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Walsall Housing Group Limited (202127405)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202127405

Walsall Housing Group Limited

27 September 2022


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 handling of the resident’s reports of boiler repair issues.

Background

  1. The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord.
  2. The repair records provided by the landlord are incomplete, and many that have been provided do not show dates. Accordingly, some of the repair information set out in this report is taken from the resident’s own correspondence, and the landlord’s complaint responses.
  3. The resident reported a total failure of her boiler to the landlord on 14 October 2021. The landlord’s contractor visited on 15 October 2021 and advised that a new boiler was required. Temporary heating was provided by the landlord on 18 October 2021. The resident also reported a leak in the airing cupboard on 19 October 2021. The new boiler was fitted and commissioned (checked and tested) on 25 October 2021, and was left in working order. On 2 November 2021, the resident contacted the landlord’s out-of-hours service as she had no heating and hot water. She reported the next day that she had noticed that the carpet in front of her airing cupboard was wet. The landlord assessed the leak as containable, and an engineer attended on 5 November 2021 to repair it, which resolved the heating and hot water issue as well.
  4. The resident complained about the time she was without heating and hot water for, the damage caused to her flooring and decoration due to both the leak and the location in which the new boiler had been positioned.
  5. The landlord acknowledged that there had been poor communication in advising the resident of when her boiler repair would be completed. It apologised and offered her £50 towards any extra electricity costs in light of its poor customer service, an additional £50 towards any flooring repairs, and £50 in vouchers to address redecorating around the newly installed boiler. However, the landlord did not accept responsibility for the leak, and explained it had adhered to its guidance and timescales for a replacement boiler.
  6. The resident did not feel the landlord had considered the impact the loss of heating and hot water had on her and her work and asked to escalate her complaint. She explained that she had taken time off work, losing £400, and that she wanted the landlord to compensate her for “loss of earnings, reimbursement of electricity, bathroom flooring and fitting costs, carpet cleaning costs and the painting costs…with a compensation for the stress, depression and disturbance this has caused me…I also believe I should be rewarded a percentage of my rent back for that month”. The landlord acknowledged the resident’s request, but maintained the position, and compensation, it had set out in its first response.
  7. The resident’s complaint to this Service was regarding the landlord’s response to her issues and her request for increased compensation to cover damages and their associated costs.

