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Westminster City Council (202006131)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202006131

Westminster City Council

28 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 handling of the resident’s reports of problems with the water supply to her flat.

Background

  1. The resident is a leaseholder of a flat within a block of flats. The landlord owns the freehold of the block. The resident has health conditions that the landlord is aware of. She is represented in this complaint by her daughter. For clarity, they will both be referred to as ‘the resident’ in this report.
  2. On 6 February 2020, the resident submitted a formal complaint to the landlord about a loss of water supply to her flat. The resident was staying with her daughter as a result of this issue. She complained that the landlord had told her that the issues were her responsibility to resolve as leaseholder of the flat. The resident had called out a plumber at significant cost to herself and been told that there was no issue with the flat’s plumbing.
  3. The landlord issued a stage one complaint response on 19 February 2020. It apologised for the lack of water supply and the misinformation it had given to the resident. It confirmed the water supply issues had been resolved and offered to reimburse the resident for the cost of hiring a plumber.
  4. The issues with the water supply returned, which included dirty water running from the flat’s taps. The landlord’s contractors attended the resident’s building in May 2020 and June 2020 but found no problems with the water tank on the roof. Residents of neighbouring flats which shared the same water tank confirmed they were not having water supply issues. The resident contacted the landlord on 14 August 2020 and requested that it escalated her complaint to stage two of the landlord’s complaints procedure. On 5 October 2020, the resident confirmed the landlord’s contractors had fitted filters at her flat.
  5. On 6 October 2020, the landlord issued a follow-on stage one complaint response to the resident. It offered £550 financial compensation to recognise the distress and inconvenience experienced by the resident as a result of the intermittent water supply issues.
  6. On 9 March 2021, the resident’s support worker contacted the landlord on behalf of the resident and explained that the resident had been shielding at her daughter’s address during the Covid-19 pandemic. The resident had returned to her flat to find there was no water supply there. On the same day, the landlord’s contractors attended and turned the stopcock back on, which restored the supply.
  7. The landlord issued a second stage one complaint response on 30 April 2021. It upheld the resident’s complaint. It said that it had attended all except 2 jobs within service level agreement timescales. It offered £242 compensation to recognise 10 weeks of delay and distress and inconvenience. The landlord received a complaint escalation request from the resident on 26 May 2021.
  8. On 9 July 2021, the landlord issued a stage two complaint response. It partially upheld the resident’s complaint. It confirmed the water supply issues had been resolved. It had arranged a visit to the resident’s address on 13 July 2021 to follow up and change the resident’s filter. It made a further offer of compensation of £1250, comprised of:
    1. £500 in recognition of the resident’s distress and inconvenience;
    2. £500 in recognition of the delays to repairs;
    3. £250 in recognition of the resident’s time and trouble.
  9.       The visit on 13 July 2021 did not go ahead. Issues with the resident’s water supply reoccurred. The landlord attended the resident’s address on 2 more occasions and carried out works. An inspection was carried out on 3 November 2021 that found no problem with the completed works and suggested the issues were in the resident’s flat.
  10.       On 15 January 2022, the landlord’s contractors attended an emergency call to the resident’s address. They could not gain access to the flat or contact the resident but found no issues with the communal water tank. The resident reported that the issues with the water supply continued intermittently throughout 2022. On 25 May 2022, the landlord authorised a service charge refund to the resident of £1398.56, covering the period between February 2020 and February 2022.
  11.       The landlord took water samples to be tested on multiple occasions, which returned similar results to each other. There were no issues with the water tank on the roof, but there was indication of a scale build-up on the taps. Reports recommended the taps were deep-cleaned or replaced. The landlord replaced the kitchen taps on 17 October 2022. It replaced another set of taps on 16 March 2023.
  12.       The resident asked the Ombudsman to investigate. She remains resident at her daughter’s home and states the taps at her flat continue to run with dirty water. She wants the problems to be resolved so she can live at her flat. The landlord continued to respond to the issues until June 2023, but has since stated to this Service that the issue is caused by the resident’s taps and as leaseholder, this is the resident’s responsibility to resolve.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1.       The resident has explained to the landlord and this service how the problems with the water supply have negatively affected her physical and mental health. However, it is outside our remit to establish if there was a direct link between the landlord’s actions or inaction and the resident’s health. Therefore, this Service would not order the landlord to pay for or reimburse the resident for private medical appointments. The Ombudsman has considered any distress and inconvenience the resident may have experienced as a result of the landlord’s handling of the issues with the water supply. We have also considered the landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns about her health.
  2.       The landlord advised the resident to consider making a claim against its personal liability insurance. Landlords are entitled to use liability insurance as a means of managing the costs of negligence claims and they are not obliged to pay such claims outside the insurance process. It is outside the Ombudsman’s remit to consider the actions of the landlord’s insurer as it is our role to consider the actions of social landlords and the insurer is a separate organisation from the landlord. Therefore, we cannot comment on the outcome or handling of any liability claim the resident may decide to make.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of problems with the water supply to her flat

