Southwark Council (202011129)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202011129

Southwark Council

15 September 2021 (Amended on Review)

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 the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
   1. reports of loud noise from the water pipework.
   2. reports of a leak from a bathroom tap.
   3. request to reimburse their water bill.
   4. The associated formal complaint.

Background and summary of events

Background

2. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord, which is a local authority. The property is a new build flat in a communal building.
3. The landlord operates a two-stage complaints policy. On receipt of a complaint, the landlord will provide a complaint response at stage one within 15 working days. If the complainant is dissatisfied with the response, they can request an escalation of the complaint to stage two and a review of the complaint will be undertaken. A stage two complaint response will then be sent to the complainant within 25 working days of making the escalation request.
4. Section 2a of the landlord’s compensation policy describes payments for delay and distress. This states that it will pay £5 per week each for delay and distress that the landlord considers ‘Low Impact’. Low impact is defined by the landlord as:

“The complainant has just cause but has not suffered significant inconvenience or distress as a result of the events. Low impact means the manager accepts the service has not achieved the expected standards, However, the impact is not greater than a reasonably tolerant person could be expected to accept.”

5. Section 2c of the compensation policy relates to incurred costs and states as follows:

“If the complainant has incurred costs, which would not have been necessary, but for the fault, it will usually be appropriate to reimburse the complainant. For example, cost of contractors’, use of the complainant’s gas and electricity.”

Summary of events

Noise from taps and pipework

6. The resident initially raised concerns about the loud noise coming from the taps on 16 November 2019.
7. On 27 January 2020 the landlord confirmed concerns the resident had to ‘New Homes’. This included the loud noise from the taps and problems with the window in the kitchen. An inspection took place on 29 January 2020.
8. On 3 February 2020 the Communal Repairs Technical Officer provided a report of his inspection where it was advised; ‘‘loud taps’ – no repair or defect. The taps are somewhat noisy when they are turned off or on full bore quickly. This is simply high-water pressure. The noise is reduced if the taps are turned on more slowly’. This was relayed to the resident on 14 February 2020.
9. According to the email conversations, a further inspection was carried out on 17 March 2020 where it was agreed the noise from the taps was unusually high and arrangements were made for a handyperson to repair the fault. A week later there was a national lockdown which resulted in no appointments being arranged in line with government guidelines.
10. The resident contacted the landlord on 19 June 2020 for an update on the work for the noise from the taps as well as other aspects that needed to be addressed. The landlord responded the same day to explain that whilst the other jobs were passed to ‘Lovells’, the tap issue needed to be passed to its internal team (handyperson) and due to the pandemic, they were unable to attend. The resident was advised that the landlord would arrange the job once the handypersons were attending properties again.
11. The resident emailed again for an update on 16 July. The landlord replied on 21 July 2020 to explain that the handypersons were still not attending properties however that this was being reviewed at the end of that month and it would update the resident then.
12. On 4 August the resident contacted the landlord as he had not heard anything back by the end of July as specified in the email of 21 July 2020. He expressed the stress that the noise was causing to him and his family. The landlord responded that day to advise it had emailed the handypersons team who advised they were not back and would be reviewing the decision in mid-August. It went on to explain that the regular repairs service was not going out to properties unless it was an emergency, so it was unable to refer the resident to them as a quicker solution. The resident was advised that he would be emailed once the landlord had heard from the team.
13. On 13 and 23 August 2020 the resident sent emails asking about an update. The landlord responded on 24 August 2020 to explain that the handypersons service would be having a meeting shortly to discuss if they were restarting the service. It also advised that due to the ongoing pandemic, the Council’s services were not running at full capacity but that it would update the resident with the outcome of the meeting when it had more information.
14. On 4 September the resident emailed again to confirm he had raised  a complaint the day before regarding this issue. He was unhappy that all the other aspects raised were resolved during the pandemic except the problem with the noise from the taps. He also advised that whilst the landlord did not consider the job urgent, it was affecting his sleep, so he considered it urgent.
15. On 10 September 2020 the resident received emails from the landlord to confirm the complaint was passed to the relevant team and it also explained that the reason the job was not attended like the other repairs was because this one was to be dealt with by the handyperson, whereas the other jobs were handled by the construction company. The landlord confirmed the handyperson service was back taking appointments the following week and that landlord would be in contact. There is no further evidence of the exact date that the appointment took place.
16. The resident’s complaint about the loud noise from the taps was acknowledged by the landlord on 9 September 2020. The resident then contacted the landlord back on 12 October 2020 as he had not had a response with regards to his complaint. 
17. On 12 October 2020 the landlord wrote back to the resident to advise that the handyperson had found no issues with the taps and there was nothing further to investigate. That the inspector and one of the landlord’s technical plumbers had advised there was nothing defective about the pipes.
18. The resident responded the same day challenging this advice noting he was advised during the visit of 17 March 2020 that the noise from the taps was unusually high. He also advised the landlord that he had a recording from the conversation with the handyperson who advised that there was a problem with the pipes.
19. The landlord requested a copy of the recording on 14 October 2020. It went on to explain that at the end of the inspection it was mentioned that there was a noise, but only when the taps were fully on, and the inspector said no banging noise was heard. On 15 October 2020 the resident responded confirming that the handyperson said that the issue needed to be looked at by the people who built the property and that this information would be passed to the manager to arrange a call back. The resident noted that he hadn’t had a call back. He explained that the noise could be heard from bedroom and was very loud. He added that he had a mixer tap so when turned halfway, the noise could still be heard, and very little water would come through.
20. On 21, 25 October 2020 and 19 November 2020, the resident chased the landlord for an update as it had not responded to his emails. On 20 November 2020 the landlord wrote to ‘New Homes’ the construction company, to ask it to investigate the matter.
21. On 24 November 2020, the resident received the landlord’s second stage response advising that there were no repairs or defects and that the taps were somewhat noisy when turned off or on fully, too quickly. It advised that this was simply high-water pressure and that the noise was reduced if the taps were turned on more slowly.
22. On 7 and 17 December 2020 the resident contacted the landlord for a follow up as he had not heard from it or ‘New Homes’ about the repairs. He received a response on 17 December 2020 to confirm the issue was passed to ‘New Homes’ and that the landlord would ask it for a firm visit date.
23. On 18 December 2020 the resident’s MP wrote to the landlord to question why this matter had not been resolved.

