that she felt unable to have people over to the house “due to the safety issues….in case anything happened” and felt “ashamed and embarrassed of my own house”.
Although the landlord did not provide this Service with a copy of the asbestos survey completed in December 2022, a later survey conducted in May 2023 indicated that there was no asbestos detected in the bathroom ceiling. This lack of actual risk of harm does not, however, detract from the distress which the resident was caused by the potential risks.
After receiving the asbestos survey results in late December 2022, the landlord arranged for the ceiling to be repaired on 27 January 2023. This was a reasonable timeframe considering the Christmas period and the time and resource required for the job (noted by the landlord to be 2 operatives for a period of 4 hours).
Following the repair, the resident expressed her dissatisfaction at the workmanship, particularly the fact that the ceiling was not taken down and reboarded. The landlord appropriately sought comment on this from one of its maintenance supervisors who viewed photos of the work and asserted that it had been done to a “more than reasonable standard” and “there was no need to remove the ceiling as it was not at risk of collapse also the ceiling was sealed and encapsulated to prevent mould growth”.
This position was supported by both the landlord’s inspection of 14 February 2023 and the independent surveyor’s inspection of 28 March 2023, neither of which identified any issues with the bathroom ceiling – although the independent surveyor did note that it had been recently repaired.
In summary, the landlord delayed unreasonably in obtaining an asbestos survey of the ceiling following its collapse. This left the resident and her family suffering distress and anxiety for a considerable period, unsure whether they were at risk of exposure to asbestos or the ceiling further collapsing. Although there is some mitigation in difficulties for the landlord’s contractor arranging access to the property, the landlord has not evidenced that it maintained appropriate oversight of the process – despite it being an outstanding action from a complaint. This represents maladministration.

Complaint handling

The resident first raised a complaint with the landlord on 18 October 2021. After arranging for a contractor to inspect the property, the landlord closed the complaint on 21 October 2021. Its complaint procedure allows for this under its ‘right first time’ process and it was reasonable to do so considering the damp and mould had not recently been brought to its attention in the form of a service request. However, the landlord has not provided evidence that the resident was appropriately informed that the complaint had been closed.
The resident next raised a complaint on 7 January 2022. On this occasion the landlord logged a stage 1 complaint. The landlord then appropriately contacted the resident on the day its response was due to advise that it required a 10 working day extension. Its provided a reasonable explanation that this was due to it sourcing information from multiple departments and contractors, which is supported by its records. The stage 1 response was then provided on 28 January 2022 – within the 10 working day extension period.
The resident requested to escalate her complaint to stage 2 on the same day as the stage 1 response was provided. However, it took until 8 February 2022 for the landlord to acknowledge this. In its acknowledgement the landlord explained that it was “experiencing a high demand for complaint escalations” and the “volume of cases had caused delays”. It explained cases were being managed in date order, but did not provide the resident with any indication of how long it would take for her complaint to be responded to.
The Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (‘the Code’) sets out that landlords should provide a stage 2 response within 20 working days of a request to escalate – with a 10 working day extension permissible if required. This is mirrored by the landlord’s own complaints policy. Whilst the Ombudsman acknowledges the resourcing issues which the landlord described in its complaint handling facility, and the fact that it was taking steps to address this, this does not remove its obligation to provide residents with a timely response to their complaint in line with the Code.
The resident first contacted this Service on 4 January 2023, by which time almost a year had passed since her request to escalate her complaint. The landlord eventually provided its stage 2 response on 5 April 2023, after this Service wrote to it on 8 March 2023 asking it do so. Had it not been for the Ombudsman’s intervention it is unclear how long the resident would have continued to wait for a response.
This delay not only resulted in the resident waiting indefinitely for the landlord’s decision on her complaint – with no indication of when it would be provided, but also obstructed her ability to bring her complaint to this Service for investigation as is her right.
It is of concern that the landlord described responding to its outstanding stage 2 complaints in a solely date based order. This shows a lack of consideration of risk of harm and dynamic issues in its complaint portfolio. Considering the resident’s complaint related to both an outstanding asbestos survey and damp and mould in a property with young and vulnerable children it would have been appropriate to identify the high risk nature of the case and prioritise it for response.
The resident’s complaint was eventually prioritised for response, but this appears to be based solely upon the Ombudsman’s intervention. This raises further concerns about a ‘two tiered’ complaints service, where those willing and able to approach this Service for assistance find their complaint progressed sooner, at the expense of those who are not.
In summary, the landlord appropriately handled the resident’s complaint at stage 1. However, it delayed in acknowledging her request to escalate her complaint and then failed to provide its stage 2 complaint response for over a year, until the Ombudsman intervened. The landlord has not shown that it appropriately considered the risks involved in the matters of complaint and the vulnerabilities in the resident’s household when subjecting her to these delays. This amounts to maladministration.
The Ombudsman has found maladministration following investigations into the landlord’s complaint handling. The relevant cases, and findings, are set out below:

202219935 – The Ombudsman found maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling. The landlord took 286 working days to provide its stage 2 complaint response.

