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Hammersmith and Fulham Council (202222877)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202222877

Hammersmith and Fulham Council

27 March 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

  1. The complaint concerns:
    1. The landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of damp in the property.
    2. The landlord’s handling of repairs required to resolve a leak in the property.

Determination (jurisdictional decision)

  1. When a complaint is brought to the Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
  2. After carefully considering all the evidence, I have determined that the complaints as set out above, are not within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.

Summary of events

  1. The complainant initially raised a complaint on 18 January 2022 which exhausted the landlord’s complaints process at stage 2 on 24 October 2022. The complaint related to the landlord’s response to the complainant’s request to be contacted by the damp specialist team.
  2. Within its response the landlord apologised for the delay in responding to the complaint and for the damp team not returning the complainant’s call. It stated that there was a leak from a blocked drain from the balcony above. It offered compensation of £400 as a good will gesture.
  3. The complainant contacted this Service on 10 March 2023, she stated that she was unhappy with the landlord’s final response as the works that were scheduled to take place in October and November 2022 had not been completed by March 2023. As a remedy she wanted the landlord and its contractors to come to agree about the source of the leak, for all outstanding works to be completed and the landlord to provide an explanation for the delays in completing these works.
  4. The Ombudsman became aware that the complainant was not the named tenant on the tenancy agreement for the address. This Service contacted the complainant and the named tenant on 4 March 2024 to explain that the named tenant would need to provide authorisation for the Ombudsman to investigate the complaint further. No response was received.

Reasons

  1. Paragraph 25 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme lists the people who can make complaints to the Ombudsman as follows:
    1. A person who is or has been in a landlord/tenant relationship with a member. This includes people who have a lease, tenancy, licence to occupy, service agreement, or other arrangement to occupy premises owned or managed by a member. If the complaint is made by an ex-occupier, they must have had a legal relationship with the member at the time that the matter complained of arose.
    2. An applicant for a property owned or managed by a member.
    3. A representative of any of the people above who is authorised by them to make a complaint on their behalf.
    4. A representative of any of the people above who does not have the capacity to authorise a representative to act on their behalf. The Ombudsman must be satisfied that the representative has the legitimate authority to act on the person’s behalf; or
    5. Person with authority to make a complaint on behalf of any of the people above who is deceased.
  2. Paragraph 41(a) of the Scheme states that the Ombudsman cannot consider complaints which were not referred to the Ombudsman by one of the people who can use the Scheme under paragraph 25.
  3. The complainant is not named as a tenant on the tenancy agreement for the property. As such she does not have a landlord/tenant relationship with the landlord and does not meet the criteria for the complaint to be considered under paragraph 25(a) of the Scheme.
  4. The Ombudsman has not received any further evidence to confirm that the complainant meets any of the other criteria set out in paragraph 25 of the Scheme and the complaint is therefore outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction to consider under paragraph 41(a) of the Scheme.