Ashford Borough Council (202123303)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202123303

Ashford Borough Council

12 July 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 response to the resident’s reports of a leak from the property above.

Background

2. The resident has been a leaseholder of the landlord since 30 January 2017. The landlord is a local authority. The property is a flat in a communal building.
3. The landlord’s repair logs state that on 6 April 2021 the resident’s neighbour in the property above reported a leak. The landlord’s repairs contractor attended the neighbour’s property on several occasions throughout April and May 2021 and its records indicate that the leak was resolved on 21 May 2021.
4. On 13 August 2021, the resident made a formal complaint in which he noted the following:
   1. Due to the landlord’s delays in identifying and resolving the leak, there was damage caused to his ceiling.
   2. He subsequently had to be decanted from his property for three weeks while his insurer repaired his ceiling and removed asbestos.
5. As a resolution to the complaint, the resident requested compensation in recognition of the distress and inconvenience the matter had caused.
6. The landlord provided its stage one response on 20 August 2021. The landlord advised that its initial non-invasive investigations to find the source of the leak had been unsuccessful. It subsequently had to arrange for the removal of the neighbour’s fitted bathroom in order to complete the repair works, which had taken time. It concluded that it was satisfied with the works carried out by its contractor.
7. Following an escalation request by the resident, the landlord provided its stage two response on 11 October 2021. The landlord provided greater detail about the actions it had taken and noted a timeline of events from when the leak was first reported up to when it was repaired. It also provided the resident with copies of notes from the contractors who attended which explained the works carried out on each visit to attempt to solve the leak and the subsequent difficulty in locating the source of the leak.
8. The landlord acknowledged that while it was satisfied that is contractor had acted appropriately in locating the leak, once the leak had been located it took three days to complete repairs. The landlord stated that this work should have been completed in a timelier manner. It apologised to the resident and offered £200 compensation for the delay.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

9. In his correspondence with this service and with the landlord, then resident has stated that his health condition should have been taken into account by the landlord in its compensation calculation.
10. The Ombudsman does not dispute the resident’s comments regarding his health, however, it is beyond the expertise of this service to draw conclusions on the causation of, or liability for, impacts on health and wellbeing. Matters of personal injury or damage to health, their investigation and compensation, are not part of the complaints process, and are more appropriately addressed by way of the courts as a personal injury claim. The resident should consider independent legal advice in this regard.
11. Nonetheless, consideration has been given to the general distress and inconvenience which the situation may have caused the resident and how the landlord responded.

Investigation of the leak

12. The lease agreement notes that the landlord has a responsibility to maintain the structure of the building, as well as the pipes in common areas. The landlord’s repairs policy notes that leaks are considered ‘urgent repairs’, which will be attended to withing five working days.
13. The Ombudsman acknowledges that it is not always possible to complete repair works within the targeted timeframes of a repairs policy, and that circumstances beyond the landlord’s control, such as access and the availability of specialists, can cause reasonable delays. It should also be noted that it can take more than one attempt to resolve issues such as leaks as it can be difficult to identify the cause of an issue from the outset. In some case different repairs may need to be attempted before the matter is resolved. The Ombudsman will therefore assess whether a landlord’s response was reasonable in the circumstances.
14. The landlord’s repair logs and internal correspondence note the timeline of its investigation and repairs as follows:
    1. The resident’s neighbour reported a leak on 6 April 2021. Work was then undertaken to clean out the gullies and reseal the shower.
    2. Following a further report, the shower was replaced on 15 April 2021, but the leak remained.
    3. A section of floor was removed on 22 April 2020 to inspect the space between the floor and ceiling of the property below. The seals and gullies between the properties were subsequently renewed.
    4. Following a further report of a leak on 14 May 20221, additional work was carried out to seal the bathroom. The contractor returned on 18 May 2021 where a blockage and a burst pipe beneath the shower was discovered and identified as the source of the leak.
    5. Works were undertaken on 19, 20 and 21 May 2021 to remove the shower and the floor below the shower. A section of pipework was then replaced, and a new shower tray was installed. Between 18 and 21 May 2021 the bathroom was not used by the neighbour.
15. While it is evident that it took the landlord multiple attempts to solve the leak, based on the evidence provided to this service, its attempted repairs on each occasion (prior to the final repair) were reasonable and were carried out within a reasonable time period. The landlord’s position in its complaint responses that it was satisfied with the initial steps its contractors took to identify and address the leak was therefore reasonable.
16. However, the landlord acknowledged that the three days it took to complete the final repairs having identified the issue was not acceptable. The landlord apologised and offered £200 compensation for its service failure.
17. Where there are admitted failings by a landlord, the Ombudsman’s role is to consider whether the redress offered by the landlord resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this, the Ombudsman takes into account whether the landlord’s offer of redress was in line with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles: to be fair, put things right and learn from outcomes.
18. While the three days taken by the landlord’s contractors were within the targeted timeframe noted in its repairs policy, given the impact the ongoing issues had on the resident, it was appropriate for the landlord to have acknowledged that in the circumstances, it could have acted faster. It endeavoured to put things right by apologising to the resident and awarding appropriate compensation. It looked to learn from its errors by escalating the matter internally to management to identify lessons that could be learned. The landlord explained to the resident that its repairs manager and a manager from the contractor were involved in the stage two investigation of the complaint that led to the determination that work to repair the leak took too long. They will therefore be able to learn from these identified errors.
19. The resident has suggested that the compensation should have been in the region of £500 to £1,000. The Ombudsman’s awards of compensation are not intended to be punitive and are not the equivalent of damages that might be ordered by a court. In assessing an appropriate level of compensation, this service takes account of a range of factors including any distress and inconvenience caused by the issues, the amount of time and effort expended on pursuing the matter with the landlord, and the level of detriment caused by the landlord’s actions.
20. The compensation offered was made broadly in line with the Ombudsman’s own remedies guidance (which is available on the Housing Ombudsman website). This suggests a payment of £50 to £250 in cases of service failure resulting in some impact on a complainant.
21. The Ombudsman notes that the repairs required to the resident’s ceiling had a significant impact due to the need to be decanted while repairs were carried out. Based on the evidence received by this service, however, this decant was in part due to the need to remove asbestos, which was beyond the landlord’s control. As noted above, while there were multiple unsuccessful attempts by the landlord to address the leak, these were reasonable in the circumstances. While the timeframe in which the final repairs could have been improved, it would not be proportional to attribute the need for the resident to be decanted on this delay.
22. The delay would, however, have caused frustration for the resident, and so it was appropriate for the landlord to acknowledge this and apologise. In the Ombudsman’s opinion, the amount of £200 compensation offered by the resident was reasonable to reflect this distress and inconvenience caused by its delay.

Determination (decision)

23. In accordance with paragraph 55(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, and in the Ombudsman’s opinion, there was reasonable redress offered by the landlord for its service failure regarding its response to the resident’s reports of a leak from the property above.

Recommendations

24. Within four weeks of the date of this determination, the landlord to contact the resident and reiterate its offer of £200 compensation if this is yet to have been accepted.