Abri Group Limited (202309963)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202309963

Abri Group Limited

31 July 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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of damp and mould.
The Ombudsman has also considered the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

The resident began her tenancy of the property, a 2 bedroom ground floor flat, in August 2022. She lived with her young daughter and was pregnant at the time of the complaint. The landlord is a housing association, which owns and manages the property. The resident left the property in May 2024 through the mutual exchange process.
On 24 November 2022, the resident reported concerns about damp and mould. The landlord’s records show it raised a job to a specialist contractor to complete an inspection.
The resident raised further concerns about mould in the property on 11 January 2023. The landlord completed a mould wash on 12 January 2023. It returned to the property on 18 January 2023 and applied stain block to the affected areas.
The resident called the landlord on 18 January 2023 and raised a complaint. She said:
1. She had waited over a month from reporting the mould before the landlord took any action.
2. The landlord had only taken action because she had reported the problem again.
3. She and her 2 year old daughter had been provided with inhalers due to the effect on their health caused by the condition of the property.
4. Her daughter’s mattress and pillows had been ruined by mould.
5. The landlord’s operative had damaged one of her blinds when completing the mould wash.
The landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint on 19 January 2023 and told her it would respond within 10 working days or let her know if it needed more time. It wrote to her again on 30 January 2023 confirming it needed more time and would respond by 16 February 2023.
After the resident reported further concerns with the mould on 20 March 2023, the landlord attended on 21 March 2023 and completed a mould wash. Its specialist contractor also attended on 21 March 2023 and reported that:
1. There was evidence the resident had been drying washing indoors, which it advised should be kept to a minimum or eliminated to reduce moisture levels.
2. The existing kitchen and bathroom extractor fans were working but it recommended servicing these.
3. It would install a Positive Input Ventilation (PIV) system with integral intelligent low temperature comfort heater.
The resident contacted the landlord again on 21 April 2023 asking for a response to her complaint. During the discussion, the resident said:
1. She had to threaten legal action before the landlord took any action in response to her first report of mould.
2. The landlord’s operative had not been given enough time to complete the first mould wash so they had left before this was finished. They had also damaged one of the resident’s blinds.
3. Mould had returned in the property since the most recent mould wash on 21 March 2023, and she wanted the landlord to complete another wash.
4. She had disposed of her daughter’s shoes, bed and books because of mould damage, and had paid £210 for a replacement bed and shoes.
5. The mould had affected her and her daughter’s physical and mental wellbeing.
The landlord sent a stage 1 response on 28 April 2023, in which it said:
1. It should have completed a mould wash when the resident first reported the issue in November 2022 and it sincerely apologised for not doing this.
2. It recognised there was a considerable length of time between the resident reporting mould on 24 November 2022 and its specialist contractor completing a survey on 21 March 2023. The specialist contractor would be attending again on 3 May 2023 to complete the recommended works.
3. It was sincerely sorry the resident had experienced health concerns because of the mould.
4. It had raised a job request for another mould wash to take place in the property and the resident could contact it to arrange further washes if needed.
5. It was sorry for the delays in handling her complaint, which had been caused by its complaint team having a large workload.
6. It upheld her complaint and offered compensation of £250, comprising:
  1. £150 for the delay in treating the mould issues.
  2. £50 for the poor communication.
  3. £50 for the delay in responding to the complaint.
The landlord’s specialist contractor attended on 3 May 2023 and completed the recommended works from the visit on 21 March 2023.
The landlord attended on 4 May 2023 and 5 May 2023 and completed another mould wash. The resident emailed the landlord on 4 May 2023 stating the operatives had attended 5 hours after she had received a text to say they were on their way. She was also unhappy that they had told her the mould wash would take 2 days, particularly as she would not be home on 5 May 2023 while the operatives were there. She asked the landlord to add this to her complaint.
The resident sent the landlord an email on 10 May 2023, in which she said:
1. She wanted to discuss the financial cost she had incurred because of the mould, which included:
  1. £190 for a new bed.
  2. £30 for netting.
  3. £40 for a jewellery box.
  4. £20 for shoes.
  5. £10 for books.
  6. £18 for a sentimental birth book.
  7. £90 time missed at work.
2. She also wanted the landlord to acknowledge the impact on her physical and mental health while she was living in the property, which she believed had a structural problem causing the mould.
