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Six Town Housing Limited (202104733)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202104733

Six Town Housing Limited

17 September 2021


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:
    1. The level of rent charged by the landlord to the resident based on the number of bedrooms in the property.
    2. The landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns over the number and size of the bedrooms in the property.

Jurisdiction

  1. What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. This is governed by the Scheme. When a complaint is brought to the Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
  2. After carefully considering all the evidence, in accordance with paragraph 39(g) of the Scheme, the following aspect of the complaint is outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction:
    1. The level of rent charged by the landlord to the resident based on the number of bedrooms in the property.
  3. Paragraph 39(g) of the Scheme states that the Ombudsman will not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion “concern the level of rent or service charge or the amount of the rent or service charge increase”.
  4. As the resident has complained about the level of rent charged by the landlord to her based on the number of bedrooms in the property, this Service is unable to investigate this issue under paragraph 39(g) of the Scheme above because this concerns the level of rent, and so a determination will not be made on this aspect of her complaint.

Background and summary of events

Legislation, policies and procedures

  1. Section 326 of the Housing Act 1985 outlines the space standard defining statutory overcrowding so that a property is overcrowded when this is breached. The definition includes a calculation that a person aged over ten years old is expected to have a room with a floor area of at least 70 square feet or 6.5 square metres. Although the space standard is only breached when the total number of persons in a property exceeds the lower of either the specified number of persons for the number of rooms counting both living rooms and bedrooms or the specified number of persons for the floor area of each room in the property.
  2. As per the landlord’s “tenant complaint panel fact sheet”, the complaint panel can review complaints where the resident remains dissatisfied with the landlord’s final stage complaint response. If the panel cannot find a resolution, it will refer the complaint to this Service.

Background

  1. The resident is a tenant of the landlord.
  2. There is a historic element to this complaint concerning the resident’s dissatisfaction with the landlord’s letting of the property to her as a three-bedroom property on 27 November 2017, which is outside of the scope of this investigation. This is because the Ombudsman cannot consider complaints that were not brought to the attention of the landlord as a formal complaint within a reasonable period of normally within six months of the matters arising, and the resident began to formally complain to it about this on 4 May 2021. While some of this information has been included in the report below for contextual purposes, this report will therefore focus on events from 11 March 2021 onwards, being within six months of her stage one complaint of 4 May 2021.
  3. The property was previously classified as a two-bedroom property. However, the previous resident had changed the internal layout of the property by installing a partition wall to create a third bedroom. This was not known by the landlord until the former resident had vacated the property in October 2017. It had carried out an assessment of the standard of the completed work and the sizes of the resulting bedrooms, and it was happy with the standard of work and that all of the bedrooms were above the minimum room requirement. As a result, the landlord reclassified the property to reflect the third bedroom. The resident subsequently moved into the property in November 2017. The landlord also carried out a building regulations assessment in February 2018, with the property being found to be compliant with these.

