Royal Borough Of Greenwich (202215587)

Back to Top

 

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202215587

Royal Borough Of Greenwich

16 January 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. The complaint is about the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of:
    1. communal lighting repair requests.
    2. a personal injury claim.

Background

  1. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord, and the property is a second-floor flat. Access to the property is via an external staircase with four flights of stairs.
  2. The resident submitted a liability claim form to the landlord on 22 December 2020. She informed the landlord that she had slipped and injured her leg and that bad lighting in the communal area contributed to the fall. On 4 January 2021 the landlord’s repair records show that lights in the stairwell were not working and a fault finding follow up was required.
  3. The resident wrote to the landlord on 19 January 2021 and informed it that the light in the communal stairwell was not working. The landlord attended the repair on 29 December 2021, but the operative could not access the intake cupboard.
  4. The resident raised a stage 1 complaint on 11 April 2022. She advised that the communal lighting was still not working. She raised health and safety concerns and advised that grocery stores will not deliver to her because the lights are not working.
  5. On 29 April 2022 in its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord upheld the complaint. It apologised to the resident for the delay and inconvenience. As a resolution to the complaint, it advised it would repair the communal lights on 6 May 2022. The resident escalated the complaint on 27 May 2022 because 6 of the communal lights were not repaired. She also complained that the landlord was ignoring her correspondence about the personal injury claim.
  6. In its stage 2 complaint response on 26 June 2022, the landlord upheld the complaint. It apologised and acknowledged there was a service failure because of the delay from when it failed to access the issue in December 2021 until it attended on 6 May 2022. It noted that the repair was unsuccessful and it reattended on 6 June 2022 and completed the repair. The landlord also advised that it had recently been in contact with her about her personal injury claim.
  7. When the resident brought her complaint to this service, she advised that the problem with the communal lighting had been ongoing since 2017. She advised that she was concerned for her safety when walking in the dark and was unhappy that grocery stores would not deliver to her after dark because of the lack of lighting. The resident further complained that she was not treated fairly by the landlord as it took 2 years for it to accept liability for her accident.

Assessment and findings

Jurisdiction

  1. Having carefully considered the evidence, this service cannot investigate the resident’s complaint about the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of a personal injury claim. What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. Paragraph 41(d) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme sets out that we may not consider matters in respect of Local Housing Authorities in England which do not relate to their provision or management of social housing. This issue is not a housing matter.
  2. Paragraph 42(j) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme sets out that we may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion fall properly within the jurisdiction of another Ombudsman, regulator or complaint handling body. The resident may consider taking this complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

Scope of investigation

  1. The resident advised this Service that the communal lighting issues have been ongoing since 2017. The evidence shows that there have been several repairs to the communal lighting since January 2017. However, this investigation has focussed on the landlord’s response to the repair request of 4 January 2021, because it is this repair that gave rise to the complaint.
  2. The resident further advised this Service that the communal lighting remained an issue after the stage 2 complaint response. This has been considered for context. However, because the issue re-occurred 3 months after the landlord’s repair, it would not be reasonable to consider issues beyond the landlord’s stage 2 complaint response on 26 June 2022.

The landlord’s response to the resident’s communal lighting repair requests.

  1. Under the terms of the tenancy agreement the landlord is responsible for repairing the communal parts of the building. The landlord’s repairs policy sets out that it will attend to an emergency repair within 2 hours, and urgent repair within 1-5 working days and a non-urgent repair within 20 working days.
  2. Landlords are required, in accordance with the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), introduced by the Housing Act 2004, to “identify and protect against potential risks and hazards to health and safety from any deficiencies identified in dwellings”. Falls on stairs is listed as a hazard in the HHSRS, and adequate lighting is listed as a measure to reduce the hazard. Therefore, the landlord would be expected to take reasonable steps to mitigate any hazard presented by poor lighting in the communal stairwell.
  3. It is not disputed that the landlord delayed in repairing the communal lighting. In its complaint response it acknowledged the delay and apologised to the resident.
  4. When a landlord has accepted a failing, it is the role of this Service to consider if redress offered by the landlord put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily. In considering this the Ombudsman considers 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.
  5. In its complaint response the landlord acknowledged it should not have taken 5 months in repairing the communal lighting after it failed to access an intake cupboard on 29 December 2021. However, the evidence shows that the landlord received the same repair request on 4 January 2021 and a follow up order to find the fault did not take place. It is reasonable to conclude, based on the evidence, it did not complete the repair until 17 months after the report.
  6. The landlord’s repair policy does not set out a timescale for repairing communal lighting. Given the potential health and safety risk, this Service considers it would have been reasonable to treat this repair as urgent. The landlord did not adhere to its repair timescales. The delay was unreasonable and caused distress to the resident as the communal stairway is the only point of access to her property. The resident’s distress was heightened by a previous fall, and she was concerned that she may have had another fall.
  7. The resident raised concerns for her health and safety and reported to the landlord that poor communal lighting was a contributing factor to a previous injury. There is no evidence that the landlord assessed the hazard and took reasonable steps to address the issue after it became aware of the resident’s concerns. This lack of action was inappropriate and caused distress to the resident, which was not considered by the landlord in its complaint response.
  8. The resident also advised the landlord that grocery stores would not deliver to her address after dark because of the lack of lighting. This caused inconvenience to the resident which was not considered by the landlord in its complaint response.
  9. This Service finds that there was maladministration with the landlord’s response to the resident’s communal lighting repair requests. It was appropriate for the landlord to apologise for its failings and take steps to address the repair issue when it received the complaint. However, the landlord did not correctly identify the length of its repair delay or consider the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident in its complaint response.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration with the landlord’s response to the resident’s communal lighting repair requests.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. It is ordered that the landlord apologise to the resident for the failings identified in this report.
  2. It is ordered that the landlord pay the resident compensation of £600, compromising:
    1. £500 distress caused by its delay in repairing the communal lighting.
    2. £100 inconvenience caused to the resident in not receiving grocery deliveries.
  3. It is ordered that the landlord review this case to establish what went wrong in its process for follow on repair orders and implement improvements to the process if necessary. A copy of the review should be provided to this Service.
  4. The landlord should provide evidence to this Service that it has complied with the above order within four weeks of the date of this report.