Southwark Council (202214181)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202214181

Southwark Council

30 November 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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
1. Rehousing application.
2. Reports of anti social behaviour (ASB).
3. Formal complaint.

Jurisdiction

What the Ombudsman can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. This is governed by the Scheme. When a complaint is brought to the Service, the Ombudsman must consider all the circumstances of the case, as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
Paragraph 41d of the Scheme says that the Ombudsman cannot consider complaints which “concern matters in respect of Local Housing Authorities in England which do not relate to their provision or management of social housing”.
The resident’s complaint about the handling of her rehousing application relates to the priority banding awarded to her under the council’s allocations policy. Complaints regarding housing need, priority banding and administration of ‘choice based lettings schemes’ fall under the jurisdiction of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO). Should the resident wish to pursue her complaint about this matter, she should refer it to the LGSCO who may be able to consider it.
Therefore, in accordance with paragraph 41d of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the complaint about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s rehousing application is outside of jurisdiction.

Background

The resident and her husband are the joint tenants of a secure tenancy with the landlord, which began on 22 September 2014. They live at the property with their 2 young children.
The property is a 2-bedroom flat on the first floor of a converted house. The ground floor of the house has also been converted into a flat. Both flats share a communal front door and hallway but have individual doorbells.
The resident says that she began experiencing ASB from the neighbour in the flat below immediately after moving into the property, however, the landlord has no record of any issues being reported until 2017.
From 2017 onwards, the resident and her neighbour made numerous ASB complaints about each other to the landlord. The neighbour complained about noise made by the resident’s children and household appliances. The resident complained about the neighbour approaching her in an intimidating and aggressive manner to complain about noise.
The landlord used an independent mediation service to try and resolve the dispute. Face to face mediation was carried out at the landlord’s offices in January 2019. Following this, the resident expressed concern that the mediator was “too familiar” with her neighbour, and she felt the process was biased.
On 31 October 2019, the landlord wrote to the neighbour asking her not to ring the resident’s doorbell or knock on her door apart from “in the event of an extreme emergency”.
On 27 April 2020, the landlord referred the resident to the council’s ‘social welfare panel’ based on the long standing dispute with her neighbour. The panel reviews welfare and/or exceptional circumstances to determine whether residents should be granted priority transfer status on the council’s housing register. The panel determined that the resident did not qualify for priority status.
The landlord has no record of the resident submitting any ASB complaints between February 2021 and November 2021. The resident’s formal complaint was logged on 18 January 2022.
Paragraph 42c of the Scheme says that the Ombudsman may not consider matters which were not brought to the attention of the landlord as a complaint within a reasonable period – normally 6 months of them arising. In accordance with this, whilst regard will be given to the previous matters, this investigation will focus on the landlord’s handling of events from November 2021 onwards.