The landlord acknowledged the resident’s escalation request on 10 May 2023, and said it would respond within 20 working days. However, it wrote to the resident again on 6 June 2023 and extended the response date to 22 June 2023.
On 8 June 2023, the resident’s daughter’s paediatrician wrote a letter addressed to the resident but for the attention of the landlord. We have seen no evidence to show on what date the landlord received this letter. The paediatrician wrote that:
1. The resident’s daughter had significant respiratory symptoms which were “most likely due to her exposure to chronic damp and mould, particularly in her bedroom”.
2. The resident had also experienced respiratory symptoms, especially when she was in her daughter’s bedroom.
3. Mould was “well recognised as being a serious environmental risk to children’s health”.
4. The resident and her daughter would benefit from being rehoused as soon as possible.
The landlord completed another inspection on 26 June 2023 and found that the PIV system and vents were working as intended. It found there was no sign of new damp or mould but there still some mould in the bedroom. It therefore confirmed it would arrange to complete another mould wash.
The landlord issued its stage 2 response on 28 June 2023, in which it said:
1. Its scheduling team would contact her to arrange an appointment for a mould wash following the inspection on 26 June 2023.
2. Its specialist contractor should have arrived within 90 days of the first report of mould to complete the survey, but it had not met this timescale.
3. It recognised the resident had experienced delays receiving her complaint responses and it had not updated her appropriately.
4. It upheld her complaint and offered a total payment of £500 to replace its stage 1 offer. This comprised:
  1. £400 to cover the cost of her damaged belongings.
  2. £100 for the inconvenience the issue had caused.
5. The resident had the right to approach this Service with the complaint if she remained dissatisfied.
The landlord completed a further mould wash in the property on 14 July 2023, as promised in the stage 2 response.
On 20 July 2023, the resident asked the landlord about being rehoused. The landlord sent her an email on the same date confirming she could consider completing a mutual exchange with another resident. The landlord said she could also contact the local authority for a reconsideration of her housing priority banding based on medical evidence.
The resident reported a leak from the flat above on 26 September 2023. The landlord attended on 26 September 2023 and noted it could not complete any works as the resident had to go out. A surveyor completed an inspection of the property on 6 October 2023, and found that:
1. New plasterboard, skimming and painting were required in the area affected by the leak.
2. The resident had not been opening the windows often because of the cold weather or using the PIV system because of the running costs. She had also been air drying washed clothes in the property. The surveyor recommended the resident open the window’s trickle vents and fully open the windows for 10 minutes per day. He also recommended regular use of the PIV system and extractor fans.
3. The property met the Decent Homes Standard.
The landlord completed the works recommended by the surveyor on 8 November 2023.
The landlord’s surveyor completed a full housing condition inspection on 16 November 2023 and concluded that the property was fit for human habitation and met the Decent Homes Standard. However, there were some “above average” and “high” humidity readings in the kitchen, living room and bedroom. The surveyor’s recommended works included:
1. The specialist contractor to test and service the PIV unit.
2. The landlord to:
  1. Replace the extractor fan in the kitchen.
  2. Seal all gaps around the windows and window sills internally and externally.
  3. Reseal internally around the front door.
  4. Check above the living room bay window for any potential leaks in the lead flashing.
  5. Check the cavity wall insulation in the property.
  6. Apply stain block as a preventative measure to the areas previously affected by mould.
The resident initially refused the works recommended by the surveyor because she told the landlord being moved to a different property was the only solution to the problem. However, the resident later agreed to the works after some discussions with the landlord. The landlord and its contractors attended several times between 11 December 2023 and 18 December 2023 and completed the recommended works.
The landlord attended on 10 January 2024 and completed a quality check of the works completed. It purchased internal storage for the resident at a cost of £130 to decrease clutter and facilitate greater air flow in the property. It also provided her with £50 vouchers for paint.
The resident duly made her complaint to this Service on 24 February 2024. Through this Service, the resident is seeking compensation for the distress, inconvenience and health concerns caused by the mould.
The landlord wrote to the resident on 26 March 2024 offering an additional payment of £100 to recognise the delay in issuing its stage 2 response. It did this as part of its further review of the complaint following the resident’s submission to this Service.
The resident moved out of the property on 28 May 2024 via the mutual exchange process.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