  1.       The resident’s repair responsibilities as the leaseholder, and the landlord’s repair responsibilities as the freeholder, are set out in the resident’s lease agreement. The lease agreement states that it is the leaseholder’s responsibility to keep her flat, as well as the fixtures and fittings within it, in good repair. This includes “things that are solely installed or used only for the purpose of the demised premises [the individual property]”. The landlord, as the freeholder of the block of flats, has a responsibility to maintain communal structures, fixtures and fittings.
  2.       The resident’s leaseholders’ handbook gives examples of where responsibility would lie for specific repairs. The resident, as a leaseholder, has the responsibility to repair water pipes beyond the stopcock within her property. She is also responsible for maintaining the bath, basin, sink, taps, and toilet. These are fixtures and fittings that serve the resident’s flat exclusively. The landlord, as the freeholder, has the responsibility to maintain water pipes up to the stopcock, communal water storage tanks and the communal infrastructure that does not exclusively serve the resident’s flat.
  3.       The landlord has a legal responsibility to respond to repairs in a “reasonable” timescale according to the urgency of the repair and the severity of the impact the repair issue is having on the resident. Issues that mean the resident has a lack of access to a clean supply of water would be considered an emergency that requires an immediate response from the landlord, i.e., within 24 hours of receiving the report. The impact on the resident may be reduced if the affected flat is uninhabited at the time when the issue occurred. The water supply issues have been ongoing on an intermittent basis for nearly four years despite the landlord and its contractors attending regularly, which suggests there have been significant problems in resolving the issues.
  4.       There is a distinction between the total loss of the water supply to the flat and the dirty water running from the taps as these two issues have different causes. The landlord had been able to resolve incidents of total loss of water supply by identifying causes of the problem that were within its remit to resolve. It has been unable to do the same for the issue with dirty water from the taps.
  5.       This Service acknowledges that some repair issues are complex in nature and can take a significant amount of time to correctly diagnose and resolve. The landlord’s repair job notes show that its contractors made thorough investigations when attending the resident’s building, including checking the communal plumbing serving the resident’s flat. They attempted to access the resident’s flat to continue investigations and they spoke with residents of neighbouring flats to find out if they were experiencing the same issues. This was a positive approach to take. On occasion, the contractors found fault with the communal plumbing that they were able to rectify. However, on other occasions, they found no fault with the communal plumbing. They were often unable to gain access to the resident’s flat to continue investigations, which meant they left the building having been unable to diagnose the cause of the issues.
  6.       The landlord did not suggest or insist that the resident should conduct her own investigations as the leaseholder, as it had mistakenly done in 2019. It had identified from 3 November 2021 that the cause of the dirty water was likely to originate from plumbing that the resident would be responsible for. It advised her of her responsibilities. However, it continued to attempt to resolve the issues that were exclusively affecting the resident’s flat. The landlord acknowledged in internal communications that the resident is an elderly lady with health conditions and this had informed its positive approach to the situation. However, this Service would not expect the landlord to assume responsibility that it does not legally or contractually have. Therefore, the landlord is not obliged to continue to investigate or resolve plumbing issues affecting the resident’s property where there is no evidence of an issue with the communal plumbing. It should ensure that it gives appropriate advice to the resident on each party’s contractual responsibilities so that the most appropriate route can be taken to achieve are solution.
  7.       The landlord has reached the conclusion that it is not responsible for resolving the dirty water issue following advice from qualified professionals, who have also suggested that the flat being left vacant for long periods of time may be contributing to the problem. They suggest this may be because the water does not have an opportunity to run clear from the taps being used. The landlord is entitled to rely on the advice of its qualified professionals and the Ombudsman has not seen evidence from similarly qualified professionals to show this opinion is incorrect.
  8.       It is understandable why the resident has been staying with her daughter. A flat with a lack of or dirty water supply would generally be considered to be uninhabitable. However, the flat remaining vacant for a significant period of time has meant that it has not always been possible for the landlord to gain the access it needed to investigate the problems and identify the causes. Delays caused by access issues, however understandable, were beyond the landlord’s control.
  9.       The evidence shows that there was a delay with the landlord registering on its systems that the resident’s daughter was acting on behalf of the resident. This may have impacted the landlord’s ability to contact the resident, although this Service accepts this issue was relatively short lived. The landlord should ensure it appropriately records essential contact information about its residents such as alternative contacts for them that are critical for its ability to respond to emergencies.
