The Riverside Group Limited (202219380)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202219380

The Riverside Group Limited

25 July 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 is about the landlord’s response to the resident’s requests for upgrades to her property.

Background

2. The resident is an assured tenant at the property of the landlord. The landlord is a registered provider of social housing. The property is a three-bedroom, semi-detached house.
3. On 7 September 2022, a validation survey (an inspection of a property to collect data regarding the life cycles of the components) was completed at the resident’s property. This concluded that the kitchen was due to be upgraded in 2023, and the bathroom was due to be upgraded in 2032.
4. The resident made a formal complaint on 8 September 2022. She was not happy that she had been asking for improvements to the property for a number of years, yet these never materialised. She said that each time she requested certain improvements to the property, she was told to wait until the following year. However, when the following year came around, no works would commence. She highlighted that a neighbour had recently had a new kitchen installed and had new guttering. She did not understand why this took priority over others.
5. The landlord provided its stage one complaint response on 14 September 2022. It did not uphold the complaint but apologised that the resident felt she had been overlooked. It explained that the neighbour’s kitchen was updated due to their specific circumstances and that it had now “validated” all the kitchens in the area with a view to upgrading them as well. It said that this would most likely be in the next financial year, starting in April 2023, as programmes are set 12 months in advance. It also said that it was considering replacing the windows and doors in the same year, provided it completes the current programme on schedule.
6. The resident escalated her complaint on 15 September 2022. She did not consider that the validation inspection was thorough enough. As a result, she contended that the landlord had already made up its mind that it was not going to upgrade the resident’s kitchen, and even the stage one complaint response did not explicitly confirm that it definitely would. In addition, she remained dissatisfied with how the landlord divided its budget for each of its properties and with the landlord’s past communication regarding when upgrades would take place.
7. The landlord provided its stage two response on 22 September 2022. It did not uphold the complaint on the basis that the information provided at stage one was accurate and in line with its procedures. It explained how improvement work address lists are established and the stages of the process that it follows. It confirmed that a validation of the resident’s property was completed on 7 September 2022, with data collected regarding the current life cycles of the components. Once the budgets for the 2023/24 financial year were released in November/December 2022, it would then know how many properties it could include in next year’s programme. As it stood, it said it was unable to confirm if the resident’s property would be included as it was only part way through this process. Regarding the neighbour’s property being added to the kitchen programme outside of the geographical area, it was unable to establish any further details as to why this was the case because the member of staff dealing with it had left the business.
8. The resident brought her complaint to this service on 23 November 2022. She remained dissatisfied with the thoroughness of the kitchen validation undertaken on 7 September 2022, which in turn gave her the impression that her kitchen would not be upgraded. She was not happy that she had lived in the property for 22 years and not had either a bathroom or kitchen upgrade in that period. She also did not think it was fair that some residents had upgrades while others had to fight to get theirs. As an outcome, she wanted proper validations to be undertaken in the future and a new kitchen.
9. In a letter to the resident dated 24 January 2023, the landlord confirmed that the kitchen upgrade was being proposed for renewal before March 2024. A pre-entry survey of the resident’s kitchen was completed on 31 March 2023. The resident’s kitchen upgrade commenced on 28 April 2023, and was completed on 15 May 2023.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

10. In correspondence with this service in December 2022, the resident provided details of issues to consider in our investigation that had not been raised as part of the complaint addressed by the landlord in its internal complaints procedure. These included concerns about some of the landlord’s communication in relation to the specifics of the kitchen works. She also raised concerns about being told that the neighbour had not had any work completed at their property, which was incorrect. Additionally, she raised issues concerning the inconsistency of the standard of work completed by the landlord’s operatives.
11. For clarity, this investigation will focus solely on the aspects of the complaint that were raised on 8 September 2022, and escalated on 15 September 2022. We cannot adjudicate on the aforementioned concerns, as the landlord needs to be provided with the opportunity to investigate and respond to these aspects. The resident will need to contact the landlord and, if appropriate, raise a separate complaint if she still considers these issues need to be resolved.

