Hyde Housing Association Limited (202012113)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202012113

Hyde Housing Association Limited

24 April 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:-
   1. The landlord’s handling of repairs to the garden paths at the resident’s property;
   2. The landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Background and summary of events

Agreements, policies and procedures

2. The landlord’s Responsive Repairs Procedure separates repairs into two categories, emergency and “anytime” with timescales for attendance at 24 hours and 20 working days respectively.  Non emergency major repairs are dealt with separately.
3. The procedure sets out that repairs to paths, steps or other external means of access; and garden paths that are not used to gain access to the main property door are generally treated as the responsibility of the landlord.
4. The landlord has a procedure for dealing with aids and adaptations with the following provisions:
   1. It separates out adaptations into two categories: ‘minor’ and ‘major’. Minor changes costing under £1000 can be made by the landlord without a referral from OT. Examples include the installation of grab rails and half steps.  Major adaptations are defined as those works recommended following assessment by OT and which cost over £1000. It states that major adaptations will usually only be carried out where the resident has successfully been awarded a “disabled facilities grant” (DFG) – available from the local authority.
   2. With regard to minor adaptations, the landlord will assess what is required and determine whether the works are within its funding limits and assess if it has the budget to fund them. It can require the resident to apply for a DFG and direct them to get assistance from OT. For major adaptations, the landlord’s policy is to advise the resident to contact their GP or social services to arrange an OT assessment.
   3. If a DFG is applied for, but refused, the landlord’s policy is to consider options for alternative funding and / or to review whether rehousing the resident to more suitable accommodation might benefit them.
5. The landlord’s Complaints Procedure sets out how it will approach dealing with complaints. It states that it will try to resolve complaints informally to begin with but if this is unsuccessful, it operates a two-stage formal procedure, as follows:
   1. Stage One consists of a full investigation with a response to the resident as soon as possible and not later than 20 working days. The landlord aims to discuss the issue by telephone within two working days of the complaint being made, with a formal acknowledgement letter being sent shortly after. During the investigation, the landlord aims to keep the resident updated as to progress. The resident can escalate the complaint to the next stage if they remain dissatisfied.
   2. Stage Two consists of a review by a more senior staff member, again with a response being given as soon as possible and not later than 20 working days from the escalation date. The landlord does not offer to re-investigate the facts of the complaint, but rather to respond to the resident’s reasons for the escalation request and review the proposals it had already put forward for putting things right.
6. The landlord’s Complaints and Compensation Policy sets out its approach to offering compensation to residents where it considers it appropriate to do so. It states such payments are discretionary and may be offered where it has failed to deliver a service to the advertised standard; in recognition of time and trouble by the resident in making a complaint; for distress and inconvenience; and to reflect where the resident has suffered a loss as a result of a service failure.
7. Its Compensation Procedure confirms that a payment to reflect “distress and inconvenience” can be made as well as a payment for “time and trouble” and the two concepts should not be “confused”.
8. The procedure allows for goodwill compensatory offers up to £25 to acknowledge service failures at an early stage. Failing that, compensation is assessed based upon the severity of the impact on the resident that the service failure has caused, ranging from no real impact, through to severe and prolonged consequences. The amounts are then set out as follows:

Summary of events

9. The resident and her partner are joint tenants of the property. The partner has serious health concerns and requires regular deliveries of oxygen to their home. The resident considers the pathways around the property and leading up to the back door are/have been in a poor state of repair. She considers this jeopardises those deliveries and first reported the situation to the landlord in late December 2017.
10. The landlord’s repairs spreadsheet details the report as “18 December 2017: tnt reports the pathway along (the) side of the bungalow is broken and uneven, sections of concrete and paving, from front gate along (the) side round to back of property.” 
11. That spreadsheet continues with the following entries:
    1. 14 March 2018:  Inspection “form concrete pathway to front elevation leading from front entrance path to side entrance path”.
    2. 22 August 2018:  “Stage 0 complaint: Resident is advising the pathway to the side of the property is very broken and is a trip hazard please attend take pictures”.
    3. 19 November 2019: note from Surveyor “carry out alteration works to concrete path to side and rear elevations as indicated on the attached drawing”
    4. 3 January 2020: Request from surveyor “Carry out alteration works to concrete path to side and rear elevations as indicated on attached drawing”
    5. 25 February 2020: “groundworker to attend to measure up back path and raise new works”
12. On 27 February 2020, in an internal email, the landlord noted the resident had complained about how the repairs were being handled. She had stated that nothing was heard from the landlord for many months, despite the repair being needed to ensure medical supplies could be delivered safely. She reported that nobody turned up for a first appointment to deal with repairs, but they did on the second occasion. However, by then the pathway had deteriorated, in her view, and needed more extensive work to repair it. The landlord’s operative who attended had only been instructed to repair the original fault and, even though he appeared to have enough tarmac on his vehicle, refused to complete the job that was now required. The resident was left unclear as to what was going to happen moving forward with what she saw as outstanding repairs.
13. The landlord emailed the resident that day to confirm it had raised a formal complaint and that she would be contacted shortly to discuss it in more detail.
14. On 5 March 2020 the landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint which it recorded as being that she had been pursuing the repairs to her pathway for two years and that access to her property was unsafe. The letter stated a written response would be provided by “02 March 2020”. In the meantime the landlord’s contractor was to attend the property again on 31 March to measure up for works to take place. However this was then extended to 15 April, 15 May, and 16 June owing to restrictions in place due to the pandemic.
15. On 16 June 2020 the landlord updated the resident that it had intended to provide its response to her complaint by 12 June, but it needed more time to complete its investigation. It was to attend the property on 19 June and therefore was now aiming to provide a response by 30 June.
16. The landlord’s internal records show that on 2 July 2020 it noted the outcome of a recent visit to the property. It had concluded that there were some paving slabs that needed to be removed and re-laid and one broken one that needed replacing altogether to make the pathway wheelchair friendly and safe for deliveries. However, the resident’s request to re-path to the shed at the end of the garden was declined and it considered she had not raised this as part of her original complaint anyway.
17. The landlord discussed the situation with the resident on 6 July 2020 indicating it still needed to investigate the situation further.
18. On 23 July 2020, the landlord wrote to the resident with its first response to her complaint as follows:
    1. It agreed there had been “some delay” in dealing with the repairs and apologised for letting the resident down. It recorded that it had already been in touch with the resident to set out what it was going to do to put the situation right. In addition it offered to pay compensation of £50 which was divided into £25 for the delay and £25 for the resident’s distress and inconvenience.
    2. The landlord acknowledged that the resident had made it clear, when the complaint was being looked at in March, that medical supplies needed to be delivered to the property and the lack of repair was hampering this. 
    3. The landlord stated its investigations had revealed the following history to the matter. Its surveyor had attended the property in June 2019 to inspect the repairs that were required; in November 2019 the resident chased the landlord to be told its surveyor had failed to submit a report following their visit; between 19 – 25 February 2020 its operatives had attended to make repairs to the pathway; due to the resident’s concerns about those repairs a further appointment was arranged for 31 March 2020 for the landlord to attend to review the situation, however that appointment had been postponed due to the Covid 19 pandemic; at a rearranged visit on 19 June 2020 further repairs were identified and these were completed on 22 July 2020.
