Islington Council (202200164)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202200164

Islington Council

5 January 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 is about the landlord’s handling of:
   1. Repairs to the guttering at the property; and
   2. The complaint.

Background

2. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord, and lives in a three-bedroom property.
3. In early 2020, the resident reported leaks from the guttering. The landlord arranged for a contractor to carry out a repair. The leak continued, and its contractor concluded in October 2020 that scaffolding was needed to the rear and front of the property in order to carry out the repair.
4. The scaffolding was eventually erected to the front of the property in April 2021, and the front guttering repaired in July 2021, as well as the soffits and fascias. The scaffolding to the rear was erected in September 2021, and a repair carried out to the rear guttering. The scaffolding was all struck down in November 2021.
5. The resident complained to the landlord about the delays in fixing the gutters, and the length of time the scaffolding was erected. He explained the rear scaffolding prevented him and his wife from using the garden, and this was important to his wife as she was undergoing cancer treatment.
6. The landlord accepted there had been a delay and offered the resident total compensation of £474.96. This included £75 compensation to recognise there had been delays with its complaint process.
7. The resident brought a complaint to this Service as he was unhappy with the level of compensation offered. He also said the landlord’s repair had not fixed the rear guttering, and the scaffolding had to be erected again to resolve this issue.
8. The landlord issued a new stage one response regarding the scaffolding and acknowledged there was a lengthy delay whilst the scaffolding was erected. It said the reason for this was because the resident had asked this Service to investigate his complaint about the delay in resolving the leak.

Assessment and findings

The landlord’s handling of the repair

9. The landlord’s repair policy explains that it is responsible for the gutters at the property. It also explains that a routine repair will be responded to within 20 working days. Finally, it says that if a maintenance problem reoccurs within 12 months of it carrying out a repair which was to fix the problem, then the landlord will treat this as a recall to the original job – and will aim to refix the problem within five working days.
10. When the resident initially reported a leak from the gutters in February 2020, a repair was not carried out until May 2020, which was outside the landlord’s published repair timescales.
11. The resident again reported problems with the guttering in October 2020. It is not known if this was the same issue that had been reported in February 2020. Nevertheless, a contractor attended and concluded that scaffolding was needed to both the front and rear of the property in order to carry the repair. Despite this, another contractor attempted a repair in December 2020 without scaffolding. This did not work, and the gutters continued to leak. The contractor again concluded in February 2021 that scaffolding was needed. The landlord did not act appropriately as there was a delay of four months in ordering the scaffolding; there was a subsequent further delay of around a month as it had not provided the scaffolding company with photos required.
12. Once the scaffolding (to the front) was erected on 10 April 2021, there were further delays on the landlord’s part. The landlord’s contractor did not attend until 28 May 2021, which was around six weeks later. Although they found a specialist part was needed to carry out the repair to the guttering, the work order was not raised until 11 June 2021.
13. The Ombudsman has not seen evidence to explain why the contractor failed to erect scaffolding to the rear of the property as recommended in October 2020. This was only considered by the landlord after the resident raised concerns after the scaffolding was erected to the front of the property. That meant the rear scaffolding was delayed further, and not erected until September 2021. This was over a year after the initial recommendation had been for scaffolding to be erected to both the front and rear of the property.
14. Although the resident was not happy with the repair carried out to the rear guttering, the landlord said it had carried out an inspection and it was satisfied the repair had been done satisfactorily. However, the rear gutter continued to leak which meant the landlord needed to erect scaffolding to the rear of the property again in April 2022. This Service understands that the repair was carried out and the scaffolding was struck down before the end of June 2022.
15. In relation to the failures identified the Ombudsman’s role is to consider whether the redress offered by the landlord put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this the Ombudsman takes into account whether the landlord’s offer of redress was in line with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles: Be Fair, Put Things Right and Learn from Outcomes as well as our own guidance on remedies.
16. The resident was evidently impacted by the landlord’s failure to fix the gutters in a timely manner. In considering compensation, this Service has considered that the issue was outside the resident’s property and the leak occurred presumably when it rained, and so was not directly impacting the resident and his family on a day-to-day basis. Whilst the landlord made an error by failing to erect the rear scaffolding initially, this would have been of some benefit to the resident, as it meant the rear scaffolding was only erected for a relatively short period of time (compared to the scaffolding at the front of the property), and so he and his wife could still use the garden before the rear scaffolding was erected.
17. The landlord offered compensation of £399.96. This Service considers that this is a reasonable amount in the circumstances and reflects the impact on the resident and his family. It is also within the range of amounts that the Ombudsman can order when he has found evidence of considerable service failure or maladministration. This includes cases where there have been delays in carrying out repairs.

The landlord’s handling of the complaint

18. The landlord’s complaints policy indicates that it operates a two-stage complaint handling process. It explains that at stage one, a complaint response will be issued as well as a stage one review where the matter complained about remains unresolved. Where the resident remains dissatisfied, the policy indicates that matters will be considered at stage two (also known as the ‘Chief Executive stage’), and a full response provided within 28 calendar days.
19. The Ombudsman appreciates that in this case, the landlord followed this process. In the Ombudsman’s opinion, however, while the landlord’s procedure purports to be a two-stage process, the introduction of a stage one review response ultimately made this three stages. This is contrary to the Housing Ombudsman Service’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) which emphasises that “a landlord’s complaints procedure shall comprise of two stages”.
20. While the Code does make some provision for a three-stage process where a request has been made and the reasons have been set out in the landlord’s self-assessment against the Code, it does not appear that the landlord has done this.
21. By introducing a stage one review, rather than escalating the resident’s complaint to stage two, the landlord delayed the resident in obtaining its final position and in being able to bring the matter to the Ombudsman Service. This was inappropriate and is contrary to this Service’s expectation.
22. It is also the case that despite the landlord acknowledging on 5 July 2021 that the resident wanted to escalate his complaint to stage two, the landlord did not provide its Chief Executive’s response until 1 March 2022, which was around eight months later. The landlord recognised there was a delay and offered the resident £75 compensation for this. However, taking into consideration all the circumstances, this award fails to reflect the full impact on the resident and a further £75 has been ordered, below, to reflect the full inconvenience and frustration to him.

Determination

23. In accordance with paragraph 53 (b) of the Scheme, the landlord has offered redress, which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves the complaint about the landlord’s handling of the repairs to the guttering at the property.
24. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was service failure in respect of the landlord’s handling of the complaint.

Orders

25. The landlord shall take the following action within four weeks of the date of this report and provide evidence of compliance with these orders to the Ombudsman:
    1. Pay the resident £150 compensation for its handling of the complaint (minus any sum previously paid).
    2. Review its complaints procedure to ensure that it fully complies with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.

Recommendations

26. It is recommended that the landlord takes the following action on receipt of the report:
    1. Pay the resident compensation of £399.96 previously offered in respect of its handling of the repairs to the gutters, as the finding of reasonable redress above has been made on that basis (if this sum has not been paid previously).