Assessment

12. The Government’s Decent Homes Standard provides criteria for social landlords to ensure their properties are ‘decent’. It provides guidance on the component lifetimes within the disrepair criterion, to assess whether the building components within a property are considered ‘old’ and thereby in need of renewal/replacement. It states that the lifetime of a kitchen in a house or bungalow is 30 years, whereas for a bathroom it is 40 years. A component is defined as ‘old’ if it is older than its standard lifetime.
13. A building component cannot fail this criterion based on age alone. Thus, a component would need to be in poor condition for a renewal/upgrade to take place prior to any planned works. Components that are considered in poor condition are ones that require major work.
14. In this case, there is no indication from the evidence provided that either the resident’s bathroom or kitchen should have been considered ‘old’ in accordance with the Decent Homes Standard. The internal validation, completed on 7 September 2022, concluded that the kitchen was due to be upgraded in 2023 and the bathroom was due to be upgraded in 2032. There is also no evidence to suggest that the kitchen or bathroom in the property were in poor condition and required major work, though it is acknowledged that there were some minor repairs needed to the kitchen.
15. As such, while it is noted that the resident was not happy that no improvement works had been undertaken for the period she had been at the property, the landlord had not failed to meet the above standards. Incidentally, the kitchen was subsequently replaced in May 2023 as expected, albeit after this complaint was brought to this service for investigation, but nonetheless within the expected timeframe for replacement.
16. While the Ombudsman understands that the resident was frustrated by the lack of a firm commitment to replace the kitchen in the landlord’s stage one response, given that the landlord ultimately did replace the kitchen in the timeframe it promised, the resident’s contention that the kitchen validation was not thorough enough was unfounded.
17. The landlord’s Planned Standard: For Planned Maintenance and Improvements states that during the validation inspection it will collect information including:
    1. Component Type
    2. Installation / Next replacement date
    3. Photos of the key components
18. Based on the evidence provided, this was obtained during the validation in September 2022. Therefore, the landlord completed the validation in accordance with its procedures.
19. In regard to the resident’s claim that there was an inherent unfairness in how the landlord distributed its budget, this could not be substantiated with the evidence provided. There may be various reasons why components of an individual property would be upgraded before others and thereby not form part of a planned programme of works. For instance, it may be in a state of disrepair, meaning works to upgrade an individual’s kitchen would need to be prioritised in order for it to meet the criteria in the Decent Homes Standard. Thus, the fact that the resident’s neighbour had improvements to their property prior to the planned programme of works does not signify an unfairness in how the landlord managed its budget.
20. That said, communication surrounding the matter could have been improved, as it came across somewhat contradictory. For example, the stage one complaint response stated that the neighbour’s kitchen was updated due to a complaint, which in turn led to the validation of all the kitchens in that area. In contrast, the stage two complaint response stated that it did not know why the neighbour’s kitchen was renewed as the member of staff dealing with this had left the business. Though this alone would not amount to service failure by the landlord, it would have been helpful if, having decided to provide details about the neighbouring property, the information provided was clear and consistent, so as not to cause unnecessary frustration and exacerbate any preconceptions.
21. There was, however, service failure in this case, as the landlord failed to fully address an aspect of the resident’s complaint. Namely, the landlord did not specifically address the resident’s concerns regarding past communication about when improvements would take place.
22. A large proportion of the resident’s initial complaint of 8 September 2022, which was then reiterated in her escalation on 15 September 2022, concerned the landlord’s communication about being told to wait until the following year for improvements, yet works did not materialise as expected when the following year came around. As this was a significant aspect of the resident’s complaint, the landlord should have taken the opportunity to address this aspect during the internal complaint procedure, in accordance with its Complaints Policy, which states that a complaint should address all points raised and provide clear reasons for any decisions, referencing relevant policies, laws, or good practice where appropriate.
23. Instead, the landlord’s stage one complaint response of 14 September 2022 focused on the neighbour’s conduct. And though the landlord’s stage two response on 22 September 2022, went some way towards explaining the planned work process, it did not specifically address the resident’s past communication concerns; this was a failing on the landlord’s behalf.
24. In view of the above failings, an overall finding of service failure has been made. To put matters right, the landlord is ordered to write to the resident to apologise and to pay £50 compensation. This is in accordance with the landlord’s Financial Redress and Compensation Procedure for low impact failings where the issue has caused inconvenience or distress.

Determination (decision)

25. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord for its handling of the resident’s requests for upgrades to her property.

Orders

26. The landlord is ordered to pay the resident £50 compensation.
27. The above order should be completed within four weeks of the date of this report.