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Clarion Housing Association Limited (202009259)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202009259

Clarion Housing Association Limited

17 May 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. This complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of repairs needed to a kitchen tap.

Background and summary of events

Background

  1. The resident is an assured shorthold tenant and his tenancy began on 22 January 2007. The landlord has described the property as a third floor flat.
  2. The tenancy agreement obliges the landlord to ‘keep in repair and working order’ any installations for the supply of water.
  3. The landlord has a repairs and maintenance policy that says it will offer residents an appointment within 28 calendar days for non-emergency repairs.
  4. The landlord’s complaints policy sets out a two-stage complaint process with timescales of 10 working days for the stage one complaint and 20 working days for the review. Its complaint principles state that it will ‘use lessons learned from the complaints to improve our service and prevent complaints’.
  5. The landlord’s compensation policy allows for awards to be made for loss of service, out of pocket expenses and missed appointments. The landlord is required to award £15 when it fails to keep an appointment without giving 24 hours’ notice and awards a maximum of £50 for overdue repairs.

Summary of Events

  1. A repairs job was raised on 3 August 2020 due to a report of a problem with a kitchen tap. That job was cancelled on 13 August 2020 but the landlord recorded that it attended the property on that date under a different repairs order. The job was closed on 13 August 2020 and it was noted that no issues had been found with the tap.
  2. A new repairs job was raised on 14 August 2020 with the reason given that the kitchen tap had begun to leak intermittently. The landlord’s records show that this job was cancelled with no reason given why – another repairs job was raised on 24 August 2020.
  3. The resident’s councillor wrote to the landlord on 25 August 2020. He advised that the resident had raised concerns that:
    1. a plumber attended an appointment to fix the resident’s toilet but had not been made aware of the leaking kitchen tap so another appointment had to be scheduled for 20 August 2020
    2. the appointment on 20 August 2020 had been missed and there had been no reply to the resident’s enquiries to the contact centre
    3. the contact centre subsequently advised on 24 August 2020 that it had no record of why the appointment had been missed and rescheduled it for 9 September 2020.

The councillor asked for the matter to be considered as a complaint and for compensation to be awarded for the missed appointment and poor service.

  1. The landlord’s repairs records show that the landlord attended the resident’s property on 9 September 2020. It noted that ‘a new tap had been ordered and would take 2 hours to replace’.
  2. The landlord wrote to the resident on 10 September 2020 (this was a stage one complaint response). It concluded that:
    1. its records showed that when the plumber attended on 13 August 2020, no fault to the tap was found although its records did mention a mixer tap replacement
    2. an appointment was scheduled with the resident for 20 August 2020 but it was not passed to an operative
    3. a follow-up appointment was scheduled for 9 September 2020 which was attended but works were not completed because a mixer tap had not been sourced
    4. the mixer tap had now been ordered but the resident had advised that he had other commitments until late September 2020
    5. compensation of £98 was calculated which was composed of £30 for two missed appointments (20 August 2020 and 9 September 2020), £18 for the overdue repairs and £50 in recognition of the resident having to travel 100 miles from his holiday home unnecessarily on two occasions.
  3. The councillor wrote to the landlord on 7 October 2020. He acknowledged that compensation had been offered and that an appointment had been scheduled for 30 September 2020. He advised that this appointment had been missed too and asked for the complaint to be escalated for a review of the case so meaningful action could be taken to improve the repairs service.
  4. The landlord’s internal records show that a regional director reviewed the circumstances of the case on 2 November 2020 and considered relevant service improvements that the landlord was in process of making.
  5. A new repairs job was raised on 2 November 2020 – it was attended to on 3 November 2020 and the landlord noted the tap was renewed.
  6. The landlord issued a stage two complaint response to the resident on 13 November 2020. It reiterated the stage one complaint findings and £98 compensation award and concluded that:
    1. an additional £15 compensation was awarded for the 30 September 2020 missed appointment, bringing the total award to £113
    2. the job had been rescheduled to 3 November 2020 and completed that day
    3. it would use the resident’s feedback regarding the operative’s actions on 9 September 2020 to improve performance
    4. additional resources had been provided to the local planning and operational functions to meet demand of quantity and quality
    5. the planning team had undergone training to assist with monitoring of operatives’ movements and communication with residents
    6. a software package had been implemented which also captured ‘instant feedback from the tenant in regards to their repairs experience’
    7. positive and negative feedback was used to performance manage individual operatives.
  7. The resident’s councillor approached this Service in November 2020 and advised that the resident was seeking more reassurance on service improvements within the landlord’s repairs service and suggested that the landlord should pro-actively follow up missed appointments.

