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London Borough of Hackney (202219315)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202219315

London Borough of Hackney

9 August 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 the resident’s reports of a leak and resulting damage affecting her property.

Background

  1. The resident is a secure tenant and lives in a two-bedroom property owned by the landlord. The resident is represented by an advocate. For clarity, they are both referred to as ‘the resident’ in this report.
  2. On 11 January 2022, the resident reported a leak in her home to the landlord. The landlord attended the resident’s home on 18 January 2022. It found defective tiling in the bathroom. The resident informed the landlord that she did not want work to be carried out on her tiles as she did not believe that they were causing the leak. The landlord sent a different plumber to assess the leak and found that it originated from a neighbouring flat and was not caused by any issue with the tiles.
  3. On 4 April 2022, the resident complained to the landlord. She stated that some lighting in her flat was not working due to the ongoing leak. The walls and flooring in her bathroom and bedroom were wet due to the leak. The resident said that she was sleeping in the living room and had been advised by her health visitor that the property was an unhealthy environment for her young baby. The resident wanted the landlord to resolve the leak and carry out the necessary remedial works to her flat.
  4. The landlord issued its stage one complaint response to the resident on 14 April 2022. It confirmed that works to repair the leak had been completed on 29 March 2022. It stated that it had attended the resident’s home on 8 April 2022 and fixed the bathroom light. The landlord had raised further works to inspect the damage caused to the resident’s flat. It apologised for the inconvenience the resident had experienced as a result of the leak in her home. Following the landlord’s complaint response, the leak reoccurred.
  5. In an internal communication on 9 May 2022, the landlord mentioned that the resident may need to be temporarily decanted (moved to an alternative property) while works to resolve the leak and fix the damage at her property were carried out. On 12 May 2022, an order was raised to deliver temporary lighting to the resident’s home, which was delivered on 9 June 2022. On 20 June 2022. The resident confirmed that the leak had been resolved.
  6. Some remedial works to resolve the damage caused by the leak were completed on 28 July 2022, however some works remained outstanding. The resident asked the landlord to escalate her complaint to stage two of its complaints procedure on 22 August 2022. She explained that the leak and its resulting damage to her home had been ongoing for eight months and that she had no electricity in her bedroom.
  7. On 22 September 2022, the landlord issued its stage two complaint response to the resident. It accepted fault for the delays the resident had experienced with the landlord resolving the leak and the damage it had caused to her home. It acknowledged that following its surveyor visiting the resident’s home in May 2022, the job raised for some of the remedial works had not been passed to its contractors until September 2022. The landlord apologised and offered the resident £500 in compensation, made up of £300 to recognise the avoidable delays she had experienced and £200 for the time and trouble she had needed to go to. It advised the resident to claim from her home contents insurance or from the landlord’s liability insurance for the damage to her personal belongings.
  8. On 26 September 2022, the landlord fully restored the lighting in the resident’s home. Appointments were made for the landlord to attend the resident’s home to complete remedial works on 13 October 2022 and 27 October 2022, however it remains unclear from the evidence provided if these appointments were successfully completed.
  9. The resident asked the Ombudsman to investigate. She is unhappy with how long it had taken the landlord to complete the required works. She would like this Service to review the landlord’s offer of compensation.
  10. The landlord has informed the Ombudsman that further repair works were completed in July 2023 to the resident’s bedroom and bathroom.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The landlord advised the resident to consider making a claim against its liability insurance for damage to her possessions, which it was within its rights to do. Landlords are entitled to use liability insurance as a means of managing the costs of negligence claims and the landlord is not obliged to pay such claims outside of the insurance process. The resident can consider making a liability claim if she feels the landlord’s actions or inaction are directly responsible for damage caused to her personal belongings. It is outside the Ombudsman’s remit to consider the actions of the landlord’s insurer as it is our role to consider the actions of social landlords and the insurer is a separate organisation from the landlord. Therefore, we cannot determine if the landlord was liable for the damaged belongings or comment on the outcome or handling of any liability claim the resident may decide to make.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of a leak and resulting damage affecting her property

