Southwark Council (202013386)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202013386

Southwark Council

12 August 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 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

The complaint is about the landlord’s:
1. Handling of the resident’s reports of no heating or hot water in the property between September 2019 and December 2020.
2. Handling of more recent reports of no heating or hot water after December 2020.
3. Associated complaint handling.

Jurisdiction

What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. This is governed by the Housing Ombudsman 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.
Paragraph 39(a) of the Scheme states that the Ombudsman will not consider complaints which, in his opinion, ‘are made prior to having exhausted a member’s complaints procedure unless there is evidence of a complaint handling failure and the Ombudsman is satisfied that the member has not taken action within a reasonable timescale’.
After carefully considering all the evidence, in accordance with paragraph 39(a), the complaint about the landlord’s handling of reports of no heating or hot water after December 2020 are found to be outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.
Following the exhaustion of the landlord’s internal complaint procedure, the resident referred to further hot water and heating outages, which are subject to a separate complaint which has not been referred to this Service.
While the issues have been reviewed for contextual purposes, this Service is not able to adjudicate on these incidents as the landlord needs to be provided with the opportunity to investigate and respond to this aspect.

Background and summary of events

Policies and procedures

The landlord’s repair guide confirms it will attend emergency repairs within 24 hours to ensure the safety of its residents is not put at risk; the full repair may be completed on “another day” once the issue has been made safe.
As per the landlord’s repair guide, it aims to “do good work which is right first time”. If concerns are raised over the work, it will “send someone round to either fix or inspect the problems.”
The appendix of the landlord’s compensation policy details “medium impact…events are clearly an injustice to [the resident] and the service has failed to meet the expected standards.” It details the following awards:
1. £10 per week for delays in delivering a service.
2. £10 per week for distress and inconvenience.
3. £50 – £250 for the resident’s time and trouble in progressing the complaint.
4. For incurred costs, for example the use of the resident’s electricity by its contractors, “it will usually be appropriate to reimburse” the resident.
As per section three of the landlord’s complaint policy, stage one complaint responses will be sent within 15 working days, and final-stage complaint responses within 25 working days.

Background

The resident is a tenant of the landlord, and the property is a flat. The heating and hot water are provided by a communal boiler.

Summary of events

The resident has reported that his property was without heating and hot water for four days from 3 September 2019.
There was a further outage of three days duration from 2 October 2019.
On 18 January 2020, a work order was raised following the resident’s reports of no heating or hot water at the property, resulting in a two-day outage.
On 18 February 2020, a work order was raised in respect to there being no hot water in the building. This required the communal boiler gaskets to be replaced, resulting in a two-day hot water outage.
On 20 February, the landlord’s records confirm that a work order was raised following the resident’s reports that he was “still without heating or hot water”. It further confirms that the resident was informed that “a new [work order had] been raised to the block”. No further information has been provided in respect to this work order.
On 28 February 2020, the landlord’s records confirm that a further work order was raised following the resident’s reports of no heating, which was due to a tripped pressure unit affecting the whole building. It attended on the same day, confirmed there were no signs of a leak, reset the unit, and restored heating and hot water to the building.
On 5 March 2020, a work order was raised following reports of no heat from the communal boiler. The landlord attended the next day to restore heating and hot water.
On 10 March 2020, the resident raised his complaint with the landlord, which is summarised as follows:
1. There had been no heating or hot water in his flat for a “prolonged period”. This meant that the flat “was practically unliveable”, with the freezing temperatures meaning he had to find somewhere else to sleep “several times”.
2. The resident provided the landlord with his record of the landlord’s visits, including the landlord’s work order reference numbers, and requested the landlord check these.
3. He felt that his physical health had been affected by the conditions in the flat.
4. He raised concerns over the landlord’s customer service, with telephone staff being “unhelpful and rude”.
5. As a result, he wanted compensation; for the 34 days he spent without heating and hot water, for the “20 hours on calls” in dealing with the complaint, and for the adverse effect on his mental health.
On 21 May 2020, the landlord issued its stage one complaint response to the resident, which is summarised as follows:
1. It apologised for the delay in its response to the resident’s complaint.
2. In response to the work orders listed by the resident in his stage one complaint, it provided a summary of the actions it had carried out. However, it was stated that five of the work orders were “not on [its] systems”.
3. It explained that “district heating service charge rebates are paid for outages that run continuously for more than 24 hours” and are paid directly to the affected residents’ rent accounts.
4. It advised the resident that because the outages affected the whole block, it was unable to reimburse the resident for the additional electricity he had used to allow for the heating of the flat.
5. In addition to the rebates which were paid directly to the resident’s rent account, it awarded £50 for the inconvenience experienced by the resident.
On 28 May 2020, the resident requested the escalation of the complaint for the following reasons:
1. He had spent “a considerable amount of time” in obtaining his last year’s electricity bill “upon [the landlord’s] request”, and it was now declining to reimburse him as it was an outage affecting the whole building. He requested the relevant policy on this matter.
2. He confirmed that he had experienced heating and hot water outages for three or four days at a time, amounting to a total of “around 30 days”, during which time the flat was “practically unliveable”.
3. In respect to the repair history information provided by the landlord in its stage one complaint response, he did not feel that it reflected the occasions when its operative had fixed the problem, which reoccurred soon after the visit.
4. In summary, the resident did not consider that the landlord was providing the services he was paying for and was not happy that he was refused compensation for this.
On 1 June 2020, the landlord emailed the resident to acknowledge his request to escalate the complaint.
This Service has not been provided with any evidence of communication between the landlord and the resident in the period 1 June to 2 November 2020.
On 2 November 2020, the landlord’s records confirm that the resident had called to follow up on his request to escalate the complaint.
On 14 December 2020, the landlord provided its final-stage complaint response to the resident, which is summarised as follows:
1. It apologised for not providing information on all of the work orders quoted by the resident in his stage one complaint. It provided the resident with a list of all of the work orders in respect to the issues raised in the complaint, along with its respective findings at stage one and final-stage complaint investigation. It concluded that the resident had experienced a total of eight heating and hot water outages between January and March 2020.
2. It confirmed that the reimbursement of service charges for communal outages were automatically paid to residents. It recognised that the resident had also suffered individual outages; however, these “[did] not meet the minimum [one] week consistent delay period” required for the landlord to pay compensation under its policy. As it had “acted in good time to progress the repair”, it felt that the £50 compensation it had offered in its stage one complaint response was fair.
3. It did not uphold the resident’s complaint. However, it did apologise for the delay in escalating the complaint, which it said was due to the impact of the coronavirus national lockdown.