Summary of events

On 27 November 2021, the resident emailed the landlord to report that her neighbour had continuously rang her doorbell on several occasions. She said that on each occasion her children had been playing in the property and “making a bit of noise” but that she had been trying to keep them quiet.
The landlord responded on 7 December 2021. It said that it presumed the neighbour had been ringing the resident’s doorbell due to the noise. The landlord said that it was a very difficult situation due to noise transference in the property and there was not much it could do about everyday domestic noise. The resident pointed out that the neighbour should not be ringing her bell, or approaching her directly, to which the landlord asked the resident “what would you like me to do going forwards?”.
On 30 December 2021, the resident emailed the Chief Executive of the council expressing her dissatisfaction at the landlord’s handling of the situation with her neighbour over the previous 7 years. She said she felt “ignored” by the landlord, had received “no help” and was left “not able to live a peaceful life”.
On 5 January 2022, the landlord telephoned the resident in response to her email to the Chief Executive. It proposed using mediation with a new mediation service (which the resident declined), said it would send her diary sheets to log incidents, and said it would speak to her neighbour to advise them not to ring her doorbell.
Also on 5 January 2022, the police contacted the landlord. They said they had visited the resident after she had called them about the long running issues with her neighbour. The police said they had seen footage captured on the resident’s video doorbell of the neighbour repeatedly ringing the doorbell and shouting up at the resident’s property. They described the resident as “struggling with the situation”, “unable to live in peace” and said that “it was very evident they need help”.
The landlord responded the same day, confirming that it was aware of the situation and had previously tried to resolve it. It said that it had spoken to the resident that morning and that the neighbour had also made complaints about the resident. The landlord said it would arrange to view the resident’s doorbell footage and speak to the neighbour.
On 9 January 2022, the landlord provided a written response to the resident’s email of 30 December 2021. It said that it had explored various options “to resolve the dispute and counter allegations…without success”. It said it had spoken to the resident and police about the current complaints and would arrange a convenient time to view the footage from her doorbell. It urged her to reconsider its offer of mediation.
The resident made a formal complaint to the landlord on 18 January 2022. She said she had suffered ongoing harassment, ASB and damage to her belongings from the neighbour in the flat below since moving into the property. She described the neighbour banging on the floor/ceiling between the properties, ringing her doorbell repeatedly, shouting abusive language at her and intentionally locking her out of the building. She said despite the recent involvement of police, the landlord was still not offering her any help.
On 24 January 2022, the police informed the landlord that they had received a further report from the resident of ASB by her neighbour. They asked the landlord for an update on the situation and offered to visit the resident with it.
The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 3 February 2022. It said that it had explored various means of resolving the situation between the resident and her neighbour without success. It said it would arrange a meeting with the resident and the police to “discuss this matter and hopefully agree a resolution plan” and asked her to continue completing the diary sheets it had provided.
On 24 February 2022, the landlord met with the resident and the police at the landlord’s offices. During the meeting the landlord viewed footage of incidents from the resident’s video doorbell. It was agreed that the landlord would write to the neighbour asking them to attend a meeting with it and the police.
The resident emailed the landlord on 28 February 2022. She attached 2 further clips captured on her video doorbell which she said showed the neighbour encouraging their grandchildren to shout and make loud noises in the communal hallway, and pushing past the resident to confront a delivery driver and tell them that the resident was “rude”.
The resident completed diary sheets recording 14 separate incidents involving the neighbour (and the neighbour’s grandchildren) between 3 November 2021 and 7 March 2022. These included continuously ringing her doorbell, shouting and swearing towards her property, spitting towards her video doorbell and throwing her wheely bin into the road. The resident said the incidents had made her feel upset, intimidated, anxious and stressed. It is unclear exactly when these diary sheets were received by the landlord.
The resident emailed the landlord on 18 March 2022 asking for an update on her case. The landlord replied on 22 March 2022 to say that it was still waiting for the police to confirm their availability to meet with the neighbour and was considering arranging the meeting without them.
On 28 March 2022, the resident asked the landlord to escalate her complaint to stage 2 of its process as she remained dissatisfied with how the ASB case was being managed.
On 29 March 2022, the landlord and the police met with the resident’s neighbour. The neighbour was advised not to knock on the resident’s door, ring her doorbell, or engage with her or her family. During the meeting the neighbour raised concerns about the resident’s video doorbell – which was capturing footage of her grandchildren entering and exiting the building.
On 18 April 2022, the resident contacted the landlord to report that the neighbour’s grandchildren were hitting her video doorbell and pushing their hands onto it when entering the communal front door.
The resident requested to escalate her complaint for a second time on 21 April 2022. The landlord acknowledged the request the same day.
On the same day, the landlord telephoned the resident to update her about its meeting with the neighbour held on 29 March 2022.It informed her that the neighbour had raised concerns about the video doorbell and that it needed to be removed as it had not given her permission to install it.
On 17 May 2022, the landlord emailed the resident asking her if there had been any further incidents with her neighbour. It said that it was aware her video doorbell was still in place and repeated its request for her to remove it.
The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 27 May 2022. It said it had reviewed its handling of the case and found that it had been addressed in the correct manner. It asked the resident to continue recording any further incidents using the diary sheets provided.

