Hammersmith and Fulham Council (202234317)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202234317

Hammersmith and Fulham Council

28 June 2024

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 resident’s complaint is about the landlord’s handling of repairs to the windows in her home.

Background

2. The resident holds a secure tenancy, which started in July 2022. She lives in the property with her four children, and has reported that she and her children have different health conditions which mean they should not be exposed to the cold.
3. The landlord’s repairs policy says it will aim to complete routine repairs within 20 working days, and planned repairs within 60 working days.
4. The resident reported issues with her wooden sash windows to the landlord on 3 October 2022. She told it that there were large gaps in the frames, which wasted heat and let in cold.
5. The resident submitted a stage 1 complaint to the landlord on 5 December 2022. She said since she had reported “huge gaps” in the windows, a repairs operative had attended on 14 November 2022 and requested a surveyor attend to look at the windows. She had chased this five times but nothing had been done. In the meantime, the property was losing heat and she was suffering with rheumatoid arthritis. She asked the landlord for a prompt response, to replace the windows, and for compensation for the lost heat because energy prices were “soaring”. The landlord acknowledged the complaint the same day.
6. The landlord’s records indicate that its surveyor raised a repair job for the windows on 15 December 2022. On 23 December 2022 its complaint team advised the resident that it was awaiting some information necessary for its response, and would aim to provide the response by a revised date of 10 January 2023.
7. The landlord issued its stage 1 complaint response to the resident on 29 December 2022. It advised that its surveyor had attended on 7 December 2022, and had raised a job to its contractor for repairs for the windows on 15 December 2022.  It apologised for the delays and the fact the repairs had not been resolved within its 20 working day timeframe. It offered the resident a total of £80 compensation, made up of £50 for the delay in booking a repair job and £30 for the delay in the attendance of its surveyor.
8. The landlord’s contractor told it that it attended on 3 January 2023 and was not given access to the property. It said it attended again on 23 January 2023 and started work to apply new beading with draught exclusion to the windows. It returned the next day, once failing to gain access and later it reattended to finish the work. It added new weights to four of the windows and a window stay to the bathroom window. It said it “overhauled” all nine windows on 25 January 2023 and applied draught-proof beading.
9. The resident asked the landlord to escalate her complaint to stage 2 on 30 January 2023, and asked it to reconsider the amount of compensation it had offered her as well as to provide assurance that there was accountability in how the repairs service operated. She said she had a report which said the landlord had assessed the windows as in “very good condition” prior to her moving in, and queried how this was done given all the windows now required repair. The resident explained the pain she had experienced due to the cold, and that two of her children had a heart condition and asthma, which meant they should not be left in the cold for months. The resident highlighted that the repairs had been outstanding over winter. The landlord acknowledged this request on 6 February 2023.
10. On 16 February 2023 the resident sent some additional information to the landlord’s stage 2 complaint handler, and explained that she was “exhausted” from chasing the repairs and the stress had affected her arthritis.
11. The landlord issued its stage 2 complaint response to the resident on 27 February 2023. It:
    1. Acknowledged that the resident had expressed dissatisfaction with the length of time it had taken to carry out the repairs to the windows after its stage 1 complaint response, and had explained to it that this had resulted in heat loss which had affected her and her family’s health conditions;
    2. Advised that it had given the repairs a timeframe of 20 days for completion when the resident reported the issue in October 2022. It confirmed it had completed the repairs on 25 January 2023, out of this timeframe, and apologised that the resident and her family had been “affected” by the cold temperatures;
    3. Acknowledged that the resident had found it “disrespectful” that no appointment was made with her for 3 January 2023, with the operatives arriving having assumed she would be in. It apologised for this and said it was “aware that sometimes this happens” and was addressing the matter with its contractor;
    4. Advised its strategic leadership team was currently reviewing its repair service and it was running a “transformation programme” for “housing overall including repairs”;
    5. Increased its offer of compensation to £380, including £150 for the “inconvenience and hardship” the resident’s family had “suffered” because of the delays, and a £150 “contribution” towards the increased cost of heating the resident’s home before the windows were repaired;
12. On 7 March 2023 the resident acknowledged the landlord’s complaint response, but told it that she wanted to “stress that the windows are still not repaired and [the] same problem persists”. She reiterated that her “peace of mind” had been affected by the way the repairs team had acted.
13. The landlord sought clarification and the resident explained on 8 March 2023 that while the beading had been done, the wooden window frames were “collapsing” and allowing cold air through. She said the problem had been “masked” by the contractor, which had fitted a piece of wood to the frame.
14. The resident told this Service in April 2023 that the repairs had not been sufficient to eliminate the draught from the window frames, which she thought were beyond repair.
15. The landlord has advised us that it booked in a “post inspection” visit by its surveyor for 16 May 2024, to check the work done to the windows and to identify any further repairs needed.
16. The resident has advised us that as a result of the inspection, further repairs to the windows have been booked in for 1 August 2024.

