Haringey London Borough Council (202202745)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202202745

Haringey Council

3 November 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 handling of repairs to the resident’s boundary wall.

Background

2. The resident is a tenant of the landlord. The resident’s complaint was raised and dealt with by a representative acting on her behalf. For the purposes of clarity, the following report will refer to the resident and her representative singularly, as ‘the resident’.
3. On 21 October 2020 the landlord raised a job to repair an external wall at the resident’s property. The corresponding log noted that the wall was located at the rear of the property and was shared with a neighbouring hostel. It noted that the hostel used the other side of the wall as a bin store and that “the resident is worried that the wall is not a fire wall”.
4. The resident raised a complaint with the landlord on 19 February 2021 regarding several repair issues at her home. The resident also complained that the issue with the “firewall” had not been addressed. It is understood that the resident believed that the condition of the wall meant that it did not provide adequate fire-safety from the adjacent bin storage in the neighbouring property. The resident asked the landlord to address her safety concerns, and asked when it would replace the wall. In its subsequent stage one response, the landlord (mistakenly) advised that the wall had already been repaired.
5. On 22 March 2021 the landlord raised the following repair; “make repairs to brick wall in back garden, 3ft high bricks crumbling.” Correspondence between the resident and landlord, indicate that a pre-inspection of the wall was undertaken on 29 March 2021.
6. The resident chased the landlord for updates the following April, and escalated her complaint in August 2021, as the works had still not been progressed. In a final response to the resident’s complaint on 23 September 2021, the landlord said that it was is in the process of “procuring new contractors who will be assigned to this job and unfortunately the works on the wall has not been deemed urgent enough to be placed ahead of other pending jobs.” It apologised for the delays and said it would agree an appointment for the repair.
7. The following month it said it had considered the resident’s concern that the wall posed a safety hazard, and would recommend that it was assessed further in case interim repairs were needed to make the wall safe. It offered the resident a total of £306 compensation (broken down as £206 for delays in relation to the wall as well as other repair issues that the resident had raised, and £100 for the time and trouble taken in pursuing the complaint about the wall and other repair issues). It confirmed its complaints process had been completed and provided the resident referral details for this Service, if she remained dissatisfied.
8. On 22 November 2021 the landlord emailed the resident offering sincere apologies for the delay in completing the works on the fire wall. It said, ‘…we intend to contract these types of works but due to staffing issues we are still procuring for contractors.’ In June 2022 the resident chased up the works, and in response the landlord said that it was still unable to provide a firm date for when the works would be done and apologised for this.
9. The resident referred her complaint to this Service as the landlord had not completed the repairs to the wall as it had stated it would. She explained, ‘I feel unsafe with the wall not being intact because there was a temporary board put up in 2013 and that won’t protect me from fire, in fact it’s a fire hazard…The wall is next to commercial bins and the wall is covered with ply wood instead of having had the bricks re-built. If there is a fire in the bins it would put me at risk of fire spreading to my house.’ The resident said communication from the landlord had been very poor, and since the date of the final response to the complaint no repairs had been carried out and no date given for the work. In June 2022, the resident informed this Service that she had since paid to complete the works herself due to her concerns about safety.
10. To resolve the complaint, the resident would like the landlord to pay additional compensation for its failure to address the repair, and to cover the cost for the works she had undertaken to the wall.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

11. As the resident’s decision to complete the works to the wall herself occurred several months after the landlord’s final response to the complaint, this is not a matter that was considered via the formal complaint process. Generally, the Ombudsman will not investigate matters which have not been considered via a landlord’s full complaints procedure. This is because landlords first need to have the opportunity to consider and respond to a concern before the Ombudsman makes a determination. As such, this matter is not considered in this investigation.
12. Therefore, the resident may want to consider contacting the landlord to raise this issue, so that the landlord has an opportunity to respond at all stages of its complaints process. Should the resident remain dissatisfied with the outcome once the complaint process has been exhausted, she can raise the matter again with the Ombudsman.

