Swindon Borough Council (202213870)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202213870

Swindon Borough Council

30 January 2024

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 the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of concerns about fire safety at the property.

Background

2. The resident is a secure tenant in a property in a block of flats (the block) managed by the landlord.
3. The property is a flat in a tower block which has a lift system. The lift machinery and other equipment are in a roof space which is accessed through a trapdoor which is directly above the front door of the resident’s property. The landlord is responsible for the lift system and for fire safety in the block and contractors must enter the roof space regularly. When they do so, the ladder which they use to climb up to the roof space obstructs the resident’s doorway.
4. The property was empty in early 2021. The landlord commissioned an electrical installation safety inspection at this time. A Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) for the block was carried out in 2021. The resident moved into the property in May 2021. A further FRA was conducted in June 2022.
5. On 17 June 2022, a contractor entered the roof space leaving the ladder down and obstructing the resident’s exit from the property. She complained to the landlord raising several concerns about fire safety. She said that the ladder when in use was a risk to her and her family’s safety. She also made other allegations of poor fire safety practice. Among these were that a fan in her bathroom posed a fire risk and that the landlord had not carried out fire safety checks on work in the property.
6. The landlord provided its stage 1 response five days later. It said that no lift contractor had entered the roof space that day, but many contractors had to access the roof space. Lift contractors already knew to knock on the resident’s door before entering the roof space. The landlord said it would investigate the possibility of putting up signage to encourage other contractors to do the same.
7. The resident was not satisfied with this response as it had not addressed all her concerns. She escalated her complaint to stage 2 of the landlord’s internal complaints procedure. The landlord provided its stage 2 response on 14 July 2022. It apologised for failing to respond to all her complaint points at stage 1. The landlord responded fully to the resident’s concerns. The resident was unhappy with this response and complained to this Service. She says she wants the landlord to address her concerns about fire safety. 

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

8. It is not in this Service’s jurisdiction or expertise to make definitive determinations about building safety and whether a landlord has been negligent about it. The main consideration in this case is whether the landlord acted reasonably after the resident expressed concerns about the building.
9. The resident has explained to this Service that she also has fire safety concerns about a fire door in the block. It is not apparent from the evidence seen here that this issue has been reported previously, and it was not referred to in the complaint to the landlord. Thus, in accordance with paragraph 42(a) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, that specific matter will not be considered here, but the landlord is recommended to follow the issue up directly with the resident.
10. The government has issued guidance, Fire safety in purpose-built blocks of flats, (the Guidance) which sets out the law, guidance, and good practice for purpose-built blocks of flats such as the one where the resident lives. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 contains the rules governing fire safety in the common parts of these blocks.
11. The guidance says that there must be a fire safety officer for any purpose-built block of flats who is responsible for fire safety matters. The fire safety officer must commission a fire risk assessment (FRA) for any building. This FRA must include an “action plan” of measures required for the building to meet fire safety standards. There is no requirement to share the FRA with residents. The fire safety officer must devise an evacuation plan based on the assessment. Details of this plan need not be displayed on signs in the building but must be available in some format such as in a resident’s handbook.
12. The guidance states that each property in a purpose-built block of flats, particularly one with a “stay put” evacuation plan must be a self-contained, fire-resistant unit. This will enable residents to shelter safely in their flat in the event of a fire elsewhere in the building. To this end, no extractor fans from individual flats within the block should feed into the communal ventilation system as this would tend to make flats less secure and allow the spread of fire.
13. The landlord has provided documents which show that it carried out regular FRAs at the block. It also arranged for safety checks to be carried out on any gas and electrical equipment in the resident’s property before she moved in.
14. In her complaint, the resident raised various fire safety concerns. The main one was her concern that the ladder leading to the roof space outside her flat, when in use, posed a fire risk to her and her family by obstructing their exit.
15. In its response, the landlord recognised that the ladder posed a risk and said it had introduced a new procedure which would ensure that there would always be someone at the foot of the ladder when it was in use who could, in the event of a fire, make sure her path was cleared. This was an appropriate response to the resident’s legitimate concern about fire safety as it acknowledged the likely problem and addressed her concern by clearly explaining the actions it would take if the need arose.
16. The resident raised other concerns. She said she believed the landlord had not carried out the required safety checks at the property before she moved in. She did not provide any evidence to support this concern. The landlord dealt with her concern appropriately by telling her that it had carried out the works and checks in line with its duties. It has provided this Service with documents which support its explanation.
17. The resident expressed concern about an extractor fan in her bathroom. She said an electrician employed by the landlord had told her that it was unsafe to have such extractor fans in a tower block. The landlord explained that the fan was safe as it did not connect to the communal ventilation system. The landlord’s response was, again, an appropriate one, and in line with the Guidance set out above.
18. The resident also raised concerns about the building more broadly. She said that recommendations in the FRA had not been carried out and the landlord had not given her a copy of the FRA before she moved in. In response, the landlord said it had carried out any works required by the FRA but there was no duty on it to carry out works which were recommended. The resident gave no examples of works that had not been carried out. The landlord gave her a copy of the current FRA to show that it had met its obligations. In the circumstances, this was an appropriate response to her concerns, because nothing in the evidence seen for this investigation suggests the landlord had omitted any mandatory requirements and it could only reply generally as there were no specific allegations to address.
19. The resident has sent this Service a copy of the FRA which, contains a recommendation that the landlord should repair a fire door. She says the landlord has not done so. As is stated above, this Service cannot reach a view as to whether this work has been done or not. However, we recommend that the landlord should address this matter with her.
20. The resident complained that no one had told her the evacuation plan for the building. The Guidance obligates the landlord to make the plan available to tenants, which it did by publishing it on its website. The landlord explained this in its complaint response. Given there is no evidence of the resident specifically asking for the plan prior to her complaint, the landlord’s response was reasonable. 
21. The resident also said that no one had given her a personal emergency escape plan. The landlord said it had no record of her having asked for one but said it would provide one on request. Again, this was an appropriate response to the resident’s concerns as landlords are only obliged to provide such a plan on request. 
22. Overall, the landlord responded to the resident’s concerns in line with the relevant Guidance and the resident’s circumstances. Its responses were accurate, pragmatic, and reasonable.
23. On receipt of the resident’s complaint, the landlord sent a stage 1 response within 5 days which was within its service standard. However, this response failed to address all the resident’s concerns. Instead, it dealt only with her concerns about the ladder and did not fully address these. This was not an adequate complaint response and amounted to a service failure.
24. The resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 and the landlord sent its stage 2 response 3 weeks later. It apologised for having closed the complaint without responding fully in error. The stage 2 response, however, dealt fully and appropriately with all the resident’s complaint points.

Determination

25. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration in the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of concerns about fire safety at the property.

Recommendations

26. It is recommended that the landlord contacts the resident to further discuss her concerns about the fire door mentioned in paragraph 9 of this report.