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Southern Housing Group Limited (202224867)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202224867

Southern Housing Group Limited

26 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

  1. The complaint concerns how the landlord handled the resident’s reports of antisocial behaviour (ASB) and her requests to be rehoused.

Background

  1. The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord, which is a housing association. The property is a flat.
  2. Since at least 2020, the resident has been in contact with the landlord and other agencies to attempt to be rehoused due to harassment she had suffered from a neighbour. The resident wrote to the landlord on 21 June 2022 to request to raise a formal complaint into how it had handled her reports of harassment and her requests to be rehoused. She described the elements of the complaint as:
    1. She had suffered harassment from a neighbour, who had called the police on four occasions to report her children crying.
    2. She had requested help and support from the landlord in being rehoused, but its response had been poor. She had also not been made aware that the landlord no longer had an internal transfer list, it having ceased in 2021.
    3. She felt undermined by the landlord’s position that she had not been harassed by her neighbour, despite the police confirming that the neighbour’s reports were malicious.
    4. The ongoing issues had caused an adverse effect on her and her family’s health and wellbeing.
    5. In May 2022 she offered a resolution, to her attempts to be rehoused, of being nominated by a household in her preferred area. However, the household’s landlord would not offer support as she was not their tenant and the landlord had also refused to help unless the resident first relinquished her tenancy.
  3. The landlord sent a stage one complaint response on 4 July 2022, then a stage two complaint response on 13 September 2022. In its responses, the landlord:
    1. Informed the resident that it had made a formal information disclosure request to the police for the reports made by the neighbour, as these were made directly to the police and not to the landlord.
    2. Explained that the disclosure request had shown that in last five years, one call had been made to the police relating to noise from the resident’s children in December 2021. The police visited the resident’s property and no further action was taken. The landlord also confirmed that it had received no reports since this date from the resident’s household.
    3. Further explained that it would not consider a single report to be harassment or vexatious behaviour by the neighbour and therefore this would not meet the criteria for a priority move.
    4. Provided advice on what further rehousing options were available to the resident, such as bidding on properties of other landlords, pursuing a mutual exchange, and using websites and apps such as Homeswapper.
  4. In referring the case to this Service, the resident described the outstanding issues of the complaint as the inadequate support she had received from the landlord following her reports of harassment, the landlord had incorrectly advised her to relinquish her tenancy in order to be rehoused and had it not informed her that it had ended its internal transfer list. As a resolution to the complaint, the resident requested that the landlord supported her in finding suitable alternative accommodation.

Assessment and findings

Relevant policies and procedures

  1. The landlord’s ASB policy defines antisocial behaviour as “conduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person, or that is capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to a person in relation to that person’s occupation of residential premises, or that is capable of causing housing-related nuisance or annoyance to any person”.
  2. The policy states that when it receives a report, the landlord will categorise the seriousness of the allegation (low, medium or high) and work with the complainant and alleged perpetrator in order to reach a resolution. The policy also notes that “If we decide that a report is not ASB, we will advise the complainant of this decision and may still be able to help or offer advice”.
  3. The landlord’s priority moves policy sets out the criteria it uses to consider if an applicant requires to be rehoused urgently. For a move to be approved as a result of ASB or harassment, the policy notes that a move will be considered “in exceptional cases of anti-social behaviour/ harassment/ targeted hate crime; where the abuse has been investigated and the targeted and ongoing abuse is having a significant impact on the resident’s quality of life or there is risk to the resident’s safety. The [landlord] will usually exhaust all other possibilities of resolution before considering approving a move, as this will not address the behaviour of the perpetrator”.