Under section 42(j) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, fall properly within the jurisdiction of another Ombudsman, regulator or complaint-handling body. Part of the resident’s complaint related to the medical banding she was awarded by the local authority in relation to her request for a home move. This was a local authority decision rather than a service provided by the landlord. As such, this would be a complaint about the local authority rather than the landlord. This part of the complaint falls under the jurisdiction of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of damp and mould

The Ombudsman released his ‘Spotlight on: damp and mould’ report in October 2021 which emphasised that landlords should take responsibility for damp and mould without assuming it is caused by the resident’s lifestyle. Some of the recommendations in the report were for landlord to take a “zero-tolerance approach to damp and mould”, to “ensure that their responses to reports of damp and mould are timely and reflect the urgency of the issue”, and to “consider whether they require an overall framework, or policy, to address damp and mould which would cover each area where the landlord may be required to act”.
The landlord completed a self-assessment and made changes to its processes and procedures in response to the recommendations in the Spotlight report. As part of this, it produced a new damp and mould procedure in April 2022, a copy of which it has provided to this Service.
The landlord’s damp and mould procedure says its contact centre will triage reports of damp and mould when residents report these. It says its specialist team will then assess reports daily and respond on a priority basis depending on the severity of the problem. The procedure says the landlord will attend all reports of damp and mould within 30 days, while attending the more severe cases within 10 days. It states the landlord will complete a mould treatment to ensure the hazard is removed and instruct its specialist contractor to complete a ventilation survey where required.
We have seen no evidence the landlord followed its procedure in response to the resident’s first report on 24 November 2022. The landlord raised a job to its specialist contractor to complete an inspection, but it did not attend to complete a mould wash until the resident reported the problem a second time on 11 January 2023. The landlord’s specialist contractor also did not attend until 21 March 2023, which was 4 months after the resident reported the issue.
The Ombudsman welcomes the actions taken by the landlord following the resident’s second report of mould on 11 January 2023. The landlord completed numerous mould washes and inspections, completed remedial works to improve the ventilation and make the property more watertight, and even paid for the resident to have additional internal storage. However, the Ombudsman notes that the landlord did not identify some of the remedial works until its fourth inspection on 16 November 2023. It would have been better for the resident if the additional works were identified at an earlier stage and addressed to relieve the damp and mould in the property. It is not clear why this was not picked up by the landlord’s specialist contractor at earlier visits.
Whilst works were being undertaken to address the damp and mould, the resident could have benefited from the provision of dehumidifiers to get rid of excess moisture. The landlord also could have placed damp monitors in the property to collate information on the issue.
The damp and mould policy says the landlord will “ensure all colleagues and external contractors are trained on awareness of damp and mould, how to spot it, our reporting processes and the importance of addressing underlying causes and treating our residents with empathy”. That it took the landlord 4 inspections before identifying the remedial works required to address the damp and mould suggests its representatives were not fully trained on identifying the underlying causes, as they should have been in line with the policy.
For the failure to follow its damp and mould procedure in response to the resident’s first report, the delay the resident faced in having a survey completed by the specialist contractor, and the long delay with the landlord identifying some of the remedial works, added to the fact the occupants were vulnerable and ultimately left the property, the Ombudsman finds maladministration.

The landlord’s complaint handling

Section 10 of the landlord’s complaints procedure matched the timescale requirements included in section 5 of the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) at the time of the complaint. It said the landlord would:
1. Send a stage 1 decision in writing within 10 working days of acknowledgement, extending this by up 10 working days if necessary by writing to the resident with an explanation of the delay.
2. Send a stage 2 decision within 20 working days of the resident’s request to escalate, extending this by up to 10 working days if necessary by writing to the resident with an explanation of the delay.
It took the landlord 71 working days to send its stage 1 response and 34 working days to send its stage 2 response. While the landlord wrote to the resident at both stages to confirm there would be a delay, it exceeded the extended timescales allowed under its procedure and the Code at the time. The particularly long delay the resident faced at stage 1 led to her contacting the landlord 4 times between 17 February 2023 and 13 April 2023 requesting updates, which would have caused inconvenience. The Ombudsman recognises the landlord acknowledged this and offered £50 for the stage 1 delay and £100 for the stage 2 delay, although it only offered the compensation for the stage 2 delay after it had already completed its internal complaints procedure.
Section 4.1 of the complaints procedure and section 1.2 of the Code at the time defined a complaint as “an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the organisation, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting an individual resident or group of residents”.
On 4 May 2023, the resident sent an email in which she raised dissatisfaction about the conduct of the landlord’s operatives and asked the landlord to add this to her complaint. This fit the definition of a complaint under the landlord’s policy and the Code at the time and should have resulted in the landlord escalating the complaint to stage 2. However, the landlord did not raise a stage 2 escalation until 10 May 2023, when the resident sent a further email.
Section 5.6 of the Code at the time of the complaint said the landlord needed to “address all points raised in the complaint and provide clear reasons for any decisions”. In her stage 1 complaint, the resident raised concerns about her possessions being ruined by mould and the landlord’s operative damaging one of her blinds during a mould wash. The landlord did not address these points in its response. The landlord also did not respond to the concerns the resident had raised in her stage 2 request about the operatives’ conduct on 4 May 2024 and the effects of the damp and mould on her and her daughter’s health.
Section 6.2 of the Code at the time said any remedy offered needed to “reflect the extent of any service failures and the level of detriment caused to the resident as a result”. The landlord upheld the resident’s complaint at stage 2, which meant it recognised the remedy offered at stage 1 was insufficient. However, while its stage 2 compensation offer of £500 was higher overall than the stage 1 offer, £400 of this was to compensate the resident for damaged possessions. The remaining £100 payment was lower than the compensation of £250 the landlord had offered at stage 1, which had not included any payment for damaged possessions.
Due to the complaint handling delays, the failure to address all points raised in the stage 1 and stage 2 complaints and the insufficient remedy, the Ombudsman finds maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
1. Reports of damp and mould.
2. Complaint.

Orders

It is ordered that, within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord provides the resident with an apology written by a senior member of staff.
It is ordered that, within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord provides the resident with a total payment of £1,250. This includes the payment of £500 previously offered by the landlord at stage 2 and the additional payment of £100 the landlord offered on 26 March 2024. It also comprises additional payments of:
1. £500 for the delayed treatment of the damp and mould, delayed remedial works, and the resulting distress, inconvenience and health concerns.
2. £150 for the complaint handling failures identified.

Recommendations

It is recommended that the landlord amends its damp and mould policy to include the provision of dehumidifiers where required and damp monitors in the property to monitor pre and post works for damp.