Assessment and findings

  1. In reaching a decision we consider whether the landlord has kept to the law, followed proper procedure and good practice, and acted in a reasonable way. Our duty is to determine complaints by reference to what is, in this Service’s opinion, fair in all the circumstances of the case.
  2. The Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles are:
  • Be fair
  • Put things right
  • Learn from outcomes

This Service will apply these principles when considering whether any redress is appropriate and proportionate for any maladministration or service failure identified.

  1. It is not disputed that there was service failure on the part of the landlord in its handling of the resident’s kitchen tap repair as:
    1. it took almost three months between August-November 2020 to complete the repair, albeit a part of this delay period was because the resident had other commitments during September 2020
    2. it had failed to attend appointments on 20 August 2020 and 30 September 2020
    3. it had attended an appointment on 9 September 2020 without the required parts so no works were undertaken.

The landlord’s handling of the repair was therefore inappropriate as its policy sets out that it should have been completed within 28 days and should have notified the resident 24 hours in advance if an appointment was to be missed.

  1. The landlord apologised for these failures through the complaints process and awarded compensation of £68 in recognition of the delay and time and trouble caused to the resident. This is more than the landlord’s maximum repairs compensation level set out in its compensation policy and is in the range recommended within the Ombudsman’s Remedies Guidance where there ‘has been service failure which had an impact on the complainant but was of short duration and may not have significantly affected the overall outcome for the complainant’. The landlord was responsible for a delay of more than one month beyond its repairs policy timescales for a tap leak that had been described as intermittent – the compensation awarded was therefore proportionate given the circumstances of the case.
  2. The landlord also apologised and awarded £45 compensation for the three appointments that its operatives either missed or failed to bring necessary parts for. The compensation awarded was in accordance with the landlord’s compensation policy to award £15 per missed appointment and was therefore appropriate.
  3. When the resident’s representative escalated the complaint, he advised that the resident sought ‘an assurance that meaningful action is being taken to resolve these persistent service failures’. At the final stage of its complaints process, the landlord arranged for its regional director to consider the case and the resident was advised that specific measures were being taken to address repairs service failures of this type, namely:
    1. review of services offered in the resident’s geographical area
    2. performance management of individuals using case feedback
    3. training of ‘back office’ staff to improve contractor monitoring and customer communication
    4. a new IT package so residents could track operatives themselves
    5. provision of additional resources for planning and operations.

The measures outlined by the landlord to improve service delivery were relevant to the resident’s complaint and were proposed by a senior member of staff within the organisation – this demonstrated that the landlord had considered the resident’s concerns and was willing to offer him reassurance as to how it aimed to avoid service failures of this kind recurring in future.

  1. In summary, the combination of the landlord’s apologies offered, service improvements proposed and compensation awarded represented appropriate redress for the service failures identified in the way it handled the resident’s kitchen tap repairs. In accordance with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles, it was fair in its assessment of the service failure, took steps to put things right and demonstrated it had considered learning points.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 55 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has offered reasonable redress to the failures identified in its handling of the resident’s reports of repairs needed to a kitchen tap.

Reasons

  1. The landlord delayed in completing a non-emergency repair and failed to keep appointments. However, it has accepted and apologised for these service failures, awarded proportionate compensation and advised of appropriate means by which it expects to be able to improve service delivery.

Recommendations

  1. The landlord to write to the resident and his councillor to:
    1. update them on progress made since November 2020 in the areas of service improvement it outlined in its final complaint response
    2. advise them of the impact these have had on its repairs service delivery
    3. answer the resident’s suggestion that landlord staff should pro-actively contact residents to reschedule appointments that their contractors have missed.

The landlord should confirm its intentions in regard to these recommendations to this Service within four weeks of the date of this report.