  1. The resident is a secure tenant, which means the landlord is legally obliged to carry out most repairs, in most circumstances, in her home. Relevant legislation says that the landlord must complete repairs within a “reasonable” timeframe. The landlord’s repairs guide states it will aim to respond to “immediate” repairs within two hours, such as a water leak that cannot be contained and risks flooding the property. It will respond to “emergency” repairs within 24 hours, such as works to restore full or partial failure of the electrical supply. It will respond to “urgent” repairs within five working days, where the issue does not cause danger to occupants. It will respond to “normal” repairs within 21 working days, where the issue does not cause major inconvenience or danger to occupants. Similar categories and timescales are given in the landlord’s safe working arrangements for managing electrical safety in housing policy.
  2. The resident first reported a leak in her home to the landlord on 11 January 2022. The landlord responded by attending her home a week later on 18 January 2022. This Service has not seen evidence of the information the landlord had about the initial nature of the leak. It may have been appropriate for the landlord to attend the resident’s property on an “immediate” or “emergency” basis, in accordance with its repairs guide. The leak had been described by the landlord as a “slow, constant leak” in May 2022. However, the resident informed the landlord on 11 February 2022 that the leak was “uncontainable”, it had flooded her bedroom floor, and she had been sleeping in her living room for three weeks. The landlord should ensure it has sufficient information about the nature of a leak when it is first reported so it can respond according to appropriate timescales. If there is any doubt about the severity of a leak, it should err on the side of caution and investigate the leak urgently to avoid unnecessary damage being caused. If the landlord was aware from 11 January 2022 that the leak had the potential to cause significant damage to the resident’s property, it should have responded sooner than it did. The landlord should ensure that appropriate information is recorded throughout its repairs process to avoid confusion and ensure transparency in its decision making.
  3. It is clear from the evidence provided by the landlord that the leak was complex to diagnose and resolve. Itwas necessary for the landlord to arrange access to neighbouring properties to complete repairs. The landlord attended the resident’s property multiple times to investigate and carry out works. The landlord’s records show that it considered the leak to have been fixed on 29 March 2022, but thatit reoccurred soon after. This Service accepts that there can be unavoidable delays in resolving complex repair issuesthat would be outside the landlord’s control. However, it was not until 20 June 2022 that the resident confirmed to the landlord that the leak had stopped. This was over five months after the leak had first been reported, which is a significant amount of time for a leak to continue. While there is evidence of the landlord being generally responsive to the resident’s reports, some delays were avoidable. There were delays of several days or weeks between the landlord carrying out an appointment and raising an order for follow on works. The landlord had sufficient relevant information about the severity of the leak and its impact on the resident to treat it with significant urgency from at least February 2022. There is evidence that the landlord failed to respond to the leak with the appropriate level of urgency and this significantly impacted the resident and her living conditions for a substantial period of time.
  4. The landlord raised an order for some remedial works at the resident’s property on 9 May 2022 and completed the works on 28 July 2022. It is possible for there to be reasonable delays to remedial works being carried out by the landlord if it was necessary for the leak to be stopped before works to fix damage could be effective. As the leak was not stopped until 20 June 2022, this works order was completed within a reasonable timeframe.
  5. However, a separate order for remedial works at the resident’s property had been raised on 21 February 2022. The landlord did not approve this order until 6 October 2022, which was a significant period of time after the leak had been stopped. Works at the resident’s flat were booked in for 13 October 2022 and 27 October 2022. The landlord has been unable to confirm to this service if this work went ahead on these dates due to it being unable to access this repair record. The landlord has informed this Service that it was using a temporary works tracker due an IT cyber attack that occurred in October 2020 and that this works order had not been passed to its contractors for a number of months. A cyber attack may explain technical issues, or a lack of clear records for the period prior to October 2020 and for a few months thereafter but it would be expected that these issues would have been resolved over a year later, when the resident first reported the leak. The landlord should establish the cause of its failure to progress a significant works order and take steps to prevent it from happening in future.
  6. The landlord has confirmed that an order was raised on 10 July 2023 for its contractors to complete agreed works in the resident’s toilet, bathroom, and bedroom. These works were completed on 28 July 2023. The landlord has not stated that these works were the same works that had been arranged to take place in October 2022. However, the landlord referring to these recent works in connection with this complaint suggests that they were further repairs being carried out to resolve damage caused by the leak. The resident has experienced an unreasonable delay to the landlord fully resolving the damaged conditions of her home and a further offer of compensation in recognition of the distress and inconvenience caused by this additional delay will be appropriate, as explained further below in this report.
  7. The resident had complained to the landlord about her bathroom light not working in her complaint of 4 April 2022. Lighting in one of the resident’s bedrooms also failed at a later date. The landlord advised the resident on 3 May 2022 that it was unable to safely restore the lighting until the leak had been resolved, which was a reasonable response. On 12 May 2022, the landlord raised an order for temporary lighting for the resident’s flat due to there being a newborn baby living there. However, this temporary lighting was not delivered until nearly a month later, on 9 June 2022. The resident had already been without adequate lighting in her home for a period of time before the order had been raised. The landlord failed to treat the significant issues being experienced by the resident with an appropriate level of urgency. The landlord confirmed that the affected lighting had been restored in the resident’s flat on 26 September 2022. This was over three months after the leak had been resolved, which was a further significant delay. The landlord stated that it could not confirm that the issue with lighting was directly related to the leak at the property and that problems have reoccurred on two occasions since. Regardless of the cause of the problem, the electricity should have been restored to affected rooms in the resident’s flat in line with the landlord’s published timescales for doing so.