Assessment and findings

Handling of ASB

It is acknowledged that this situation has been distressing to the resident and her family. It may help to explain that the role of the Ombudsman is to consider complaints about how the landlord responded to reports of a problem. It is not the Ombudsman’s role to decide if the actions of the resident’s neighbour amounted to ASB, but rather, whether the landlord dealt with the resident’s reports appropriately and reasonably.
The resident made her first report (within the scope of this investigation) to the landlord on 27 November 2021. The landlord failed to acknowledge or respond to this until 7 December 2021, despite its ASB procedure requiring it to contact complainants of ASB within 5 working days for all cases.
The landlord’s ASB procedure also says that it “should complete a risk assessment scorecard/matrix during the initial interview with the victim/witness so that risks in the case can be managed effectively”. Although such a risk assessment was completed with the resident on 19 December 2019, risk is not a static measure and should be regularly reassessed. Considering the time elapsed since the resident’s last recorded complaints in February 2021, it would have been appropriate to treat this as a new case and carry out an updated risk assessment in line with its procedure. This was eventually done, but not until 26 September 2022.
The landlord’s response to the initial reports failed to acknowledge that the neighbour ringing the resident’s doorbell was a continuation of prior behaviour and in breach of its previous advice to them. After the resident pointed this out, the landlord’s reply consisted solely of “Thank you for your response. What would you like me to do going forwards?”. Although it is reasonable for a landlord to consider the wishes of complainants in how it manages their cases, this was insensitively phrased, could be interpreted as dismissive and passive and was quoted by the resident in her email of 30 December 2021 as an example of the landlord’s lack of support.
The landlord has provided no evidence that it took any further action or contacted the resident until prompted by her email of 30 December 2021. The fact that the resident sent this email directly to the Chief Executive of the council, attempting to bypass the landlord, indicates that she had lost confidence in the landlord to resolve the issues. Whilst the landlord/tenant relationship was clearly strained due to the events of previous years, the landlord further damaged this by failing to appropriately respond to her latest reports.
On 5 January 2022, the landlord told the police it would contact the resident and arrange to view the footage she had recorded on her doorbell. The landlord has not provided evidence it attempted to do this prior to the police contacting it again on 24 January 2022 requesting an update. By this time the resident had already submitted her formal complaint in which she described feeling “very disappointed”, “neglected” by the landlord and “left to endure the negative behaviour” of the neighbour. Had the landlord acted more promptly in arranging to meet with the resident and view the footage these feelings may have been different.
The landlord met with the resident and the police on 24 February 2022. Although this was a month after the police had contacted it about arranging this, the delay was due to difficulties in finding a date suitable for all parties and the landlord had kept the resident reasonably informed of this.
At the meeting the landlord viewed the resident’s doorbell footage and agreed it would contact the neighbour and arrange to meet with them with the police. The landlord and police did not meet with the neighbour until 29 March 2022. As with the meeting with the resident, this delay was due to difficulties in scheduling an appointment that was convenient for all parties.
However, the landlord’s ASB procedure says that it will “update the victim or witness on a weekly or as agreed basis to notify of progress”. Although there was no apparent “agreed basis” for updates in the resident’s case, the landlord has provided no evidence that it contacted her between its meeting with her on 24 February 2022 and her chasing it for an update on 18 March 2022.
This represents a period of over 3 weeks where the resident was unsure whether or not the landlord had spoken to her neighbour. The resident had previously expressed concerns about repercussions from the neighbour and described her family feeling like they were ‘treading on eggshells’. It is therefore likely she experienced significant anxiety about the landlord speaking with her neighbour and it would have been appropriate to inform her exactly when this would be happening.
The landlord similarly failed to update the resident that it had met with her neighbour until 21 April 2022 – nearly a month after the meeting had taken place. This was an unreasonably long time, which likely added to the resident’s feeling that the landlord was ignoring her and failing to act, and contributed to her request to escalate her complaint.
During the phone call on 21 April 2022, the landlord asked the resident to remove her video doorbell after the neighbour had raised concerns about it. Although the resident argued that the doorbell was necessary for her to capture evidence of the neighbour’s behaviour, the landlord was reasonably entitled to make such a request as the doorbell’s camera was capturing a communal entrance and the neighbour had raised an objection to this.
It is noted that the resident requested for a copy of the landlord’s policy in relation to video doorbells/CCTV and the landlord was unable to provide one, instead relying on a tenancy clause requiring residents to gain its permission to make improvements to the property. A recommendation has been made below about this in light of the increasingly widespread use of video doorbells and domestic CCTV systems.
The landlord next contacted the resident on 17 May 2022, to check if there had been any further incidents. This again represented a period of over 3 weeks without contact, which was not reasonable or in keeping with its ASB procedure.
The landlord told the Ombudsman that it had not carried out any soundproofing work to the property, however it has not provided any evidence that this option was ever considered. The Ombudsman’s spotlight report on noise complaints highlighted that landlords should recognise that “actions taken to prevent and/or mitigate for the typical sources of noise nuisance will, in the long run, be more cost-efficient than handling the subsequent noise nuisance report. Ultimately, and importantly, will provide a better quality of service to its residents”.
This would seem particularly relevant in this case. The landlord has expended considerable time and resource over several years dealing with issues which ultimately appear to stem from poor soundproofing and the transference of daily living noise. Despite these efforts, the situation was not resolved and the resident still described it as having “affected our day to day life at home” when referring her complaint to the Ombudsman. An order has been made below in relation to this.
The landlord’s actions in meeting with both parties and giving words of advice were appropriate given the allegations made – which could not reasonably be said to have reached a level where tenancy action would be proportionate. The resident had also expressed her desire for the matter to be dealt with ‘informally’ by the police. The police explained to the landlord this was their reason for closing the reports she had made to them.
However, the landlord handled the case in such a way that it is understandable that the resident felt ignored and neglected. Its initial response to her reports was inappropriate and it did not evidence any intention to act until she attempted to refer the matter to the council’s Chief Executive. The landlord did not manage the case in keeping with its ASB procedure by failing to carry out a risk assessment, meet with the resident in a reasonable timeframe, and provide regular appropriate updates to her, even after significant events such as meeting with her neighbour.
These failures undermined the landlord/tenant relationship, caused the resident to lose faith in the landlord and to feel that her case was not being managed appropriately, whilst she and her family were experiencing “anxiety and stress”. This represents maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the ASB reports.