  10.       There is evidence that the resident experienced some poor practice from the landlord and its contractors. This included delayed, missed, or late appointments, poor communication, and operatives attending with minimal information about the reasons for their visit. The resident has described an unreasonable burden on her to make contact with the landlord when it should have contacted her. Internal communications demonstrate that the landlord was sometimes aware of when it had failed without it being raised directly by the resident and it sometimes took steps to improve its practices. Ongoing self-assessment against its policies and established industry practice is appropriate to ensure improvement. It was also appropriate that the landlord recognised the failings in its service to the resident in its complaint responses and offered compensation as remedy for the distress and inconvenience such failings had caused. However, the landlord should consider reviewing the performance of its repairs service to identify areas for improvement.
  11.       The resident had informed the landlord of concerns she had with the behaviour of contractors at her home. The resident told this Service that contractors drank bottled water that had been provided for the resident due to a lack of clean water in her flat. She said they had completed works and left the property without informing her that she was now able to use the toilet. There is no evidence that the landlord investigated these reports from the resident with a view to putting things right, which it should have done. The landlord should offer to meet with the resident to gain an understanding of her experiences with its contractors and take steps to improve its service.
  12.       In its first stage one complaint response, the landlord accepted it had originally misinformed the resident about whose responsibility it was to resolve the loss of water supply and offered to reimburse the resident for the costs she had incurred as a result. It offered compensation later in 2020 for delays she had experienced. This was an appropriate response to the resident’s complaint. In the landlord’s second stage one complaint response, it stated that while it had responded to most of the resident’s subsequent reports within its service level agreements, it accepted that on two occasions it had failed to do so. The landlord made a reasonable offer of compensation for this, which was also an appropriate response.
  13.       In its stage two complaint response, the landlord partially upheld the resident’s complaint and set out actions it would take to put things right for her. It stated that a visit would take place on 13 July 2021 in order to check everything was working as it should be. It offered to change the resident’s filter and leave spare ones for future use. Despite evidence that the landlord gave an internal instruction to colleagues to make sure the visit went ahead as planned, the visit was unsuccessful because of administrative failures. This was poor service. The resident should not have had to go to more time and trouble to ensure the landlord actioned the promises it had made to her as part of the remedy to her complaint. The filter was not changed until 11 January 2023, six months later than promised. While it was not the landlord’s responsibility to change the filter, it should fulfil the promises it makes as complaint remedies within a reasonable timeframe.
  14.       At stage two of the complaint procedure, the landlord offered the residentcompensation of £1250 in recognition of the delays and the distress and inconvenience she had experienced. This was in addition to previous payments of £550 and £242. It also applied a reimbursement of two years’ worth of service charges, totalling £1398.56, to the resident’s service charge account.The landlord paid the resident a total compensation of £3440.56. The landlord has also replaced two sets of taps and completed a repair to the resident’s toilet, as goodwill gestures, despite these repairs not being its responsibility.This is a significant level of remedy which exceeds what this Service would have awarded in these circumstances if the landlord had not already made offers.
  15.       This Service acknowledges that the complaint issues continued after the landlord’s final offer of compensation. However, we also accept that following the final complaint response, the landlord was acting beyond its responsibilities by repairing items within the resident’s property. The overall amount of compensation the landlord has paid remains fair, taking into account any failings by the landlord after its final complaint response. The Ombudsman’s remedies guidance (published online) suggests that compensation awards of £250 to £700 should be considered where there has been considerable service failure by the landlord, but there may not be a permanent or long term impact from the errors on the resident. Examples in the guidance of relevant landlord failures include the resident having to repeatedly chase responses or failure of the landlord to take responsibility for the quality of its sub-contracted services. The landlord’s offers of compensation and other goodwill gestures demonstrate it took the instances where it provided poor service to the resident seriously.

Determination

  1.       In accordance with paragraph 53 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has made an offer of redress which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, satisfactorily resolves the complaint about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of problems with the water supply to her flat.

Recommendations

  1.       The landlord should offer to meet with the resident to discuss her concerns with the conduct of its contractors throughout the course of the issues in her complaint. Where it identifies areas of concern, it should investigate and update the resident on outcomes as appropriate.
  2.       It is recommended that the landlord review the performance of its repairs teams and contractors to identify areas where improvement is needed. Where those areas are identified, it should make an action plan for improvement. The landlord should ensure its repairs obligations are being met to a satisfactory standard.
  3.       The landlord should ensure that it provides the resident with relevant information about her responsibilities as a leaseholder, when it is appropriate to do so.  This will allow the resident to make informed decisions about the appropriate course of action required to resolve issues in her flat in a timely manner.