Orbit Housing Association Limited (202110732)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202110732

Orbit Housing Association Limited

28 September 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

The complaint is about:
1. The landlord’s response to a request to remove fly-tipped rubbish from communal areas.
2. The standard of communal cleaning and maintenance.
The Ombudsman has also considered the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

The resident is a leaseholder, living in a one-bedroom flat.
The resident has raised concerns about the cleanliness of communal areas since his first formal complaint to the landlord in September 2021. It is acknowledged that this is a longstanding issue, within which multiple formal complaints have been raised. This has included reports of litter and fly-tipped items. The resident maintained that the estate was in a poor state of cleanliness and that this affected his enjoyment and use of the communal areas.
The resident raised a formal complaint with the landlord on 7 April 2022 regarding the grounds maintenance and general tidiness of the estate. The resident had previously raised a stage 1 complaint in September 2021 which also included concerns about the grounds maintenance. The landlord’s stage 1 response was not included in the evidence provided to this service.
The resident escalated his complaint to stage 2 of the landlord’s complaint procedure and a response was issued on 6 June 2022. The landlord upheld these elements of the complaint, as it was aware of service issues with its contractor, missed appointments and delays in undertaking work. The landlord apologised for this and offered the resident £150 compensation.
The resident remained dissatisfied and escalated his complaint to the Ombudsman seeking completion of the grounds maintenance, repayment of his service charge and compensation.

Assessment and findings

Jurisdiction and scope of complaint

The resident has raised several complaints with the landlord related to grounds maintenance, litter and fly-tipping, over a prolonged period of time. Under paragraph 42(c) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme), the Ombudsman will not usually consider matters that were not raised as a complaint with the landlord within a reasonable time, which is normally within six months of the event occurring. For this reason, the scope of this investigation has been limited to considering matters that were raised from October 2021, which is six months prior to the resident’s formal complaint.
This determination will only consider the complaint (and associated issues) raised by the resident on 7 April 2022.

The fly–tipping

The resident first reported fly-tipped items in June 2019 and subsequently in February 2021, April 2022 and August 2022. There is evidence of the resident repeatedly raising this issue with the landlord over the following months. The landlord’s quarterly estate surveys also noted fly–tipped items regularly between 30 May 2022 and August 2022.
The landlord’s estate services procedures state that fly-tipped bulky items, which do not pose a fire risk, will be removed within five working days.
The landlord acknowledged in its stage 2 complaint response that the resident had been waiting over 12 months for action to be taken to remove the fly-tipped waste, which is an unreasonable delay. Whilst there is evidence of the landlord raising work orders, discussing this case in meetings with the contractor and conducting follow-up inspections, the issue was still left unresolved for this extended period of time.
It is noted in the landlord’s internal correspondence that it was not clear about the progress being made on this matter. In particular, on one occasion the landlord’s quarterly estate inspection noted that fly tipping had occurred, but internal correspondence 13 days later states that “no bulk waste items have been present on the estate in multiple recent visits”.
The landlord apologised for the delay to rectifying the fly tipping in its stage 2 complaint response and offered £150 compensation for the distress and inconvenience of needing to repeatedly report the issue. Given the extended period of time taken to resolve this issue, the lack of effective control of the landlord’s contractors and the landlord’s own recording errors this amounts to maladministration, for which the landlord’s existing remedy is not sufficient.