On 18 February 2021 the resident contacted the landlord confirming a contracted inspector from the council attended the property on 26 January 2021 and confirmed it was the pipework. He asked for an update on when the work would be done. The landlord responded the same day to confirm the issue was identified and a repair was arranged for the following week.

Water leak

24. On 9 March 2020 the resident contacted the landlord and reported a leak from a bathroom tap. This report was not passed on to the landlord’s contractor and no repair order was raised to attend the property.
25. On 9 April 2020 the resident called the landlord to inform it that the leak had worsened and that he was concerned about wasted water. This report was passed on to the contractor. Following a request from the contractor, the resident provided them with a video of the leak.
26. On 14 April 2020 the resident wrote to the landlord and expressed his dissatisfaction that an appointment to repair the leak had yet to be made and that he had received no updates. The resident also requested the landlord consider contributing towards his water bill due to the amount of water that had leaked from the tap. 
27. The landlord replied on 14 April, apologised for the delay, and said that it would contact its contractor. It then wrote again to confirm that a repair appointment had been made for 16 April 2020 and that it would consider his compensation request.
28. The landlord wrote to the resident on 16 April 2020 and enquired if the leak had been resolved. The resident replied on 17 April 2020, confirmed that the leak had been repaired, and informed the landlord that, due to Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, he was currently unable to provide it with a water bill. The landlord responded on 20 April 2020 and informed the resident that when he was able to send the bill, it would then consider compensation.
29. The landlord’s repair logs state that the resident contacted it on 3 September 2020 to report that the tap was again dripping water. This was marked as completed on 1 October 2020.
30. The resident was able to provide a copy of his water bill to the landlord on 15 September 2020. On receipt of the bill, the landlord opened a formal complaint and sent an acknowledgment to the resident on 18 September 2020.
31. The landlord sent a stage one complaint response to the resident on 22 September 2020. The landlord apologised to the resident for not passing on his initial report of the leak on 9 March 2020 to the contractor, which had caused the delay. It stated that during the defects period for the building, the leak should have been attended to within 48 hours of it being reported; however, in this case, it took six weeks.
32. The landlord then addressed the water bill provided by the resident. It noted that the bill covered the period from May 2019 to September 2020. It explained that it would be difficult for it to calculate how much water usage related to the leak aside from general usage and it had therefore based its compensation offer on its own complaints policy. The landlord awarded the resident £50 compensation for the time and trouble caused for the delays to repair the leak.
33. The landlord wrote to the resident on 29 September 2020 and enquired if the resident wished to accept its compensation offer.
34. The resident replied to the landlord on 3 October 2020 and informed it that the compensation offered was inadequate on the grounds that:
    5. It took six weeks to complete a repair that should have been resolved within 48 hours. During this time, the tap dripped water continuously, which increased his water bill.
    6. The level of communication it took for him to arrange the repair was time consuming and stressful.
    7. Although the leak was repaired, the tap was not replaced. This resulted in the leak returning and a new appointment having to be made to replace the tap.
35. The landlord replied to the resident on 8 October 2020 and confirmed it had escalated the complaint to stage two of its process.  The resident wrote to the landlord on 25 October 2020 and enquired on the status of the stage two complaint.  No evidence has been provided that the landlord replied to this email.
36. The stage two complaint response was sent to the resident on 24 November 2020. The landlord awarded an additional £25 for the delay in repairing the leak, which was not considered in the stage one response. It explained that this was calculated at £5 per week, using the ‘Low Impact’ tariff of its complaints policy.
37. The landlord noted that, as the resident had recently moved into the property, it did not have any bills from previous years to compare to his latest bill. The landlord awarded the resident £41.20, which amounted to 5% of the overall bill, which it considered a fair and appropriate amount.