Summary of events

  1. On 11 March 2021, the landlord’s records confirmed that the resident had requested a three-bedroom property from it. She did not think that the third bedroom in her property was big enough to be classified as a bedroom. The landlord had explained that, as the property was classified as having three bedrooms, she could consider either a mutual exchange or renting privately if she was unhappy in the property.
  2. On 16 March 2021, the landlord’s records confirmed that it had again spoken to the resident, who was unhappy that her house was considered to have three bedrooms.
  3. The landlord’s records showed that the resident then emailed it on 4 May 2021 to submit her stage one complaint to it. She complained that, following her move to the property and her subsequent reports to it and to the local authority that this was a two-bedroom property that was too small for her son, she had unsuccessfully attempted to save space there. The resident explained that her son had nevertheless developed a medical condition as a result of being unable to stretch his legs in bed and growing from five to six feet tall.
  4. As the resident reported that her son and her niece were unable to share a bedroom since they were not siblings and were of different genders, lacked space for furniture or privacy, and her and their mental health was being affected, she considered that the property was not fit for purpose and explained that the local authority had now accepted this. She therefore requested that the landlord change her rent for the property to that for a two-bedroom property instead of a three-bedroom property, and that it refund her the difference that she had paid to it for this since she had moved there.
  5. On 14 May 2021, the landlord issued its stage one complaint response to the resident. It apologised for the “situation” which had “been ongoing for such a long time”. The landlord confirmed that it had assessed the size of the bedrooms in her property in October 2017, and that it and the local authority had deemed them to be above the minimum room requirement for a three-bedroom property.
  6. The landlord also stated that it had seen photographs of the resident’s son’s bedroom, spoken to its representatives who had visited the property, and found that he occupied the smallest of the two partitioned rooms with the bed appearing to be placed across the width of the room. It therefore deemed the reclassification of the property as a three-bedroom one to be appropriate and justified, and so it could not consider a refund of her rent because of this, instead offering her a £50 retail voucher as a gesture of goodwill.
  7. On 17 May 2021, the resident submitted her final stage complaint to the landlord. She complained that the local authority had told her that the property was registered as a two-bedroom property and had referred her to the landlord for this, for which her occupational therapy report had been upgraded and submitted to it. The resident added that her son’s bedroom did not meet the national legal standard, that this had never done so, and that the landlord had not inspected the size of this or the partition there as part of its stage one complaint investigation.
  8. The resident also reported that her son’s bedroom had been measured by the landlord in March 2021, when its staff had told her that the room was too small, did not meet the above standard, and that the partition there would be removed when she moved out as this had not been authorised by the landlord. She additionally explained that the location of the bed in the room could not be changed due to the location of the door there, which would not otherwise open or allow for the desk and computer etc. while her son worked from home during the corona virus lockdown.
  9. The resident described the partitioned bedrooms in the property as having only two plug sockets between them, and as measuring 74.75 square feet or 7.12 square metres for the first room and 63.25 square feet or 5.87 square metres for her son’s room. She requested a copy of the landlord’s original report for this, a “proper survey” from it, for it to stop charging her for a three-bedroom property instead of for a two-bedroom one, and a refund of her rent to it for this.
  10. On 26 May 2021, the landlord issued its final stage complaint response to the resident. It reiterated that her property was a three-bedroom property, and had originally been offered to her as such, with the floor space of her son’s bedroom accepted to be small but satisfying it as meeting the requirements for a bedroom. The landlord therefore upheld its initial response to the resident’s stage one complaint that the property should be deemed to be a three-bedroom one for rental purposes. It also highlighted that she had been contacted regarding potential alternative accommodation, following her recent re-housing application and re-assessment of her needs, and that it would consider a request from her for additional electrical outlets for identified needs if she contacted it about this.
  11. The resident requested the escalation of her complaint to the landlord’s tenant complaint panel, which is summarised as follows:
    1. She maintained that her son’s bedroom did not meet the minimum Government standard for small bedrooms, and that the landlord had proven this when it took a measurement of 63.25 square feet or 5.87 square metres from her son’s bedroom.
    2. She reported that the local authority’s decision to accept her onto the housing register was due to her being in an overcrowded property, along with her son’s medical condition, which increased the priority for her to move properties.
    3. The landlord subsequently referred the complaint to this Service to consider, as this had exhausted its internal complaints procedure, with its tenant complaint panel not having the technical expertise to consider the complaint.
  12. The resident’s local MP also referred her complaint to this Service to consider in the capacity of her designated person, explaining that she had reported that the third bedroom at the property was not usable and so should not be classed as such, as previously agreed by local authority that had now classified this as a three-bedroom property again. She sought for the property to be classed as having two bedrooms due to her son’s bedroom being too small to accommodate a bed, and causing him health issues as a result of not being able to stretch out, and to pay rent for a two-bedroom property.