Communal cleaning and maintenance

The resident has raised complaints about the standards of grounds maintenance and volumes of litter on the estate since his first formal complaint to the landlord in September 2021. The landlord’s estate inspection reports from May 2022 until March 2023 all regularly show litter as a factor, along with grass or shrubs needing to be cut back.
The landlord’s staff attended the site shortly after the resident raised his complaint and noted that the grounds maintenance was “unsatisfactory” because of areas of grass and shrubs overgrowing and litter, as well as fly-tipped waste.
The grounds maintenance is undertaken by the landlord’s contractor. It is noted that the landlord took various steps with its contractor, in an attempt to resolve the longstanding issues including:
1. Emails to the contractor;
2. Raising repeated works orders for litter picks and grounds maintenance;
3. Raising the standards of grounds maintenance in meetings on at least five occasions; and
4. Making a commitment to the resident to repay, through the following year’s service charge, any amounts owed due to missed visits.
Notwithstanding these attempts, the landlord’s works order logs also show that out of 56 booked grounds maintenance visits between December 2018 and March 2021, 24 of these visits were deleted without being completed. The records also do not show any recorded grounds maintenance visits from March 2021 onwards, except for inspections.
The landlord’s internal correspondence notes that there were issues with its contractor and that the standards of work were not improving, despite interventions from the landlord. On one occasion, the landlord also noted that it was ‘concerned’ about the number of appointments being missed and the potential for complaints arising from this.
Taking together the resident’s reports and the landlord’s own surveys showing repeated issues with litter and poor grounds maintenance, it is reasonable to conclude that these presented an issue, over a long period of time, which the landlord was aware of throughout. Additionally, the evidence indicates that the grounds maintenance has continued to be an issue up to at least March 2023.
Overall, given the extended period of time that has elapsed, the repeated enquiries from the resident and the conflicting information internally within the landlord’s processes, this amounts to maladministration. This is compounded further as the issues have still not been resolved at the time of this investigation, meaning that the resident’s enjoyment of his property has been affected for a period of at least 22 months.

Complaint handling

The Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) sets out various requirements which member landlords must adhere to throughout their complaints handling processes. This includes:
1. Responding to complaints within set timescales. This is 10 working days at stage 1 and 20 working days at stage 2 of the complaint procedure.
2. Keeping clear records of complaint and outcomes at each stage. This includes the original complaints and all correspondence sent and received.
3. Complaint responses must be clear and state the complaint stage, decision, details of any remedies and how to escalate the complaint if the resident remains dissatisfied.
The landlord’s complaints policy and procedures affirm these principles and commit to responding to complaints within the timescales above.
The resident raised his complaint on 7 April 2022, although this was not recognised as a complaint by the landlord until 21 April 2022, when the resident contacted it for a second time. The landlord’s stage 1 complaint response was referenced in its case management system but has not been included in the evidence seen by this service, nor did it show as an attachment on the landlord’s system. The response was issued on 27 April 2022 and was therefore three working days over the landlord’s policy timescales.
The resident escalated his complaint to stage 2 of the landlord’s internal complaints process on 6 May 2022, although this interaction is only referenced briefly in the landlord’s case management system, which does not include any information about the grounds for escalation. The landlord issued its stage 2 complaint response within its policy timescales.
Overall, as the stage 1 complaint response was issued in excess of the landlord’s policy timescales and key documentation has not been presented to review, this amounts to maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling and record-keeping. The landlord’s delays would have caused additional distress and inconvenience for the resident and would have also delayed him being able to progress his complaint to the Ombudsman.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there has been maladministration in:
1. the landlord’s response to a request to remove fly-tipped rubbish from communal areas;
2. the standard of communal cleaning and maintenance; and
3. the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

Within 28 days of the date of this determination, the landlord must:
1. pay the resident £475 compensation, comprised of:
  1. £200 for the delays in removing fly-tipped waste;
  2. £200 for the poor grounds maintenance caused by missed appointments;
  3. £75 for the landlord’s poor complaint handling;
2. arrange a full inspection of the common parts and grounds to determine what works and clean up is required. The landlord must then use its best endeavours to ensure that any fly-tipped goods are removed and that the grounds are maintained to a satisfactory standard within 28 days of the date of the grounds inspection. The landlord must provide the Ombudsman with evidence that it has completed the site inspection within 28 days of the date of this determination. It must include photographs. The landlord must also provide evidence of its clean up following this within 28 days of the date of the site inspection – together with photographic evidence of the clean up completed.
3. the landlord must refund all residents on the estate who paid a variable service charge towards the grounds maintenance of 43% of the cost of grounds maintenance from all residents on the estate between December 2018 and March 2021. This is because the number of visits attended against those booked is 57% performance. The landlord can credit the service charge accounts with this money or sinking fund (if it has one and the lease makes provision for one). It is open to the landlord to seek to claim this back from the contractor for its performance under any grounds maintenance contract.
4. provide the Ombudsman with evidence of compliance with these orders.

Recommendations

The landlord should:
1. Review its processes for logging fly-tipping and grounds maintenance from residents to ensure that it can adequately track these with its contractor through to completion.
2. Review its record management processes, to ensure that all correspondence from complaints are logged and stored, to enable organisation learning and investigations by this service.
3. Ensure that it has in place an adequate system of reviewing grounds maintenance. It may wish to include residents within this.