Complaint handling

The Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code defines a complaint as “an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the organisation, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting an individual resident or group of residents”.
The resident’s email to the council’s Chief Executive on 30 December 2021 clearly met this definition. However, the landlord failed to appropriately log this as a complaint, despite referring to it as such within internal emails and in its written response to the resident on 9 January 2022.
This resulted in the resident taking the time and trouble to submit a lengthy complaint to the landlord via its online complaints form on 18 January 2022, the content of which nearly identical to that of her email of 30 December 2021.
After receiving its stage 1 complaint response, the resident emailed the landlord on 28 March 2022 requesting to escalate her complaint to stage 2. The landlord has provided no evidence that it acknowledged this request, or an explanation for why it did not. It was not until the resident’s second request on 21 April 2022 that the landlord appropriately escalated her complaint.
These failures obstructed the resident’s access to the landlord’s complaints procedure and unreasonably delayed her complaint being responded to at each stage of the process. A landlord’s approach to complaints should be clear, simple and accessible and ensure that complaints are resolved promptly, politely and fairly. This was not the case in this instance.
However, there is some mitigation in the fact that the landlord’s email of 9 January 2022 provided a reasonable response to the resident’s email of 30 December 2021 – in keeping with what would be expected from a stage 1 complaint response. The delays experienced by the resident due to these failings were also less than a month on each occasion. Due to this the failings amount to a finding of service failure.

Determination (decision)

In accordance with paragraph 41d of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the complaint about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s rehousing application is out of jurisdiction.
In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman scheme there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of ASB.
In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman scheme there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s formal complaint.

Reasons

The landlord failed to manage the resident’s complaints in keeping with its ASB procedure. A timely risk assessment was not completed, updates were provided infrequently, and little regard was shown for the distress the resident reported her and her family experiencing.
The landlord failed to appropriately log a complaint when the resident emailed a clear expression of dissatisfaction. It then failed to acknowledge her first request to escalate her complaint to stage 2 of its process.

Orders and recommendations

Within 4 weeks of the date of this determination the landlord is ordered to:
1. Pay the resident compensation of £400 composed of:
  1. £300 for the distress and inconvenience caused by its maladministration in handling her reports of ASB.
  2. £100 for the time and trouble caused by its service failure in handling her formal complaint.
2. Write to the resident apologising for the poor communication and failure to follow policy in its handling of her reports of ASB.
Within 8 weeks of the date of this determination the landlord is ordered to:
1. Have a suitably qualified surveyor inspect both the resident’s and neighbour’s properties to recommend any soundproofing measures that could be implemented to reduce noise transference.
2. Write to both the resident and the neighbour detailing the surveyor’s findings, whether it will be carrying out any of the recommended works, and if not the reasons for this.
The landlord should provide evidence of compliance with these orders to this Service.
It is recommended that, if it has not done so already, the landlord considers creating a policy regarding residents’ use of domestic CCTV systems (including video doorbells) in its properties to ensure a consistent approach.