Assessment and findings

Loud noise from the water pipework

38. The service standard section of the landlord’s repairs policy states that non-urgent repairs will be dealt with within 20 working days. Examples of non -urgent repairs include minor plastering, minor electric and plumbing repairs.  The landlord did not keep to this timescale following the residents report in November 2019. There has been nothing provided to indicate that there was contact with the resident prior to the communication in January 2020. The landlord should have kept he resident updated, where repairs or inspections were delayed, and the landlord did not do so in this situation.
39. The delay between March 2020 to September 2020 was reasonable as there was a nationwide lockdown and many services were restricted. Therefore, there was nothing more that the landlord could have done at that point to expedite the handyperson service appointment.
40. The landlord confirmed that following the inspection in January 2020 there were no defects found with the taps, with no further action needed. It is not unreasonable that the landlord relied on this information to confirm any repairs needed. I can see that following a second inspection in March 2020, it was arranged for a handyperson to attend the property. Whilst there has been no report provided from the landlord in March 2020, it did agree for a handyperson to attend the property following the visit, which indicates further investigation into the matter was established.
41. In both the email from the landlord on 12 October 2020 and the second stage response, it had advised that there were no defects with the taps or the pipes and there would be no further action regarding this issue. I note the outcome in the second stage response was in contradiction to the ongoing email conversation the resident was having with the landlord.
42. The resident challenged the information, and the landlord did not dispute the residents version of events and went ahead and passed the job to ‘New Homes’ to look into the pipe work. This was reasonable.
43. Had the resident not challenged the landlord’s facts with information from the recording, there would have been no further action with regards to the noise coming from the taps. As per the email of 18 February 2021 from the landlord, there was an issue identified with the pipes and a repair was arranged for the following week. There was no further inspection carried out by the landlord prior to the repair being referred to ‘New Homes’ to suggest that it used anything other than the resident’s challenge to refer the job. Whilst we do not condone residents recording conversations, particularly if permission has not been taken from the person being recorded, I do note that in this instance it was the recording that was the evidence the resident used to contradict the final response from the landlord.
44. Between 20 November 2020 and 17 December 2020, the resident chased the status of the referral and repairs and following the construction companies inspection on 26 January 2021, did so again. The landlord did not keep the residnet appropriately updated.
45.  There was service failure in the overall handling of the residents’ concerns about the noise from the taps. It is unclear if the contradicting information from the inspections of the noise from the taps was due to misinformation from the landlord’s contractor. Nevertheless, the resident had to challenge the landlord with his own evidence, that which the landlord should have been given, in order to get the matter resolved.

Leak from a bathroom tap

46. The landlord accepted that under its new home defects policy, the leak should have been resolved within 48 hours. However, there was a delay of five weeks until a work order was raised, and the repair was completed. The landlord awarded a total of £75 compensation in view of this. This was broken down as £5 per week for five weeks for the delay, and for the stress and the inconvenience this matter had caused the resident. The landlord explained that £5 per week is its compensation tariff used for issues that are assessed as having a low impact on a complainant.
47. The landlord did not meet its obligations to repair the leak within its prescribed timescales; therefore, it was appropriate for it to apologise and offer redress for the delays and inconvenience caused to the resident.
48. The landlord considered its service failure should be compensated as ‘Low Impact “in line with its complaints policy. This is reasonable for the delay to repair the leak, as the dripping tap was contained and did not constitute a loss of service, such as a total loss of the water supply for example. However, it would have been more appropriate for the landlord to compensate for stress and inconvenience at the ‘Medium Impact’ tariff. Section 2a of its compensation policy describes medium impact as:

“The events are clearly an injustice to the complainant and the service has failed to meet the required standards”.