Assessment and findings

Handling of the resident’s reports of no heating or hot water

In response to the resident’s request for repairs, the landlord was required to attend to the repair within 24 hours in line with its policy. The landlord has provided evidence which confirms that it honoured this commitment, and this was therefore a fair and reasonable action for the landlord to have taken.
In respect of the continued reports of issues affecting the heating and hot water to the resident’s flat, it would have been appropriate for the landlord to have arranged for an inspection of the property to understand the cause of these issues. This Service has not been provided with evidence regarding such an inspection, or that it had considered further repairs to address the issues experienced by the resident. This added distress and inconvenience to the resident, and failure was found for this aspect of the complaint. While it is acknowledged that some of these issues were communal, there were also repeated individual issues, and it would have been appropriate and reasonable for a further inspection to be completed and documented by the landlord.
Following the resident’s stage one complaint, the landlord attempted to address the resident’s concerns by detailing the repairs it had undertaken at his property, explaining the process for arranging compensation following communal outages, and offered compensation. However, it failed to address the resident’s concerns about the conduct of its staff, and this was inappropriate. It would have been reasonable for the landlord to have investigated these concerns and provide a response to the resident.
The resident had also asked the landlord to reimburse him for additional electric costs, “as he had to use electric heaters” in the property during the outages. The landlord did address this point in its complaint responses. While it is acknowledged that some of the outages were communal, and therefore covered by an automated reimbursement procedure, in line with the landlord’s repairs policy, some were individual. Therefore, it would have been reasonable for the landlord to consider the resident’s request for reimbursement for the individual outages, in line with its compensation policy. The landlord would not be expected to pay additional compensation to the resident for the communal outages as it was fair for the landlord to pay the same amount to all residents affected by these issues.
In settlement of the resident’s complaint, the landlord offered £50 compensation, in recognition of the distress and inconvenience suffered by the resident as a result of having no heating and hot water; this award being in addition to the payments the resident had received following the communal outages. As the outages occurred over a short period of time on each occasion, this award is in line with the landlord’s compensation policy which says that compensation will not be paid for short-term loss of heating or hot water of less than a week. However, the same policy also refers to compensation for delays in delivering a service, as well as time and trouble in the resident progressing a complaint. This does not appear to have been adequately considered during the landlord’s internal complaint procedure, and failure has been found for this aspect of the complaint. Under the circumstances, as detailed in this report, it would have been fair for landlord to recognise these points and offer the resident similar levels of compensation for the outages affecting his own property to that offered for communal outages.
The resident has provided the landlord with copies of his electricity bills as evidence of his additional costs due to the lack of heating and hot water in his property. As explained above, the Ombudsman agrees that it would be fair for the landlord to compensate the resident for outages affecting his own property in the same way as it has done for communal outages. However, it would be difficult to base this compensation on the resident’s electricity bills. This is because there may be various reasons why electricity usage may be higher compared to the same period the previous year. This could lead to a further dispute between the resident and landlord concerning the exact amount of additional electricity used because of the lack of heating and hot water compared to other factors.
In view of this, the Ombudsman considers that the landlord should calculate the compensation for outages affecting the resident’s own property using the same method that it used to assess compensation for the communal outages. The landlord should therefore refund the resident’s service charge for periods of outages affecting his property alone.
It is noted that the resident has raised concerns over the effect of the lack of heating on his health and wellbeing. The Ombudsman does not doubt the resident’s comments regarding his health, but this Service is unable to draw conclusions on the causation of, or liability for, impacts on health and wellbeing. This because we do not have the authority or expertise to do so in the way that a court or insurer might. However, we have considered the landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns about his health and the general distress and inconvenience which the situation affecting his property has caused him.
It does not appear from the landlord’s responses to the complaint that it has considered the resident’s comments about his health as it did not acknowledge this aspect of the complaint or take any steps to address it, for example by prioritising repairs to his property on health grounds or explaining why it could not do this. This lack of response represents service failure by the landlord which has been taken into account when considering compensation.

