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Clarion Housing Association Limited (202004507)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202004507

Clarion Housing Association Limited

25 August 2021


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:
    1. response to the resident’s request for reimbursement of the cost of replacing a lock to his front door.
    2. response to repairs required to a communal fire door.
    3. handling of the associated complaint.

Background and summary of events

Background

  1. The resident is a tenant of the landlord and his tenancy agreement with it confirms that it is responsible for repairing and maintaining the structure of the property.
  2. The landlord’s repairs and maintenance policy classifies an emergency repair as “one that presents an immediate danger to the resident or the public, or would jeopardise the health, safety or security of the resident”. Emergency repairs are to be attended within 24 hours and made safe, with further follow-on works to be carried out as required. Non-emergency repairs should be completed within 28 days.
  3. The landlord’s complaints policy provides for a two-stage complaints procedure where the complaint is to be responded to within ten working days at stage one and 20 working days at the final stage. If it is unable to meet these timeframes, it is to keep the resident informed, explain why the response will be late, and provide a timescale of the expected resolution of the complaint.
  4. The landlord’s compensation policy details compensation amounts which derive from this Service’s own remedies guidance. This policy states that awards of £50 to £250 are payable for a failure to meet service standards where the failure had no significant impact.

Summary of events

  1. The landlord’s records identify that an emergency repair was raised on 21 February 2020 to deal with a communal fire door which was off its hinges. This was followed by a routine order raised on 25 February 2020 to fit a temporary fire door. This order was cancelled, though the records provided do not identify the reason. A further routine order was raised on 20 May 2020 to fit a temporary fire door which was identified as completed on 26 May 2020. On 4 June 2020 a request was raised for a contractor to measure up for a replacement door. This was also identified as cancelled though again the records provided do not identify the reason. All the orders were identified as relating to a communal fire exit door in the same location.  
  2. The resident experienced a break-in at his property which caused damage to his front door. He informed the landlord on 5 June 2020 that he would need to call a locksmith to repair the damage. It replied to him later that day to advise him to call its repairs telephone line where it would be able to arrange a repair at no cost to him.
  3. The resident called the landlord’s contact centre later on 5 June 2020 when it arranged an emergency repair to be carried out within 24 hours.
  4. The landlord’s repair log showed that it attended the property later that day and completed the repair to secure the front door.
  5. The resident informed this Service that when the landlord’s worker attended on 5 June 2020, it advised him that it would be repairing one of the two locks on the door. He relayed that it had said the second lock would “in all likelihood not get replaced” and this was confirmed by the worker’s manager. The resident then arranged for a private locksmith to replace the second lock on his front door.
  6. On 17 June 2020, the resident emailed the landlord to request details of its buildings insurance, advising that he would be submitting a claim for compensation. It replied later that day to ask why he was seeking compensation as his recent repair to his front door was offered by its repairs service.
  7. In response to contact from the resident, the landlord emailed him on 6 July 2020 to inform him that it could not reimburse him for the cost of the private locksmith he had instructed himself.
  8. The resident raised a stage one complaint with the landlord on 7 July 2020 in which he asserted that he had followed its procedures, the damage caused to his door was not “of [his] making”, and it had attended to only “part fix” the damage. He contended that it had made no commitment to fixing the rest of the damage and he had spent £420 to complete the repair; therefore, he wanted reimbursement of this.
  9. The landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint on 10 July and emailed him on 15 July 2020 to advise him the complaint response may be delayed due to high workloads. It issued a stage one complaint response to him on 24 July 2020 in which it maintained that it would not be reimbursing his costs for repairing the door, as it provided a “free service for repairs… and [he] was fully aware of this process”. The landlord did not uphold the resident’s complaint as it did not recognise any failures in its service to him. Its complaint response provided the telephone number for the complaint handler and the central customer services’ email address and webpage if the resident had any questions about the response; it did not provide information to him on how to escalate the complaint.
  10. The resident replied to the landlord’s complaint handler on 29 July 2020 to express his dissatisfaction with the stage one response and asked how he could escalate his complaint. After not receiving a response, on 3 August 2020, he advised the landlord’s customer service team that he had posted his complaint on Trustpilot. In this, the resident added that the landlord had allowed a communal door to remain unrepaired which he believed had impacted on the security of the building. The landlord’s stage one complaint handler emailed the resident on 10 August 2020 to advise his complaint escalation had been relayed to the appropriate team, and it acknowledged his complaint by email on 21 August 2020.
  11. The landlord emailed the resident on 1 September 2020 to apologise for its delayed response due to staff absence and advised that it would issue its final stage complaint response by 21 September 2020. In this email it requested further information from the resident which he provided on 7 September 2020 when he contended that its out-of-hours telephone service was not working as intended and therefore it did not provide a timely response to him. The resident also said that the worker who attended did not fully repair the damage “saying that the other lock would take a long time”. 
  12. The landlord issued its final stage complaint response to the resident on 16 September 2020. In this, it acknowledged a concern about the damaged communal door being a security vulnerability. The landlord explained that this had undergone a temporary repair on 26 May 2020, after receiving a report about it on 20 May 2020. It asserted that, in any event, individual doors to properties were there to provide security to each property.
  13. The landlord noted the resident’s statement that its repairs team line was not available in the evening and highlighted that, outside of working hours, an automated option was available to connect residents to its emergency repairs line which was available 24 hours a day, all year round, and provided a 24 hours response service. It relayed that it had a record of his call at 2.58pm on 5 June 2020 when he reported the damage to his door and it raised an emergency repair for him.
  14. The landlord noted that when it attended the resident’s property to carry out the emergency repair, he requested that the secondary fob entry lock on the door was reinstated. It relayed that it had explained that the door was secure once the lock had been repaired and he would need to speak to the property management agents regarding the replacement of the fob entry system. The landlord added that, in any event, the fob entry system had been decommissioned and did not impact the security of any property as each was secured with a Yale lock as standard.
  15. The landlord did not uphold the complaint as it found no failure in its response to the resident’s request for the door repair. It acknowledged, however, there had been “problems” with its handling of the complaint. The landlord noted that it had received the resident’s initial dissatisfaction with the stage one complaint response on 29 July 2020 and further contact from him was required before it acknowledged the complaint on 21 August 2020. In recognition of this delay, it awarded compensation of £50 and confirmed that this was its final response.

