Richmond Housing Partnership Limited (202127228)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202127228

Richmond Housing Partnership Limited

22 February 2024

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. This complaint is about the landlord’s:
   1. Delays resolving repairs reported by the resident, and the level of compensation it offered her in response to them.
   2. Complaint Handling.

Background and summary of events

2. The resident is a tenant of the landlord.
3. The resident contacted the landlord on 28 July 2021 raising concerns about the house’s external brickwork. She said it was full of holes and cracks, and she was worried about potential damp. She also said there was concrete in the garden which was cracked and uneven, and on which she had recently tripped.
4. On 25 August 2021 the resident reported to the landlord that there was an uncontrollable leak from her loft into her living room, with water running down the wall. Initial attempts to identify and stop the leak were unsuccessful. The leak was stopped in the evening of the day after the initial report, by turning off and draining the hot water tank (leaving the resident with no hot water).
5. The resident has explained there were three more visits by plumbers and an electrician on 26 and 27 August 2021 to address the leak, and that a new water tank was ordered on 31 August. The landlord’s repair records confirm the dates the landlord’s operatives attended, and the general nature of the issues.
6. The resident raised a complaint with the landlord on 27 August 2021. She explained her dissatisfaction with the number of visits needed to resolve the leak and the inconvenience that had caused, and about the tone and attitude of some of the landlord’s operatives, who she said had been “abusive and argumentative”. She asked for compensation. The landlord promptly acknowledged the complaint, and the evidence shows discussion with her about redecorating after the leak, and installing a water stopcock in the property (the lack of which had been a factor in dealing with the leak). However, no evidence of further discussion or a complaint response has been seen.
7. The resident wrote to the landlord in November 2021. She said repairs were outstanding for a water damaged light fitting, and she needed to redecorate after the leak and was waiting for compensation from the landlord in order to do that. She said there were other previously reported repair issues still unresolved relating to external brickwork and problems with uneven surfaces in the garden, and the landlord not yet installing a stopcock. She said she would withhold part of her rent until these issues were resolved.
8. On 5 January 2022 the resident sent the landlord a damp and mould survey, reporting problems in her kitchen. The landlord arranged contractors to inspect and survey the property on 14 February. They identified high moisture levels in the kitchen walls, and potential damp ingress points in the external brickwork. They recommended a range of treatments, including a “chemical damp proof course.”
9. The resident sent a new complaint to the landlord on 21 February 2022. She said she had previously reported rising damp to the landlord, and despite it arranging the survey inspection she had heard nothing more. She said she had black mould in her kitchen, which she believed was making her home unfit for habitation.
10. The resident approached this Service in March 2022. She set out her concerns about the leak damage, damp and mould in the kitchen, the lack of a stopcock, and problems with her radiators which had also not been resolved. She explained that despite her reports and complaints, the landlord had responded to her only intermittently, or not at all.
11. We asked the landlord to consider the resident’s concerns through its complaint process. Due to an email error the landlord did not receive the request until July 2022. It promptly contacted the resident about the repair issues she had listed, and then sent its first complaint response on 27 July. It apologised for the delays she had experienced, listed its understanding of the outstanding issues (including post-leak repairs, the stopcock, brickwork, the radiators, the kitchen damp and mould problems, and garden trip hazards), and explained the appointments it had arranged for August to resolve. It said that the resident had told it the damp and mould problems had been resolved. It offered the resident compensation of £300 for its repair delays and the time and trouble the resident had been put to, and £150 towards her redecorating time and costs (she had told the landlord she preferred to do this herself).
12. The resident escalated her complaint in August 2022 after the repair dates given by the landlord had passed. She complained that the promised work was still not complete, asked the landlord to review the compensation it had offered (she sought the equivalent of one month’s rent), alleged that the landlord must have known about the damp problem since before she started her tenancy, and complained that work to repair part of a bedroom ceiling damaged in the 2021 leak was not scheduled to be done until December 2022.
13. The landlord responded to the escalated complaint in September 2022. It confirmed new dates between September and December to attend and resolve all of the outstanding repair jobs. It explained that damp could be a recurring problem, but that the property had been in a lettable state when the resident started her tenancy. It increased its previous compensation offer to £500, and apologised for the resident needing to raise her complaints again.
14. Towards the end of September 2022 the resident told the landlord that the repairs it had promised for that month had been only partially completed, and in doing that work a new repair issue had been created. The landlord apologised for the further repair failings, increased its compensation to £666.38.
15. The resident brought her complaint to the Ombudsman in December 2022. She said that the repairs had not been completed, the compensation had not been paid, and the landlord’s complaint responses had been late.
16. The landlord provided an update to the Ombudsman in July 2023. It explained that most of the repairs had now been completed, although some of them only recently, and one was still outstanding (the uneven garden). It acknowledged that it had not properly communicated with or updated the resident about the ongoing work, or its timeframe, and explained the ways in which it had recently improved its repair services based partly on learnings it had taken from the resident’s complaint.
17. The resident emailed the landlord in August 2023 confirming that the work on the uneven garden had been completed.