    4. The landlord confirmed that its view was that the repairs had now been carried out to a satisfactory standard and that it would not be doing anything further, including looking at the path leading up to the resident’s shed at the property.
    5. Moving forward, the landlord stated it had liaised with its contractor’s staff members about the delays the resident had experiencing in getting her complaint addressed to prevent this happening again.
19. The resident requested the complaint be escalated to the next stage of the landlord’s procedure by email on 29 July 2020 making the following representations:
    1. She stated that the landlord had been aware, from the outset of the tenancy, that the resident’s partner needed vital medical supplies to be delivered regularly and the question of access was raised at the time. The landlord had referred the resident to Occupational Therapy (OT) who referred her back to the landlord, stating it was the latter’s responsibility to repair the pathways, and that was what was required, rather than their adaptation.
    2. On 4 January 2018 the landlord had inspected the pathways with this in mind, and had agreed with the resident that (with the exception of the path to the front door) they needed removal and replacement, rather than just repair. Additionally, the medical supplier had made its own assessment of what was required to deliver safely and provided that to the treating hospital which had, in turn, reported to the landlord. It had then installed some paving from the front to the rear of the property in June 2018.
    3. However, the resident reported she had pursued the question of the remaining pathways which she considered still needed to be repaired.
    4. In January 2019, the hospital had contacted the landlord again about the situation, with input from the medical supplier. The landlord had sent its surveyor out in April 2019 and he had agreed to the removal and replacement of the pathway “up to and including the pathway to the back door”. The surveyor marked the relevant area with yellow spray paint. However the resident then heard nothing further and started chasing this from June but was told by the landlord there was no mention of the work on its records.
    5. It was not until October 2019 that the landlord confirmed its surveyor had forgotten to submit plans for the work, but this would now be sorted out and a start date given immediately.
    6. A further inspection visit took place in January 2020 and in February the resident was informed the work would take place on 18 – 20 February. However, on starting the work, the landlord’s operative did not remove the pathway to the back door and when the resident asked why this was not being done, she was told it was not on the plans the surveyor had submitted.
    7. The resident then complained and following this a member of the landlord’s staff did visit (in June 2020) and took ownership of the situation. He arranged for further works to be done and which were completed in late July – but this still left an area of pathway which had not been repaired and this represented a risk to the continuation of medical deliveries and to her partner, for whom the supplies were required. The resident questioned whether the landlord was actually discriminating against her partner on the grounds of disability.
    8. Finally the resident confirmed she was in touch with OT who were to visit to provide a further assessment.
20. On 22 October 2020, the landlord acknowledged the resident wished to escalate her complaint to the second stage of its complaints procedure. It stated that the “coronavirus situation” might present a delay in resolving the case, but it was aiming to provide its decision by 17 November.
21. In an internal email on 23 October 2020 the landlord noted that it had refused to undertake any further works and needed to check why when the resident “and the medical professionals” were saying it was necessary.
22. On 6 November 2020 the landlord updated the resident by email stating it would be in touch with her again by 10 November. 
23. On 10 November 2020 the landlord’s record of a telephone conversation with the resident noted that she had been advised that its view was that the works had been done to a satisfactory standard and any further work would be considered to be “an adaptation” and a referral to OT would be needed to consider this further.
24. The landlord then wrote to the resident on 13 November with the outcome of its escalation response. It stated it had not changed its decision that the work already done was satisfactory and it maintained that the work the resident now wanted completing represented “major disability adaptations” and the involvement of OT would be required if they were to be considered further. It then set out where the resident could find more information about doing this, referring her to a website page.
25. The landlord advised the resident that she could refer the matter to this service if she remained dissatisfied.