Assessment and findings

The landlord’s response to the resident’s request for reimbursement of the cost of replacing a lock to his front door

  1. The landlord’s tenancy agreement, above at point 2, confirms that it is responsible for maintaining the structure of the property, which includes the external doors of the property. Its repairs and maintenance policy, above at point 3, confirms that a repair which affects the safety or security of the resident would be considered an emergency repair. Therefore, it was reasonable for it to raise an emergency repair once it was informed on 5 June 2020 that the resident’s front door was not secure; it is evident that this was completed later that day, within the 24-hour timeframe specified in its policy.
  2. It is noted that the resident was dissatisfied that both locks on his front door were not repaired on 5 June 2020, leading him to describe the repair as incomplete. As specified in the landlord’s repairs and maintenance policy at point 3, its responsibility is to make safe any emergency repairs. It is not disputed that the landlord repaired the Yale lock on the resident’s front door. While there may have been two locks on the door, provided that one is in working order, this secures the property. Therefore, the landlord acted reasonably and in accordance with its policy in repairing the Yale lock.
  3. There exists some dispute about what the resident was told by the landlord about the remaining repair to the second lock on the property. As there is no independent evidence corroborating either party’s account of events, it is not possible to confirm what advice was provided to him. Nevertheless, the landlord responded appropriately in attending the property within 24 hours of the resident’s report of his front door being damaged to secure the property. There is no evidence of a failure in the landlord’s response.
  4. This Service would expect a landlord to ensure that a front door to a property is secure and the lack of a second lock on a front door does not render it insecure. While it is understandable that this may have been less reassuring to the resident, and there was no evidence that the landlord definitively refused to replace this lock, his decision to employ a locksmith to replace the second lock on the door was made of his own volition. It was therefore reasonable for the landlord to decline to reimburse him for the cost of replacing this lock.
  5. Additionally, the landlord provided adequate explanation that the second ‘fob’ lock was the responsibility of the property management agent but in any case, it had been decommissioned and did not render the door unsecure.