Complaint handling

Following the complaint being received initially from the resident on 10 March 2020, the landlord was obliged to provide him with its reply within 15 working days. The landlord did not provide its stage one complaint response until 21 May 2020, meaning the resident waited 10 weeks for a response to his complaint. This added inconvenience for the resident.
Having received the resident’s stage two complaint on 28 May 2020, the landlord did not issue its final stage complaint response to the resident until 14 December 2020. This was additionally contrary to its complaints policy, which allowed 25 working days for a final stage response. This added further distress, inconvenience, time, and trouble to the resident, in contacting the landlord to request an update on the complaint. While the landlord’s policy does not refer to the extension of its stated timescales, it would have been reasonable for the landlord to provide an update on the progress of the complaint, including the expected date for its final-stage complaint response.
In the landlord’s final stage complaint response to the resident, it accepted that it had delayed the escalation of the complaint and apologised. While it was appropriate for the landlord to acknowledge this and apologise, it would have been fair for the landlord to offer suitable compensation for distress and inconvenience, and time and trouble caused by the delay in progressing his complaint.

Determination (decision)

In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in its:
1. Handling of the resident’s reports of no heating or hot water in the property.
2. Associated complaint handling.

Reasons

The landlord acted appropriately in attending to the emergency repairs within its stated timescales. It also recognised the distress and inconvenience experienced by the resident as a result of the outages and paid appropriate compensation for the outages affecting the whole building, in line with its repairs policy.
However, it has failed to evidence an inspection of the supply of heating and hot water to the property, as it was obligated to do. It also did not address the resident’s concerns over staff conduct. When provided with electricity bills from the resident, it did not consider the reimbursement of this, despite suffering outages which were not communal and only affected the resident’s property.
The landlord’s response time at stage one was 10 weeks instead of its stated 3 weeks, and at final-stage this was 28 weeks instead of its stated 5 weeks. It apologised to the resident for its delayed response, at both stages of its internal complaint procedure, however this was not sufficient redress for the distress and inconvenience caused by these delays.

Orders

The Ombudsman orders the landlord to:
1. Pay the resident compensation of £200, comprising:

– £100 for the time, trouble, distress and inconvenience caused to the resident by the landlord’s failings in its response to the resident’s reports of a lack of hot water and heating to the property.

– £100 for the time, trouble, distress and inconvenience caused to the resident by the landlord’s failings in its complaint handling.

Reimburse the service charge for the periods of heating and hot water outages affecting the resident’s property alone, in line with the payment made previously for communal outages, or should the resident provide electricity bills showing the difference in cost from this period compared to the same period the previous year, then those costs should be paid instead.
Inspect the property to assess if any additional repairs are required to improve the reliability of the supply of heating and hot water to the resident’s property. The landlord should report back to this Service on its findings.