49. Taking into consideration the length of time it took for the repair to be completed and that the issue had to be reported three times by the resident before he received an acknowledgement from the landlord, the medium impact tariff more properly recognises the failure of the landlord’s service standards. Therefore, to fully resolve this aspect of the complaint a further compensation payment of £50 is warranted to bring up the final compensation award to the medium impact tariff of £10 per week for five weeks for stress and inconvenience.

The level of compensation offered to reimburse the resident’s water bill.

50. The landlord requested a copy of the resident’s water bill in order for it to assess further compensation This is in line with its compensation policy, which recommends reimbursing incurred costs caused by a service failure from the landlord. It was reasonable for the landlord to request a copy of the water bill as evidence of the cost incurred.
51. The six weeks the tap leaked water covered approximately 10% of the time period of the water bill provided by the resident. The landlord offered compensation for 5% of the resident’s bill. It therefore offered reimbursement of around 50% of the water usage of the resident during the time of the delay. The landlord would not be expected to cover the full cost of the water bill for the period when the tap was leaking because the resident would have been using water during this period and he would be expected to pay for this usage.
52. Without any corresponding bills that covered similar time periods from previous years to compare to, this method of calculating appropriate reimbursement was reasonable for the landlord to take.

Complaint handling

53. The landlord met its stated timescales at stage one its complaint process however it did not address the point about the noise from the taps at this point. It did acknowledge the complaint about the noise from the taps in September 2020, but I have not seen a stage one response related to this.
54. The landlord did not meet it’s time scales for the stage two response. After confirming the escalation of the complaint to stage two on 8 October 2020, the stage two response was not provided until 24 November 2020. Furthermore, an email sent by the resident on 25 October 2020 asking for an update was not responded to.
55. The stage two response did not address this delay. No reason was given to the resident why the delay occurred, and no apology nor redress was offered.
56. Therefore, there was service failure in the landlord’s handing of this complaint and, further redress is warranted in view of this. Considering the landlord’s compensation policy, and the Ombudsman’s own remedies guidance, the landlord should offer £100 compensation in view of the delay in providing the stage two response and poor communication during this period.

Determination (decision)

57. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was service failure by the landlord in respect of its response to the resident’s:
    8. reports of a leak from a bathroom tap.
    9. Associated formal complaint.
    10. Reports of the noise from the taps.
58. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in respect of the level of compensation it offered to reimburse the resident’s water bill.

Reasons

59. The landlord did not manage the concerns about the noise from the taps in a reasonable manner, particularly with regards to keeping the resident updated about timescales and repair delays.
60. It is inappropriate that the landlord changed its decision about the noise from the taps only after the resident’s contradictions of the information from the inspections based on emails about his recordings. There was no acknowledgement or apology from the landlord to the resident about the incorrect conclusion regarding the noise from the taps.
61. The landlord recognised the delays in completing repair to resolve the leak. It apologised to the resident and awarded compensation at the low impact tariff of its compensation policy.
62. However, it should have compensated for resident for stress and inconvenience at the medium impact tariff.
63. It was reasonable for the landlord to reimburse 50% of the resident’s water usage for the period of the leak without any corroborating evidence to determine the exact level of usage at the time the stage two response was sent to the resident.
64. Further compensation is warranted to recognise that the landlord did not provide an outcome to the noise from the pipework complaint at stage one, did not provide the stage two response within its stated timescales and for its poor communication during this period.

Orders

65. The landlord is ordered to pay to the resident £500. This is in addition to the £66.20 compensation already offered in its complaints process.
66. This payment should be made within four weeks of the date of this report. The landlord should update this Service when payment has been made.
67. The landlord is further ordered to ensure that formal complaints are responded to in line with the complaints procedure and the Ombudsman’s Complaint handling Code. This may include additional staff training or changes to processes.

Recommendations

68. The Ombudsman recommends that the landlord should review its processes to ensure residents receive updates when there are any delays to repairs.
69. The landlord should consider giving residents response timescales within its updates, in order to avoid residents chasing matters. This will help to manage resident expectations.