Assessment and findings

  1. The landlord’s repairs policy states it is responsible for a faulty or non-working boiler. However, the policy does not state specific repair timeframes. Therefore, timeframe guidance from the right to repair scheme (which can be found online) is used in this investigation as a general baseline (only as a general reference for what might be considered reasonable). It states landlords should attend to reports of no heating and hot water within three working days in periods outside of winter (which according to government guidance is from November to March), and one working day for reported issues during the winter period. This timeframe is for an initial visit to assess the issue and complete repairs if possible. However, heating and hot water repairs can sometimes take longer to resolve, depending on the complexity and nature of the repair issue. In those cases, the reasonableness of the landlord’s repair handling will usually depend on how it has communicated with a tenant, whether it has attempted to resolve the repair as speedily as possible, and (if relevant) whether it considered interim solutions to mitigate the impact of the delayed repair on the tenant.
  2. Landlords cannot realistically guarantee 100% operation of heating and hot water systems, and so a tenant would need to make their own arrangements during any occasions when there are unavoidable delays resolving such problems. Landlords should be open to considering reasonable requests for assistance from a tenant in such situations, and, in many cases, would provide portable temporary heaters as a matter of course.
  3. After receiving the resident’s report of no heating and hot water on 14 October 2021, the landlord attended the next day to assess the problem. It identified that a new boiler was needed, which it ordered, and installed on 25 October. In the interim, it provided temporary heaters on 18 October. The landlord’s repair timeframes allow for up to 45 days to complete repairs. In this case, it attended promptly to the repair report, and completed the boiler installation in 11 days. In the circumstances, the time taken, and the interim solution it provided, were reasonable and appropriate, and do not indicate any service failings.
  4. The evidence provided does not show whether the landlord communicated with and managed the resident’s expectations about how long the boiler installation might take. Nonetheless, the resident complained about problems she had had communicating with the landlord about the repair, which the landlord acknowledged, apologised for, and offered a gesture of compensation in light of. As explained above, good communication is important when major repairs are delayed, so it was appropriate for the landlord to acknowledge its failing in this regard. The remedies it offered were proportionate and reasonable, in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance for an issue of short duration and no permanent impact, but where considerable inconvenience was caused.
  5. In correspondence with the landlord on 19 October 2021 the resident explained that the operative who had delivered the heaters the previous day had identified a leak in the airing cupboard, that the operative had reported the issue to the office, and that she had received a phone call later that day advising that another operative would visit to attend to the leak in the next three hours. There is no further reference to this leak by the resident or the landlord, or in the repair records. The first reference to a leak in the airing cupboard is in the landlord’s initial complaint response, where it explained the resident had reported on 3 November that the carpet in front of the airing cupboard was wet.
  6. The landlord’s internal correspondence, dated 2 December 2021, refers to an inspection of the leak the previous day, as part of the landlord’s complaint investigation. The note states that the leak in the airing cupboard was not related to the boiler replacement, but that after the resident called “in contractor was sent out and they repressured the system. This has caused the delay in the repair but to be fair to the engineers the leak was within a plasterboard wall. The leak has now been fixed.” It seems then that this reference to a callout, and repressuring the system, was in response to the report the resident said had been made on her behalf on 18 October, because there is no other reference in the landlord or resident’s records or correspondence to such a visit. Accordingly, going by this internal correspondence, there was a delay in addressing the leak from when it was reported on 18 October to when it was resolved on 5 November, but which was, in part, explained by hidden nature of the problem.
  7. The landlord’s internal correspondence goes on to say that the inspection concluded “The damage caused is fairly minor with water being trapped under the bathroom lino causing a mouldy smell and a small water mark on the hallway wall”, and that the operative had agreed to “compensate resident £50 to replace the lino, this is based on the cost when originally fitted and £30 for extra electricity used during the period when the boiler was unusable…resident was happy with the outcome”. The operative later explained that the resident subsequently contacted him to say that she also wanted to be compensated for taking time off work. That then lead to the outcome set out in the landlord’s complaint responses.
  8. The landlord’s complaint responses did not make any reference to the leak delay referred to in the internal note, but did offer almost the same compensation the operative said he had already offered, increasing it by £20. It said the compensation was because of the poor communication the resident had received, which contradicts what the internal note says the compensation was for i.e. the delayed leak repair. Accordingly, while there were two issues for which the landlord was compensating the resident (poor communication and the leak repair delay), it appears to have confusingly merged them in its complaint response, meaning that the compensation intended to be for the leak was attributed to the poor communication. The end result being that the leak delay was not clearly acknowledged or remedied by the landlord. That left part of the complaint unresolved, and was a service failure.
  9. By the terms of their tenancy agreements, tenants are usually responsible for internal decorating for their homes. They would usually be expected to make a claim for such damage on their home contents insurance. Some of the issues which the resident sought compensation for related to decorating (from both the leak and the boiler repositioning). A landlord would usually only be expected to consider compensating for such items if the evidence showed that it was responsible, by failings in action or inaction, for the damage. Nothing in the evidence provided for this investigation shows such an indication in relation to the cause of the leak, or the boiler placement. The landlord’s failing was for the delay in resolving the leak, for which it offered compensation of £150 (money and vouchers). When considered against its obligations in regard to decorating, and the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance, that remedy was reasonable and proportionate.
  10. The resident also sought compensation for time off work and lost income, distress and inconvenience. The landlord reasonably acknowledged and apologised for how its poor communication inconvenienced and frustrated the resident. However, as explained above, the compensation it also offered became confused with the compensation for the leak delay. Orders have been made below to address this omission.
  11. It was reasonable for the landlord not to provide compensation for time off work or lost income, because the tenancy agreement states tenants are obliged to provide access for repairs. How they provide that access is for them to arrange. Furthermore, a request for actual lost earnings would require assessment of liability and a claim to the courts. It would be outside the complaint’s procedure and the Ombudsman’s remit.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in respect of the complaint.

Orders

  1. In light of the landlord’s failings identified in this report it is ordered to pay the resident £100 compensation. The payment must be made within four weeks of this report.
  2. This payment is in addition to the £100 compensation and £50 vouchers already offered to the resident, which the landlord should also now pay, if it has not done so already.