The landlord’s response to repairs required to a communal fire door

  1. Although not raised as part of the stage one complaint the landlord used its discretion at stage two to respond to the resident’s concern regarding repairs to the communal door. The landlord’s repairs log does indicate a delay in carrying out repairs to the communal door which is not reflected in the landlord’s final response. There is also insufficient clarity on the expected timescale for completion of the repair and in particular installation of a locking mechanism in its final response. It was reasonable for the landlord to confirm that the individual flat front entrance doors are there to provide the security needed for the property. However, lockable communal doors do provide some additional security and although this is not something a landlord is obliged to provide, where they are in place it is reasonable to expect they are repaired within timescales.
  2. This was a period when lockdown restrictions may have had an impact on the repairs service although the landlord did not identify this as a cause of any delay in its final complaint response. While the Ombudsman does not have evidence that the resident raised the matters of the communal door with the landlord prior to the escalation of the complaint process in August 2020, having accepted it as part of the complaint there should have been a fuller explanation on this issue in the landlord’s final response. This was therefore a service failure for which compensation should be paid.   

The landlord’s handling of the associated complaint

  1. The landlord acknowledged in its final stage complaint response that there had been “problems” in its handling of the complaint. It noted that the escalation of the complaint had not been acknowledged until 21 August 2020, after further involvement was required of the resident and 17 working days after he first expressed his dissatisfaction with the stage one response. Furthermore, the stage one response did not provide adequate information on the steps available to him to escalate his complaint, in the event of his continued dissatisfaction.
  2. This is at odds with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (‘the Code’) which specifies that at the completion of each stage of a complaint, the resident should be informed of the complaint stage at which the complaint had been considered and be provided details on how to escalate the complaint; it is noted that these details were omitted from the landlord’s stage one complaint response.
  3. It is noted that the stage one complaint response was provided to the resident seven working days in excess of the ten working day timeframe specified in its complaints policy, above at point 4. However, the landlord acted reasonably and in accordance with its policy in advising the resident of the delay on 15 July 2020 and explaining why there was a delay. It did not provide an updated timeframe to him, but its subsequent stage one response was not excessively delayed and there is no evidence of any detriment caused to the resident by this.
  4. The landlord offered £50 compensation to the resident for its failures in the handling of the complaint. It should be clarified that in considering compensation awards, the Ombudsman does not seek to punish the landlord, or reimburse all of the resident’s costs; instead, compensation is awarded to recognise that a failure has occurred, and the amount offered is proportionate to the level of likely detriment he experienced.
  5. While the landlord did not acknowledge all of its failures in the handling of the complaint, its offer of compensation was a reasonable amount which was broadly in line with both its compensation policy and the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance where there were failures which “had an impact on the complainant but was of short duration and may not have significantly affected the overall outcome for the complainant”. Therefore, this Service finds that it made a reasonable offer of redress to the resident which was proportionate to the level of likely detriment caused by the failures it exhibited.

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in its response to the resident’s request for reimbursement of the cost of replacing a lock to his front door.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was a service failure by the landlord in its response to the resident on repairs required to a communal fire door.
  3. In accordance with paragraph 55(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord made an offer of redress to the resident prior to investigation which resolves the complaint about its handling of the associated complaint satisfactorily. 

Order

  1. The landlord to pay the resident compensation of £50 for any distress and inconvenience experienced by the resident in relation to its response to the resident on repairs required to a communal fire door.

The landlord to confirm compliance with the above compensation order to the Ombudsman within four weeks.

Reasons

  1. The landlord responded reasonably and in accordance with the tenancy agreement and its repairs and maintenance policy in securing the resident’s front door and it was reasonable for it to decline to reimburse him for his costs in repairing the secondary lock.
  2. The landlord’s repairs log indicates a delay in carrying out repairs to the communal fire door which is not reflected in the landlord’s final response. There is also insufficient clarity on the expected timescale for completion of the repair and in particular installation of a locking mechanism in its final response.
  3. The landlord recognised some of its failures in the handling of the complaint and offered a reasonable level of redress which proportionately addressed the likely detriment caused to the resident by its failures.

Recommendations

  1. The landlord should:
    1. Pay the resident the £50 compensation that it offered him in its final stage complaint response.
    2. Carry out complaints handling refresher training to ensure that complaints are handled in accordance with policy and sufficient information is provided to complainants when pursuing a complaint.