  8. In an internal email dated 9 May 2022, a member of the landlord’s staff described the conditions at the resident’s flat following a visit there. The member of staff said that they believed the damp in the flat had caused them to start coughing. They referred to a baby living in the “saturated” conditions and mentioned that the baby had a chest infection. The member of staff said that if the leak was not traced and remedied soon, they would fill out a rehousing form for the resident. When significant works are required or there is a delay in resolving highly complex repair issues, the landlord should consider decanting the resident until the issues are resolved, for health and safety reasons. It could also have considered carrying out minor works to improve the environment on a short-term basis until the leak was resolved, such as a mould wash. There is a lack of evidence that either of these options were seriously considered. The landlord should have fully considered any relevant circumstances in the household, such as a young baby living there who would reasonably be expected to be more vulnerable to the effects of damp and mould.
  9. The landlord has not disputed the resident’s description of the impact of the leak on her property and living conditions. There is a lack of evidence to show the landlord sufficiently considered temporarily decanting the resident, or if it was considered, why it decided that it was not a suitable option. The leak was not resolved until six weeks after the member of staff’s report, with the poor conditions in the resident’s flat continuing for a significant period of time after that. The landlord should review how it identifies and assesses decants as part of its response to serious repair issues, with regard to its duties to households with young children and/or health conditions. The Ombudsman has taken into account this failure when assessing compensation for distress and inconvenience.
  10. In its stage two complaint response, the landlord offered the resident £500 compensation as remedy for its failings in its response to her reports of a leak and resulting damage to her property. Its compensation policy suggests an award of £10 per week for avoidable delay to internal repairs. It offered £300 for avoidable delay, which would cover a period of 30 weeks. This was a reasonable offer from the landlord that accounted for the significant length of time that the resident was most severely affected by the issues. It also offered an additional £200 to recognise the time and trouble the resident went to in ensuring the landlord met its obligations to her. The Ombudsman’s remedies guidance (published online) suggests that awards of £200 may remedy service failure that had an impact on the resident but was of short duration. This service agrees that the resident had to go to time and trouble to get the landlord to meet its responsibilities to her, but there is evidence that the landlord was making efforts to resolve the leak, although it could have done more to help the resident with her living situation during the repairs.
  11.  This service recognises that the landlord tried to put things right for the resident in its stage two complaint response by making a significant award of compensation as redress for its failings in handling the leak and associated repairs. However, it will be appropriate for the landlord to also award compensation based on the resident’s rent as a result of her being unable to safely use a proportion of her home for a significant period of time. This will be calculated based on the resident’s weekly rent at the time of the issues, the proportion of the property that was unusable during this time, and the number of weeks the resident was severely affected. There were three rooms that were significantly damaged by the leak out of the five rooms in the resident’s property, which is 60% of the rooms in the property. The damage to the two bedrooms meant the resident had to sleep in her living room. The bathroom was damaged, but the resident was still able to use the bathroom facilities throughout. Therefore, this Service finds that compensation based on 50% of the resident’s rent over the relevant time period would be reasonable. The relevant time period starts from one week after the resident made her first report of the leak to the landlord and is considered to last until some of the remedial works were completed on 28 July 2022. This is due to the works order completed on that day including repairs that would have significantly improved the conditions in the resident’s home. Although there were further repairs needed after July 2022, these would not have meant that parts of the property were unusable and therefore a rent refund would not be due for this period.
  12. An additional award of £400 compensation to recognise the significant delay to the completion of the second order of remedial works will also be appropriate. The Ombudsman’s remedies guidance suggests an award of this amount may remedy maladministration that had a significant impact on the resident, such as failure over a considerable period of time to address repairs.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of a leak and resulting damage affecting her property.

Orders

  1. The landlord is ordered to pay the resident £2,147 of compensation, made up of:
    1. £1,747of compensation based on the resident’srent. This award has been calculated based on the resident’s weekly rent at the time of the issues and approximately 50% of her property being significantly affected by the leak and resulting damage over a period of 27 weeks until 28 July 2022.
    2. £400 to recognise the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident by the significant delay to the landlord completing all necessary works to resolve the damage caused by the leak.

This sum is in addition to the £500 paid at stage two of the landlord’s complaints procedure. The landlord should make this payment directly to the resident within 28 days of the date of this determination.

  1. The landlord is ordered to carry out a review of its handling of this case. The review is to be carried out by a senior member of staff. The landlord should assess its response to the issues in this complaint and identify where improvement is needed in the following areas:
    1. how it categorises repairs in practice, to decide on the appropriate timescales for its response;
    2. its process for assessing households for potential decanting;
    3. record keeping for repairs;
    4. systems for tracking and progressing repairs.

Where areas for improvement are identified, the landlord should make an action plan designed to address these areas. The review and action plan should be provided to this service within eight weeks of the date of this determination.