Scope of investigation

  1. As part of complaint, the resident has raised issues she had experienced when seeking to be rehoused by a local authority. Housing allocations, bidding, banding and the housing register are functions which are administered by the local authority. Any points of a residents complaint that relate to these functions fall outside of the jurisdiction of this Service, this is because we can only consider complaints about council’s in their role as landlord’s and not their role as a local authority. Any complaints that relate to these functions would be better discussed with the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman (LSGCO). This is line with paragraph 42(k) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, which states that we will not investigate complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, fall properly within the jurisdiction of another Ombudsman, regulator, or complaints-handling body.
  2. As an element of her complaint, the resident stated her dissatisfaction that she was not informed of changes made to the landlord’s internal transfer process in 2020 and 2021. The Ombudsman encourages residents to raise complaints with their landlords in a timely manner, so that the landlord has a reasonable opportunity to consider the issues whilst they are still ‘live’, and whilst the evidence is available to reach an informed conclusion on the events which occurred. As the substantive issues become historical it is increasingly difficult for either the landlord, or an independent body such as the Ombudsman, to conduct an effective review of the actions taken to address those issues.
  3. This is in accordance with paragraph 42(c) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, which states that we will not consider complaints that were not brought to the attention of the landlord as a formal complaint within a reasonable period, which would normally be within six months of the matters arising. In view of the time periods involved in this case, taking into account the availability and reliability of evidence, this assessment does not consider any specific events prior to December 2021. The historical issues provide contextual background to the current complaint, but the assessment is focused on the landlord’s actions in responding to the more recent events and, specifically, to the formal complaint made in June 2022.
  4. The resident has described the effect on her health and that of her family’s that these ongoing issues have caused. The Ombudsman does not doubt the resident’s comments. However, it is beyond the remit of this Service to make a determination on whether there was a direct link between the landlord’s actions and the resident’s health. Whilst we cannot consider the effect on health, consideration has been given to any general distress and inconvenience which the resident experienced as a result of any failures by the landlord.

How the landlord handled the resident’s reports of ASB and her requests to be rehoused

  1. Once it had received the resident’s reports of the harassment she was receiving and her request to be rehoused as a result of that harassment, the landlord had a duty to respond to the matter in line with the obligations set out in the tenancy agreement and its published policies and procedures.
  2. While the reports made by the neighbour about the resident were made to the police and not to the landlord, it was appropriate for it to request this information from the police and to consider whether these reports constituted harassment and investigation in line with its ASB policy detailed above.
  3. The landlord has provided this service with a copy of the police Information and Response Form it received. Due to data protection legislation, this service is unable to provide detailed information about the contents of the form as we cannot share other residents’ personal information without their consent. However, based on the information we have seen, this service can confirm that the information provided to the resident by the landlord in its telephone call to her on 6 September 2022 and the stage two complaint response sent on 13 September 2022 correctly described the contents of the form.
  4. The police recorded one report from the neighbour, made in December 2021, about noise from the resident’s children. The police attended the resident’s property to discuss the report and stated that it was satisfied that the noise from the property was normal household noise and that no further action was taken. No other reports made against the resident were recorded.
  5. Therefore, there is no evidence of service failure by the landlord in how it responded to the incident. The police investigated the report was that made and took no further action. It was also reasonable for the landlord not to consider the neighbour a vexatious complainant as there was no evidence of any further reports made by the neighbour about the resident’s household to either the police or the landlord other than the December 2021 report.
  6. It was also reasonable for the landlord to decline to consider a priority move for the resident. This is because the December 2021 report was not deemed to be harassment, there was no evidence of further reports being made, no evidence of targeted ongoing harassment nor that a threat to the resident’s safety had been found, which would have met the criteria for a priority move. However, it was appropriate for the landlord to offer support and advice regarding other methods of rehousing and also to inform the resident that it would reconsider a priority move if further evidence was submitted.
  7.  The resident has also disputed advice given by the landlord stating that she would have to relinquish her tenancy in order to be rehoused. On 8 July 2022, the landlord sent a letter to a local councillor who was supporting the resident. The letter explained how the landlord handled its housing stock. The letter informed the councillor that 75% of vacant properties were allocated to the local authority waiting list and the remaining 25% were used to rehouse applicants on the priority moves waiting list. The landlord informed the councillor that “if the home-swap/ mutual exchange does not proceed, we would be reliant on the existing resident to relinquish their tenancy”.
  8. This information clearly caused distress to the resident, who was left under the impression that she would first have to relinquish her tenancy before being able to move. This was not the case, and the landlord was making the point that as all its vacant properties were allocated, it could only consider an internal transfer if the mutual exchange did not go ahead or if another tenant voluntary gave up their tenancy. This information was poorly worded in its letter to the local councillor.
  9. When the resident requested an escalation of the complaint on 20 July 2022, she made reference to this issue and that she had been advised that in order to proceed with a mutual exchange she would first have to relinquish her tenancy. While it would have been useful for the landlord to have explained in its stage two response that this was not the case, it is noted that the landlord had been in contact with the resident outside of the complaint process in order to provide advice in processing a mutual exchange. Therefore, while there is no evidence of service failure in respect of the information it provided, it is recommended that the landlord review the language it uses to explain internal transfers.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in respect of how it handled the resident’s reports of ASB and her requests to be rehoused.

Recommendation

  1. It is recommended that the landlord review the language it uses to explain internal transfers to make clear that a tenant would not have to relinquish their tenancy prior to proceeding with a mutual exchange.