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Guinness Housing Association Limited (202311620)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202311620

Guinness Housing Association Limited

19 September 2023

 

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 concerns how the landlord responded to the residents reports of tiles coming loose and mould in the bathroom of the property.

Background

  1. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord, which is a housing association. The property is a house.
  2. On 7 November 2022 the resident called the landlord to report a repair required to the bathroom in the property. The landlord’s repair logs described the issue as bathroom tiles coming loose. A work order was raised as a non-emergency repair with a target completion date of 5 December 2022. The resident also sent an email to the landlord on 7 November 2022 providing more information about the issue. She explained that there was black mould present in the bathroom where tiles had fallen off which was putting her children’s health at risk. The resident requested an acknowledgement from the landlord.
  3. The resident wrote again to the landlord on 24 November 2022 and raised a complaint about how it was handling the issue. She described the elements of her complaint as:
    1. In light of the negative health effects caused by black mould, the landlord should be treating the repair as an emergency.
    2. The bathroom tiles were only put up a year ago and it was unacceptable that they had already started falling off the wall.
    3. The landlord had not responded to the email she sent on 7 November 2022 or contacted her to book an appointment.
  4. The landlord sent a stage one complaint response to the resident on 8 December 2022, then a stage two complaint response on 23 February 2022. In its responses, the landlord:
    1. Explained that it had reviewed the call recording of the repair report made by the resident on 7 November 2022. It noted that the resident had described the issue as tiles having fallen off the bathroom wall and mould being present around the bath sealant. It stated that it was satisfied that its staff member had acted appropriately in not raising an emergency repair as the mould on the sealant did not present an immediate health and safety risk to the household.
    2. Noted that following the resident’s call, it had arranged an appointment for 7 December 2022. However, it did not send a confirmation email for this date which resulted in the appointment failing due to no access. The appointment was rearranged for 22 December 2022 where the repair was successfully completed. The landlord apologised for not completing the repair within its timescale for a non-emergency and its poor communication which caused the 7 December 2022 appointment to fail.
    3. Apologised for not responding to the resident’s 7 November 2022 email within its two-working day timescale, which resulted in the resident having to raise a formal complaint.
    4. Offered £75 compensation, which it broke down as £25 for the missed appointment on 7 December 2022, and £50 for its poor communication and the inconvenience that this caused to the resident.

Assessment and findings

Relevant policies and procedures

  1. The landlord’s repairs policy categorises its repair types as “Emergency” (respond and make-safe within 24 hours) and “Routine” (complete within 28 calendar days). The landlord defines an emergency repair as a repair that is required to “address an immediate health and safety risk”. As examples of what it considers an emergency, the policy suggests:
    1. “Complete loss of power
    2. No cold water supply.
    3. No heating or hot water during the winter.
    4. A flood or leak that cannot be contained or causes a risk of electric shock.
    5. Doors or ground floor windows that are not secure.
    6. The only toilet being broken.
    7. Smoke and/or carbon monoxide alarms (continuous noise).
    8. Exposed/damaged asbestos.
    9. Anything else that may present a serious health and safety risk.”
  2. The landlord’s compensation policy states that it will consider offering financial redress “when we are at fault and an apology or other remedy alone is not sufficient”. The policy recommends a payment of up to £250 when “the issue was resolved within a reasonable time which resulted in minor inconvenience having some impact on the customer or the household”.

How the landlord handled repairs to the bathroom

  1. When the resident reported the condition of the bathroom, the landlord had a duty to respond to the matter in line with the obligations set out in the tenancy agreement and its published policies and procedures.
  2. It is not in dispute that the issue of the fallen bathroom tiles and mould on the sealant was resolved by the landlord during the 22 December 2022 appointment. However, the resident received a poor level of service from the landlord up to this point. The landlord did not send an acknowledgement of the 7 December 2022 appointment, which caused it to fail and the work to be completed outside its 28-calendar day timescale for a routine repair. The landlord also did not respond to the resident’s email sent on 7 November 2022. This resulted in clear inconvenience to the resident, who had to raise a complaint in order to receive updates on the status of the repair and to receive an explanation on why the landlord did not consider the issue an emergency.
  3. Therefore, it was appropriate for the landlord to apologise to the resident, offer compensation and explain what steps it had taken to improve its service. This position is in line with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles of: be fair, put things right and learn from outcomes.
  4. The landlord acted fairly in acknowledging its mistakes and apologising to the resident. It put things right by completing the repairs to the bathroom and offering £75 compensation. It looked to learn from its mistakes by improving its communication with its tenants. In the stage two complaint response, the landlord informed the resident that it had provided feedback to its staff concerns delays in responding to correspondence and its communication with residents during repairs.
  5. The landlord’s offer of £75 compensation was calculated in line with its compensation policy detailed above. This payment was also broadly in line with this Ombudsman’s own remedies guidance (which is available on our website). This recommends a payment of £50 to £100 in cases of service failure of a short duration that may not have significantly affected the overall outcome. This includes distress and inconvenience, time and trouble, disappointment, loss of confidence, and delays in getting matters resolved. A payment of £75 that recognised the failed appointment on 7 December 2022, its poor communication while the repair was outstanding and the inconvenience caused to the resident in having to raise a complaint in order to receive updates on the status of the repair was reasonable in the circumstances. The measures taken by the landlord to redress what went wrong were proportionate to the impact that its failures had on the resident.
  6. The resident has also disputed the landlord’s explanation given in its complaint response as to why it did not consider the condition of the bathroom to be an emergency. The information and advice provided by the landlord in the response was in line with the guidance given in its repairs policy detailed above.
  7. From the information provided by the resident regarding her phone call on 7 November 2022, it was reasonable for the landlord not to raise an emergency repair. This is because the condition of the bathroom did not pose an immediate threat of injury to the household or major damage to the fabric of the building or neighbouring properties. Therefore, it was reasonable for the staff member who spoke to the resident to follow the guidance given in the landlord’s repairs policy and to raise the work as a routine repair.
  8. Moreover, when an emergency repair is raised, it will assess and look to make-safe any immediate threats. Any required follow-on work would then be raised as a routine repair. Therefore, an emergency repair would not have resulted in the work to refix the tile and clear the mould from the sealant being completed as this would have been raised as follow-on work once the emergency visit had identified and remedied any immediate threats.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord made an offer of redress to the resident in respect of her reports of tiles coming loose and mould in the bathroom of the property, which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, satisfactorily resolves the complaint.

Recommendations

  1. As the finding of reasonable redress was reached based on the landlord’s offer of £75 compensation, it is recommended that the landlord pays this to the resident if it has yet to do so.