Assessment and findings

17. Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act (1985) sets out the landlord’s responsibility to keep the property in repair. Section 9A of the Act sets out the landlord’s responsibility to ensure the property is fit for human habitation (free from hazards to health).
18. The landlord has recognised that it took too long to act on the resident’s reports of draughts coming through the window frames. It did not sufficiently demonstrate it had used its complaint process to identify the reasons for this, or appropriate learning from the resident’s case.
19. It is concerning that, after the resident responded to its stage 2 complaint response, and explained that the problem had not been resolved by the repairs completed in January 2023, the landlord did not appear to take action to investigate this until over a year later. It has told us that it has now booked in a “post inspection” to check the work that had been completed on its behalf by its contractor, and promised that it would raise repairs for any outstanding faults it identified with the windows.
20. It is also concerning that the landlord did not appear to assess the priority for the repairs in relation to the health conditions reported by the resident, and we note that, as she had highlighted to it, she was left waiting for repairs over the coldest months of the year.
21. We have been provided with photos of the window frames by the landlord, although it is unclear when these were taken. They do show some damage to at least one of the frames, but it is not clear from the photos what the cause of this is.
22. The resident raised valid questions about why the windows were assessed as being in very good repair prior to her moving in, and how the landlord was managing its repairs service. She explained to it the toll that having to chase the repairs had taken on her, saying it had made her stressed and exhausted. She queried why the landlord’s repairs team were not monitoring the completion of the repairs themselves, rather than leaving it to her.
23. The resident also explained that she felt disrespected when appointments were attended without prior notice. It is welcome that the landlord apologised for this, however its response did not explain what it was doing to address what it acknowledged was a wider issue.
24. Complaints are an opportunity for landlords to consider the experience of their residents, and to use these to inform positive learning so that it can prevent recurrences in future. The landlord did not show that it had engaged with the resident’s feedback in a meaningful way, which would understandably not have addressed her concerns about respect, but also represented a lost opportunity to identify and implement appropriate learning.
25. The landlord’s failures in this case were not put right by its offer of compensation, and we have made orders to address this below. To take into account its failures, we have also ordered an increase in the compensation it offers to the resident. Taken altogether, its failures to carry out the repairs in a timely way and to respond to the concerns raised by the resident amount to maladministration.

Determination

26. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of repairs to the windows in the resident’s home.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

27. The landlord has already paid the resident the £380 it previously offered her. Within four weeks of the date of this report, the landlord must directly pay the resident an additional £1000 compensation, made up of:
    1. £500 for its failure to inspect the draughts the resident reported from her windows (equivalent to roughly 20% of her rent across the 14 months from March 2023 to May 2024, and taking into account the health conditions she had reported to it);
    2. £250 for the impact of its failure to demonstrate it had meaningfully engaged with the issues she raised in her complaint;
    3. £250 as a further contribution towards the resident’s heating bills while she waited for it to inspect the windows after March 2023.
28. Within four weeks of the date of this report, an appropriately senior manager (of at least director level) must apologise to the resident for its failure to respond to the concerns she had raised about its management of repairs, and for its failure to respond in a timely way to her report that the repairs had not resolved the problem in March 2023. It must confirm to us when this is completed, and provide us with a copy.
29. The landlord must confirm to us when the repairs to the windows have been completed in August 2024, and whether there are any further works that will be required.

Recommendations

30. In February 2024 the Ombudsman published a special investigation report following a number of investigations into cases from residents of this landlord. The full report is available on our website: https://www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/24-02-14-Hammersmith-and-Fulham-P49-Final.pdf .
31. A number of recommendations were made to the landlord in this report, including around its policies and practice in relation to the tracking of repairs, tracking of repairs after a complaint, residents with vulnerabilities, and management of contractors.  Some of the issues identified in this investigation are similar to the issues we have already made recommendations on as part of our special investigation report. We have therefore not made any orders as part of this case which would duplicate those already made to landlord as part of the special report. However, we recommend that the landlord considers the learning from the resident’s case and ensures that this is incorporated into its wider service improvement plans. In particular we recommend that it looks at how it:
    1. Gives appropriate priority to repairs in cases where health concerns or other vulnerabilities have been raised to it;
    2. Ensures that feedback received after a stage 2 complaint response has been issued is acted on appropriately;
    3. Understands the reasons why the surveyor’s visit in 2022 was delayed, and how it will ensure that repairs raised by its surveyors are attended within its timescales by its contractor, and that it is confident that repair work that is carried out on its behalf has been completed to a satisfactory standard.
32. We recommend the landlord consider whether it could invite the resident to take part in opportunities for feedback, for example a resident’s panel, if this is something she would be willing to take part in.