Assessment and findings

26. The landlord has not disputed that the pathways at the resident’s property are its responsibility to maintain and repair. The evidence shows that questions were being raised about access at the property from shortly after commencement of the resident’s tenancy.
27. The landlord’s stage one complaint response refers to the resident clarifying the importance of the repairs for medical deliveries in March 2020 and this comment implied this had not been spelt out sooner. However, the resident has produced a copy of a letter sent from the hospital to the landlord dated 11 February 2019 raising concerns about access which had, in turn, been raised with it by the medical supplier. It is therefore reasonable to conclude the landlord was aware of the resident’s situation by mid February 2019 at the latest.
28. The resident accepts that some work was undertaken to the pathways following her initial report of late 2017 and that these works were completed in approximately June 2018. However the landlord’s repairs spreadsheet shows that by late August 2018 the resident had raised concerns that the repairs did not go far enough to secure access around the property. There is no evidence, however, of the landlord taking further action until after the hospital’s letter, referred to above.

29. In its stage two complaint response, the landlord confirmed its “Aid and Adaptation Surveyor” had attended in June, 2019, some four months after that letter. Given concerns were raised from a hospital about the delivery of vital medical supplies, the landlord might reasonably have been expected to act more promptly in order to assess whether any further works were needed.
30. It is reasonable to conclude that once the landlord’s surveyor had visited, they viewed the situation to be one of repair rather than adaptation. This is because there is no evidence of the landlord assessing whether an OT referral was required or considering whether it had the resources to fund the works as minor adaptations.
31. Notwithstanding that works were identified as necessary, the landlord accepts no work was then done until late February 2020 – when a further eight months had passed. According to the landlord’s repairs procedure, as set out above, the resident was reasonably entitled to have the landlord’s contractor attend within 20 working days, as non emergency repairs. Even if the time before the inspection is discounted, on the basis that what was required had not been settled before then, there was a considerable delay. The landlord failed to comply with its own procedure and this was inappropriate and represented a service failing on its behalf. The resident was left, not just with outstanding repairs, but also with ongoing concerns about vital deliveries.
32. The resident’s complaint was then made as she still considered access to her home was not acceptable. The landlord agreed to undertake further repairs, and these were concluded in July 2020. Whilst this suggests there was a further delay, in fact it is fair to note that efforts to resolve the situation were hampered at this point by the pandemic and the restrictions associated with its management.
33. Having allowed for that however, it is still reasonable to conclude the landlord had not done what might reasonably have been expected of it in February 2020, for further works to be agreed upon so soon after, and actioned by July 2020. This did represent a further delay on the landlord’s part to attend to necessary repairs and a further service failing, again leaving the resident with ongoing concerns.
34. The situation is now at an impasse. The landlord asserts all works that are required to secure safe access to the property have been completed and to a satisfactory standard; the resident’s view is that there is more yet to be done. The landlord’s response is that what the resident now wants goes beyond its repairing obligations and moves into the territory of major adaptations. Accordingly, and pursuant to its policy, it has referred to an OT assessment as being necessary. The resident has tried to arrange this but unfortunately there is now a backlog with that service due to earlier pandemic restrictions and that it is beyond both parties’ control.
35. Whilst the resident has supplied some photographic evidence of what are, in her view, outstanding repairs, it is not within the remit of this Service to offer an expert opinion as to what is required at the property – and that is what would be required here to determine whether the access is fit for purpose; whether more is required; and if so, whether those extra works represented a repair or an adaptation. That ‘expert’ evidence is not available and this Service is not, therefore, able to order the landlord to undertake further work.
36. However, the evidence suggests concerns are being raised by the operatives who make the medical deliveries. In the absence of an OT assessment being available, and given the medical situation in this case, a recommendation will be made for the landlord to attend the property on a day when a delivery is being made to witness any difficulties and consider its obligations in the light of that information.
37. Delays have been identified in the landlord discharging its repairing obligations in this case and it has failed to properly apply its Responsive Repairs Procedure, which was inappropriate. These represent service failings on its behalf. In addition, when the resident was dissatisfied with the landlord’s initial response to her complaint and requested it be escalated to the next stage, the landlord took almost three months to acknowledge that request and act upon it. Its Complaints Procedure aims to provide a full response (let alone an acknowledgement) within 20 working days of the escalation date. This delay represented an inappropriate application of its policy and a further service failing. It is considered that the pandemic restrictions should not reasonably have delayed this at that time.
38. The landlord has offered compensation of £50 by way of a remedy. According to its Compensation Procedure this represents two goodwill payments to acknowledge service failures at an early stage. However, in the Ombudsman’s opinion this does not adequately reflect the amount of time and trouble or the level of distress and inconvenience the resident has been put to according to the lengthy delays which have taken place here – especially in the context of the reason why the repairs were required. This needs to be balanced against the fact that there is no evidence the deliveries were actually prevented at any point due to the condition of the pathway. The landlord’s procedure allows for it to offer more compensation than this and it is reasonable that it does so. An order will made for compensation of £250 – £200 for delay and distress and inconvenience and £50 for the resident’s time and trouble in pursuing the complaint.

Determination (decision)

39. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of repairs to the garden paths at the resident’s property. 
40. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s complaint.

Reasons

41. There were substantial delays by the landlord in carrying out repairs it had identified and accepted were necessary. This was in the context that they were required to secure the delivery of vital medical supplies. A greater degree of urgency might reasonably have been expected as a result. When the resident complained, a response and further repairs were initially hampered by the pandemic restrictions but following her escalation request the landlord unreasonably delayed in responding.

Orders and recommendations

42. The landlord to pay to the resident compensation of £250. This amount replaces the landlord’s previous offer of £50 and is comprised of –
    1. £200 in recognition of the delay in completing repairs to the paths and the resulting distress and inconvenience caused to the resident.
    2. £50 in recognition of the time and trouble incurred by the resident in pursuing her complaint.
43. The landlord to confirm compliance with the above order by 4 June 2021.

Recommendations

44. The landlord to attend the resident’s property during a medical supplies delivery to witness any difficulties experienced with access to the property.
45. The landlord to consider its repairing obligations in response to that visit.