Assessment and findings

Delays resolving repairs reported by the resident, and the level of compensation it offered her in response to them.

18. In its responses to the resident’s complaints about its repairs the landlord acknowledged its delays and poor service. In both of its responses it listed in detail how it intended to complete the repair work, and made clear that it appreciated the inconvenience its delays had caused. However, repair delays occurred again between the first and second complaint responses, and continued well after the landlord’s last complaint response in September 2022. The resident’s email confirms that the last of the repairs (the uneven garden) was resolved in August 2023 (more than two years after she reported it). The landlord has acknowledged to this Service that it did not keep the resident well informed or updated about its work.
19. The landlord offered the resident compensation of £666.38 in recognition of its poor repair service. If it had then done what it said it would and completed the work by December 2022 that compensation might reasonably have been said to have been proportionate. As it did not do so, the compensation it offered was not representative of the full scale of its repair failings.
20. It may be that the further delays in 2022 and 2023 were outside the landlord’s control. No evidence of that has been provided, and even if they were, the appropriate action would have been for the landlord to keep the resident informed, and manage her expectations about the time needed to complete the work. That was not done.
21. The landlord acknowledged it had not handled the resident’s repairs well, and it was appropriate that it apologised and offered compensation. However, the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code sets out that landlords should look beyond the circumstances of an individual complaint and consider whether anything needs to be ‘put right’ in terms of process or systems to the benefit of all residents. In this particular case, where the repair delays were multiple and continuous, it was important for the landlord to consider if the resident’s experience was isolated, or if it was indicative of wider systemic problems that could be affecting other tenants. It has explained that it did do this in mid-2023, but that should have been part of its original complaint investigations in 2022, especially when the problems continued between its first and second complaint responses.

Complaint handling

22. The resident brought her complaint to this Service in March 2022. We passed her concerns to the landlord to address, but an error on our part meant the landlord did not receive our correspondence until July. Following that it addressed and responded to the complaint promptly.
23. The resident escalated her complaint with the landlord on 22 August 2022. It sent her its response on 20 September, within the 20-working days set out in its complaints policy. Its handling of these stages of the complaint were reasonable.
24. However, the evidence shows that the resident made two clear complaints prior to coming to the Ombudsman. The first on 27 August 2021 in relation to the landlord’s handling of the leak and the actions of its operatives, and the second on 21 February 2022 about the damp and black mould in her kitchen. Both of those complaints were acknowledged by the landlord, but no evidence of a formal response to them has been seen. If, as it appears, the landlord did not investigate the resident’s complaints at the time they were made, then there was a serious service failure, especially as one of the them centred on damp and mould and the resident’s concerns about a potential health risk. In its subsequent complaint responses the landlord gave no indication of being aware that the earlier complaints had been made, meaning that the failing has gone unacknowledged.

Determination (decision)

25. In line with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of repairs reported by the resident, and the level of compensation it offered her in response to them.
26. In line with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s complaints handling.

Reasons

27. The evidence shows that the repair issues identified in the landlord’s complaint responses are now complete. However, because their completion took significantly longer than the landlord said they would the compensation it offered at the time was not proportionate. Furthermore, its responses to the resident’s complaint lacked the necessary consideration of the problems causing the delay, and whether they had wider implications for all tenants.
28. The landlord did not respond to the resident’s complaints to it until she asked for assistance from the Ombudsman.

Orders and recommendations

29. In light of the further repair delays and incomplete consideration of the factors causing them the landlord is ordered to pay the resident £1016.38. This amount is inclusive of the £666.38 the landlord already offered.
30. The landlord must also pay the resident £250 compensation for its complaint handling delays.
31. These payments must be made within four weeks of this report, and evidence provided to this Service.
32. Within 6 weeks of this report the landlord must also investigate why the resident’s complaints in August 2021 and February 2022 were not dealt with in line with its complaints policy. It must explain how its current complaints policy and procedures would avoid a repeat of those failings. The outcome of its investigation must be shared with the resident and this Service.