Assessment and findings

  1. The resident has previously raised concerns over the effect of the complaint on her and her household’s health and wellbeing, and additionally over the effect of her son sleeping in the small bedroom on his medical condition. The Ombudsman does not dispute her comments regarding her household’s or her son’s health, but we are unable to draw conclusions on the causation of, or liability for, impacts on health and wellbeing or to award damages for these. This because we do not have the authority or expertise to do so in the way that a court, tribunal or insurer might. However, we have considered the general distress and inconvenience which the situation has caused her.
  2. Following receipt of the resident’s complaint regarding the number and size of the bedrooms in her property, the landlord was obliged to review the information that it held about the property. It evidenced that it did so, and that it had considered photographs of her property and spoken to its representatives who had visited there, in its stage one complaint response to her of 14 May 2021. This was fair action for the landlord to seek to address the resident’s concerns by checking the accuracy of its records of the size of the property against more recent evidence of this from photographs and from its staff.
  3. It confirmed that it had already assessed the size of the property’s bedrooms during the void period before the resident had moved there, and that all of the bedrooms in her property were above the minimum size required to classify these as bedrooms. She stated in response that it had subsequently taken a measurement of 63.25 square feet or 5.87 square metres from the smallest bedroom for her son. This was below the expectation in section 326 of the Housing Act 1985 above that a person aged over ten years old have a room of at least 70 square feet or 6.5 square metres.
  4. There was nevertheless no suggestion or evidence that the total number of persons in the resident’s property exceeded the lower of the specified number of persons for the number of rooms counting both living rooms and bedrooms or the specified number of persons for the floor area of each room in the property. This was necessary for the property to breach the space standard in section 326 of the Housing Act 1985 and so be statutorily overcrowded. As a result of this and the fact that the third bedroom in the property was only 6.75 square feet or 0.63 square metres smaller than that expected for a person aged over ten years old, it was not unreasonable for the landlord to consider the resident’s property to have three bedrooms.
  5. In view of this it was fair that the landlord did not offer the resident compensation for not having a third bedroom. Moreover, as she reported the lack of suitability of the size of the property for the size of her family, it was appropriate that it encouraged her to seek suitable alternative accommodation to assist in resolving her complaint. The landlord did so in its final stage complaint response of 26 May 2021 by noting that the resident had been contacted regarding potential alternative accommodation, following her recent re-housing application and re-assessment of her needs.
  6. In summary, the landlord evidenced a fair review of the resident’s complaint, and it explained the steps that it had taken to ensure that it had appropriately classified her property. Its compensation offer to her of a £50 retail voucher on 14 May 2021 as a gesture of goodwill was also proportionate in recognising the detriment experienced by the resident as a result of the complaint.
  7. Additionally, this Service’s remedies guidance suggests awards of between £50 and £250 where the landlord’s handling of the complaint may not have significantly affected the overall outcome for the resident. In this case, it ultimately confirmed that the property did have three bedrooms, but it recognised that the complaint did have an impact on her and so it offered her proportionate compensation in view of this that was in line with our remedies guidance.
  8. It is nevertheless of concern that the resident reported that the landlord did not provide her with a copy of its original report for its inspection of the size of her son’s bedroom or carry out a “proper survey” of this. It has therefore been recommended below to provide her with a copy of its latest inspection report for a survey of the size of her son’s bedroom, and to carry out such an inspection if has not yet done so.


Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in respect of its response to the resident’s concerns over the number and size of the bedrooms in the property.

Reasons

  1. The resident’s property’s small bedroom was not excessively smaller than that expected for a person aged over ten years old and did not make the property statutorily overcrowded. Therefore, the landlord’s complaint response informing her of this, and its decision not to compensate her for the lack of a third bedroom, were reasonable.
  2. The compensation that the landlord offered the resident was proportionate in recognising the detriment experienced by the resident as a result of her complaint, as this was in line with this Service’s remedies guidance, and it appropriately encouraged her to seek suitable alternative accommodation via her re-housing application.

Recommendation

  1. It is recommended that the landlord contact the resident to provide her with a copy of its latest inspection report for a survey of the size of her son’s bedroom, and that it carry out such an inspection if has not yet done so.
  2. The landlord should contact this Service within four weeks to confirm whether it will follow the above recommendation.
  3. The Ombudsman accepts that, because of the present restrictions due to the corona virus pandemic, the timing of the above actions will depend on what is reasonable in the light of Government guidance regarding the health of the resident and of the landlord’s staff.