Paragon Asra Housing Limited (202006436)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202006436

Paragon Asra Housing Limited

27 January 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

The complaint is about:
1. How the landlord handled the resident’s concerns relating to grounds maintenance and cleaning.
2. The associated formal complaint into these matters.

Background and summary of events

Background

The resident is a leaseholder of the landlord, which is a housing association. The property is a flat in a communal building.
The landlord operates a two-stage complaints process. When a complaint is received, the landlord aims to provide a response at stage one within ten working days. If the complainant is dissatisfied with the response, they can request an escalation of the complaint to the next stage. The landlord will then undertake a review of the complaint and provide a stage two response within 15 working days. This will be the landlord’s final response to the complaint.
The policy goes on to state that if the landlord is unable to meet its timescales, it will contact the complainant to explain the reasons for the delay and keep them regularly updated on when the response will be provided.
The landlord’s compensation policy states that it will consider compensation in cases where:
1. It had failed to meet its own service targets.
2. It had failed to deliver a service which is paid for through a service charge.
3. It had not acted reasonably.
4. There had been damage to a tenant’s personal possessions, or a tenant had been unable to use a room in their home.
The policy also states that “compensation is not automatic and will not apply where the service failure or mistake has not caused any problems or where it can be easily remedied”.
When calculating a compensation offer, the landlord categorises the impact the issue has had on a complainant as low (payments up to £20), medium (payments from £20 to £100) and high (payments from £100 to £500). Low impact is defined in the policy as “one instance of mild inconvenience directly caused by the landlord”.

Summary of events

Since at least July 2019 the resident, as chairman of the resident’s association, had corresponded with the landlord regarding issues relating to antisocial behaviour (ASB), non-residents gaining access to the building and poor site management by the landlord.
On 6 September 2021 the resident wrote to the landlord and requested to raise a formal complaint. He described the elements of his complaint as:
1. The external gardens were overgrown and filled with rubbish.
2. It had been months since the gardens had been cleaned.
3. The communal areas of the building had not been properly cleaned.
As a resolution to the complaint, the resident requested that the landlord attend to the outstanding issues, and he was compensated for its service failures.
The landlord acknowledged the complaint on 6 September 2021 and informed the resident that it aimed to provide a response within ten working days.
On 21 September 2021 the resident wrote to the landlord and requested an escalation of the complaint to the next stage as it had failed to respond to his complaint.
The landlord replied on 23 September 2021. It explained that the issues raised by the resident were still being investigated and that it expected to provide the complaint response the following week.
The stage one complaint response was sent to the resident on 29 September 2021. The landlord first apologised to the resident for the delay in providing the response. It then informed him that:
1. It had undertaken an inspection of the site and confirmed that the communal gardens were overgrown. In response, it had requested that its maintenance contractor attend the site withing five working days and provide it the service date history to undertake a review of their prior attendance.
2. Internal cleaning had been taking place on a weekly basis and its inspection had found no concerns with the level of service being provided.
On 29 and 30 September 2021 the resident wrote to the landlord and requested an escalation of the complaint on the grounds that:
1. The gardens and grounds were still filled with rubbish.
2. The landlord should have offered compensation for the delay in providing the stage one response.
3. The grass had not been cut. This was a service failure by the landlord and the resident should be compensated.
4. He disputed that the cleaning of communal areas met required standards and requested that an inspection by a senior manager was undertaken.
The landlord wrote to the resident on 29 September 2021 to confirm that the complaint had been escalated and that it aimed to provide a response within 15 working days.
The stage two complaint response was sent to the resident on 13 October 2021. The landlord informed him that:
1. The maintenance contractor had attended since the stage one response was sent and the grounds were now litter free.
2. The contractor had provided it with a full breakdown of service dates, and it could confirm that there had been missed visits. The landlord had requested credits for the missed visits and the residents of the building would be refunded.
3. It recognised that the resident should have been informed that there would be a delay in providing the stage one response. The landlord apologised for its poor service.
4. A further inspection of the communal areas had found the cleaning to be within the contractual specification. However, the landlord found that the communal carpet was in need of deep cleaning. It informed the resident that this would be undertaken when work to the building’s skylight had been completed.
The landlord concluded the response by informing the resident that he had exhausted its complaint process and advised him on the steps to take to bring his complaint to this Service should he remain dissatisfied.

Assessment and findings

In its complaint responses, the landlord acknowledged that its maintenance contract had not always attended the scheme fortnightly as per the terms of the contract, that the communal carpet required a deep clean and it had not properly followed its complaint policy correctly. The landlord arranged to have the carpet cleaned once ongoing repairs to the building had been completed, ensure that the resident was refunded for the occasions when the maintenance contractor had not visited, and apologised for the delay and inconvenience caused by its poor complaint handling at stage one.
Where there are admitted failings by a landlord, 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.
The landlord acted fairly in acknowledging its mistakes and explaining what went wrong in each of the incidents. It put things right by apologising to the resident, arranging for the carpet to be cleaned and refunding the resident for the missed visits from its maintenance contractor. It looked to learn from its errors by reviewing its complaint-handling procedures to ensure that its staff inform a complainant if there is going to be a delay in providing a complaint response. It has also been in correspondence with its maintenance contractor about the service it had provided.
The landlord’s compensation policy recommends payment when it fails to deliver a service which is paid for through a service charge. It was therefore appropriate for the landlord to identify when the contractor had failed to attend and provide a refund to the resident for each of the missed visits.
The landlord assessed its delay in providing the stage one response to be at the low impact scale of its payment guidance. This suggests a cash payment of up to £20 or an apology as a remedy.
The landlord’s internal correspondence shows that on receiving the resident’s complaint, it arranged an inspection of the grounds and communal areas to investigate the issues that had been raised. This took longer than the ten working days timescale to complete and the resident should have been notified of this on 20 September 2021, when the deadline for providing the response was due to expire.
It was not until the resident wrote to the landlord on 23 September 2021 to request an escalation that it explained that there would be a delay in providing the response as it had yet to complete its investigation.
It was reasonable for the landlord to deem the level of service failure as low impact and offer an apology to the resident rather than financial compensation as the length of the time until the landlord corrected its mistake in not explaining its reasons for delaying the respond was for a total of three days.
Therefore, for the reasons set out above, the landlord has made an offer of redress to the resident which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves the complaint satisfactorily. The measures taken by the landlord to address what went wrong were proportionate to the impact that its failures had on the resident.

Determination (decision)

In accordance with paragraph 55(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord made an offer of redress which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, satisfactorily resolves the complaint in respect of:
1. How it handled the resident’s concerns relating to grounds maintenance and cleaning.
2. The associated formal complaint into these matters.

Reasons

The landlord acted on the information provided by the resident by arranging for the communal carpet to be deep cleaned and to issue refunds for the occasions when its maintenance contractor did not undertake their scheduled fortnightly visits.
The landlord recognised the inconvenience caused to the resident by the delay in providing the stage one complaint response. The landlord’s apology was proportionate for the effect the service failure had on the resident.