202122998 – The Ombudsman found maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling. The landlord took 106 working days to provide its stage 2 complaint response.

202120544 – The Ombudsman found maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling. The landlord took 162 working days to provide its stage 2 complaint response.

The Ombudsman also has several other cases awaiting investigation where the landlord’s stage 2 complaint response makes reference to delays due to a backlog of complaints. We have therefore issued a wider order under paragraph 54f of the Scheme for the landlord to review its practice in relation to this area, which may give rise to further complaints about the matter. We have set out the scope of the review below.

Determination (decision)

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of:
1. Damp and mould in the property.
2. Repairs to the bathroom ceiling following a collapse.
3. The resident’s complaint.

Reasons

The landlord failed to appropriately handle the resident’s reports of new mould appearing on 29 November 2022. It failed to respond to her emails in a timely manner and did not provide any updates or details of actions it intended to take on the matter until it raised a new order to its contractor on 30 January 2023. This led the resident to approach both the local authority and a solicitor for assistance, feeling that she was “being ignored” by the landlord despite the clear impact of the situation on her and her family.
The landlord delayed unreasonably in obtaining an asbestos survey for the bathroom ceiling following its collapse. This left the resident and her family suffering distress and anxiety for a considerable period, unsure whether they were at risk of exposure to asbestos or the ceiling further collapsing.
The landlord delayed in acknowledging the resident’s request to escalate her complaint and then failed to provide its stage 2 complaint response for over a year – until the Ombudsman intervened. The landlord has not shown that it appropriately considered the risks involved in the matters of complaint and the vulnerabilities in the resident’s household when subjecting her to these delays.

Orders

Within 5 weeks of the date of this determination, the landlord is ordered to:
1. Pay the resident compensation of £1,625 composed of:
  1. £300 for the distress and inconvenience caused by its handling of damp and mould in the property.
  2. £825 for the distress and inconvenience caused by its handling of repairs to the bathroom ceiling.
  3. £500 for the time and trouble caused by its handling of the resident’s complaint.

£400 of the £460 offered in the landlord’s stage 2 complaint response can be deducted from this if already paid (the remaining £60 was for an unrelated matter and cannot be deducted).

Write to the resident apologising for the maladministration identified in this report.
Review the way it monitors and manages asbestos surveys which have been ordered for remedial repairs to ensure these do not unduly delay it in meeting its repair obligations.

In accordance with paragraph 54f of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord is ordered to carry out a review of its practice in relation to managing its ‘backlog’ of complaints. The review should be carried out within 12 weeks of the date of this determination and include as a minimum (but is not limited to):
1. Consideration of how best to prioritise existing and future complaints for response whilst the backlog is in place – including use of a risk assessment.
2. Identification of the number of residents affected by the complaint backlog, and the dates on which their complaints were logged/escalated.
3. A review of the way it communicates with and updates residents whose complaints are impacted by the backlog.
4. Its current plans to reduce and clear the backlog to ensure it is able to respond to all complaints in accordance with the Code.
Following the review, the landlord should produce a report setting out:
1. The findings and learning from the review.
2. Recommendations on how it intends to manage overdue complaints going forwards.
3. The number of other residents who are currently affected by the complaint backlog.
4. Any current and future plans it has identified to clear the backlog and details of how and when these will be implemented.
The landlord should embed the recommendations in the report within its wider transformation programme, to inform practice in other areas of service delivery, where relevant, with appropriate oversight.
The landlord should provide a copy of the final report to its Housing Scrutiny Committee and member responsible for complaints, if appointed, for scrutiny. The Housing Scrutiny Committee should agree how it will provide oversight of the implementation of any recommendations made following the review. The landlord should also provide a copy of the report to the Ombudsman.
The landlord should commit to revisiting the issues 6 months after the report has been finalised, to check whether changes in practice have been embedded and how it is progressing in clearing the backlog of complaints.
The landlord shall contact the Ombudsman within 5 and 12 weeks respectively to confirm it has complied with the above orders.

Recommendations

It is recommended that the landlord contact the resident to ensure she has the appropriate rehousing priority with the local authority, which reflects her overcrowding issues and the associated medical concerns – including the link between the overcrowding and damp and mould. The landlord should assist with providing any supporting evidence (such as copies of inspection reports) that may be required.