The landlord’s handling of repairs to the wall

13. The resident’s tenancy agreement sets out that the landlord is responsible for repairs to the structure and outside parts of her property. This includes fences, walls and garden paths. It was therefore necessary for the landlord to investigate the resident’s reports of faults with the wall, and to take appropriate action to resolve any issues it identified.
14. The landlord’s repairs policy defines appointed repairs as those that can be completed in a single visit, which it will aim to complete in 28 days. It defines planned repairs as those where a job has to be pre-inspected. It states for these types of repairs, it will inspect within 28 days and inform the resident at inspection when the job will be undertaken. Whilst the landlord has not specified which category it classed the works under, it is apparent that the landlord has exceeded the basic measure of what would be considered a reasonable a timeframe for routine or planned repairs.
15. In its final response, the landlord appropriately acknowledged where its service was less than it should have been. It explained to the resident that its ability to complete the repair had been in part, impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, due to it prioritising emergency repairs for the majority of that time. However, it also acknowledged that “in this instance the main reason for the delays appears to be due to [its] poor communication and co-ordination by [its] repairs service.”
16. It was reasonable that the landlord acknowledged its mistakes, apologised for the resident’s experience and awarded compensation for the collective issues and time and trouble caused.
17. The landlord did not breakdown its compensation offer between the two issues it had addressed in its final response (the wall and another repair issue), and so it is not clear exactly how much of the £306 was for the failings with the wall repair. Given that two separate issues were addressed in the complaint, it seems reasonable to calculate that the compensation amount was spilt between these, meaning that £153 was for the wall.
18. The landlord’s apologies and compensation may have been appropriate remedies at the time of its final response, had it then followed through on the actions it said it would take, and completed the outstanding work. However, the landlord failed to provide a date for the repair as it said it would, and there is no evidence it carried out the inspection in light of the resident’s concerns about safety. Although the landlord eventually informed the resident in November 2021 that there were further delays due to difficulties it faced with staffing and with procuring contractors, it was unreasonable that it told the resident that it would update her “as soon as possible” following this, without providing a clear timeframe for when it would do so. The evidence does not show that the landlord took any further action following this, or made further enquiries into the matter, until the resident had to chase the repair again in June 2022.
19. A significant part of the resident’s complaint was her fire-safety concerns with the condition of the wall. However, the evidence does not show that the landlord made any further inspection of the issue following its final response with a view to make interim repairs to make the wall safe if necessary, despite its saying that that it would recommend this action in its final response. This was unreasonable as the landlord has not demonstrated that it took steps to satisfy itself, or the resident, if the wall was safe or not. Its failure to do so meant that it did not take the resident’s concerns seriously and will likely have caused her further distress and inconvenience.
20. This Service’s dispute resolution principles (published on our website) suggest that landlords should learn from outcomes. In this case, it would have been good practice for the landlord to use its complaints response to identify and communicate any lessons it could have learnt from the failings it identified, particularly regarding its poor communication. The omission of this, added to the continued delays and landlord’s continued lack of communication suggests that the landlord failed to learn from its mistakes.
21. Overall, the landlord did not keep the resident informed, nor arrange for repair work to be carried out within a reasonable timeframe in accordance with its policy. While the final response recognised this and offered compensation, there was a further failing to undertake the actions detailed in the final response, and carry out the repair.  The landlord should therefore ’’put right’ the overall inconvenience, distress and time and trouble the resident would likely have experienced over a considerable timeframe, in pursuing the matter, and an order has been made below to pay additional compensation. The amount is in line with this Service’s remedies guidance which suggests we may award £100 to £600 for circumstances where there has been acknowledged failings by the landlord, but no long term impact.

Determination

22. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in respect of its handling of repairs to the resident’s boundary wall.

Orders

23. Within four weeks of this report, the landlord is ordered to:
    1. Pay the resident further compensation of £250 for the adverse affect caused by failing to provide the resolutions offered in its final response to the complaint. This is in addition to the £306 offered, which it should also now pay if it has not already done so.
    2. Review any lessons it can learn from the failings identified in this case, and in light of this, considers what changes it can implement to its service delivery to prevent such instances from reoccurring. It should write to the Ombudsman with the outcome of the review.