Calico Homes Limited (202323515)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202323515

Calico Homes Limited

6 May 2025

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 response to the resident’s:
1. Reports about the condition of the property on moving in.
2. Reports of bad language by a call handler during a telephone call.
3. Support needs while he was a resident.
4. Concerns about universal credit (UC) and Housing Benefit (HB).
5. Requests for support when trying to move.
6. Formal complaint.

Background

In May 2023, the resident signed an assured tenancy agreement for the property which is owned and managed by the landlord, a housing association. He intended to move in in June 2023. He is in his 60s and has health concerns including mental health difficulties.
The landlord provides accommodation with care support for older people. The property is within a complex where support is available. The landlord has received advice that its tenants cannot use UC to pay their rent but must receive HB.
On 18 May 2023 the landlord helped the resident apply for HB prior to moving in. It arranged for the property to be cleaned on 1 June 2023. He moved in on or around 10 June 2023. When he arrived he found the property was not in the condition he had expected. He complained formally about this on 13 August 2023 and the landlord responded (no copy provided).
On 14 August 2023 the resident telephoned the landlord call centre about outstanding repairs. He then complained that the call handler (CH) had been rude to him. The landlord investigated and accepted that the CH had spoken inappropriately.
The resident said he was not satisfied with either complaint response. The landlord treated this statement as a request to escalate his complaints to stage 2 and began a stage 2 investigation. It held several meetings with the resident and added further concerns to its investigation. These were that the landlord:
1. Had not given him proper care support since moving in.
2. Had been responsible for the removal of his HB which had been stopped by the council.
3. Was failing to support him in his attempts to move away from the property to another area.
4. Had pressured him to accept the property.
In the landlord’s stage 2 response of 4 October 2023 it said:
1. It “partially upheld” the complaint about the CH. Although it could not be sure the rude terms used had been aimed at him, he had good reason to be upset.
2. It “upheld” the complaint about the condition of the property when he moved in. Various repairs had not been carried out and the property had not been completely clean, including the carpet being urine-soaked.
3. It had not met his care needs for a period of 3.5 weeks when his care provider was off sick.
4. As the property was classified as “independent living” with support provided, Government rules said that those living in it must pay their rent through HB and not UC. It noted that he had made an application for UC. As this would have left him unable to pay his rent, it had cancelled his application. However, it would allow him to receive his HB payments directly and then pay it, rather than it receiving the payments direct.
5. It had allowed him to bid for properties on its website within 12 months, which it did not normally do. It had placed him in Band 3 of the lettings system, when he would normally only be in Band 5, as he already had adequate housing. However, it had no properties in the area where he wanted to live so had signposted him to the local lettings scheme there.
6. It did not accept that he had been pressured into accepting the property.
7. It apologised and offered compensation (£100 for poor customer service, £34.28 for 3.5 weeks of missed care support, £71.50 to cover the sum the resident spent on carpet cleaner, and £150 towards the costs of moving to a new property).
The resident referred his complaint to us in October 2023, and has since moved to a different area with a different landlord.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

The resident has said the landlord’s failures made his health worse. We do not doubt his comments, but it is beyond our remit to determine whether there was a direct link between the landlord’s actions and his ill-health. He may wish to seek independent advice on making a personal injury claim if he considers that his health has been affected by any action or failure by the landlord. While we cannot consider the effect on health, consideration has been given to any general distress and inconvenience which the resident experienced as a result of any service failure by the landlord.

Reports about the condition of the property on moving in

The landlord’s Void Repairs Policy says it will inspect properties and carry out required repairs while they are empty to make sure they are ready for letting. It will then carry out an inspection in the presence of the prospective tenant to ensure that they are happy before they move in.
The landlord did inspect the property before the resident moved in and found various works, including repairs in the kitchen and living room, were necessary. It also arranged for the property to be cleaned. The landlord did then carry out some works and the resident says he witnessed them taking place. He says that, as they were underway, he expected them to be completed to an acceptable standard and signed the form saying the property was in good condition.
The landlord has accepted it did not complete the works it should have done. In its stage 2 response, it noted that, while it had cleaned the carpet, it continued to smell of urine. It attached a schedule of outstanding works which included several minor tasks that were not completed. As the landlord has acknowledged some of its poor service levels in its complaint responses, the question before us is whether those failings amount to maladministration. If so, we must consider whether appropriate redress was offered to put things right.
The landlord offered the resident £71.50 to repay him for the cost of carpet shampoo and other products he used to clean the room. It was right to do so and right to apologise for its failings. However, it should also have paid him compensation. In our view, this failure on the landlord’s part was not sufficiently serious to justify a finding of maladministration. We find that it was a “service failure”. Our guidance on remedies says that compensation for service failures should generally be in the region of £100. We have therefore made an order that the landlord should pay him £100 for this part of the complaint.
We note that the landlord did award £100 for ‘service failures’ but this appears to relate to the separate call handling incident. On its own, £100 was not sufficient as a remedy for all the failings identified in this report.

Bad language by the CH

Having received the resident’s report that the CH had spoken to him insultingly, the call centre manager listened to a recording of the call and spoke to the CH. The manager then contacted the resident to say they had not been able to hear what the CH said. However, the CH had apologised for any offence caused.
The resident asked the manager to listen to the recording again and he then did so on a different system. The manager heard insulting language and spoke to the CH again. They admitted using bad language but said they had been talking to a colleague.
The manager emailed the resident to apologise and said the CH would be put on a performance review. In the stage 2 response of October 2023 the landlord offered the resident £100 for this incident and apologised again. The resident remains extremely displeased after this incident and does not accept the CH’s explanation that the language was not aimed at him.
In identifying whether there has been maladministration, we consider both the events which initially prompted a complaint and the landlord’s response to those events. The extent to which a landlord has recognised and addressed any shortcomings and the appropriateness of any steps taken to offer redress are therefore as relevant as the original mistake or service failure. We will not make a finding of maladministration where the landlord has fully acknowledged any failings and taken reasonable steps to resolve them.
Considering the full circumstances of the case, including the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident, and in consultation with our remedies guidance; the £100 compensation offered is considered reasonable. This is line with our guidelines for service failure. Together with the assurances given about the action taken to deal with the incident and manage the CH, the landlord has offered reasonable redress to the resident for its handling of the bad language used by the CH.
A recommendation is made for the landlord to pay the resident the £100 compensation, if not done so already. The reasonable redress finding is made on the basis of this sum being paid to the resident, as it recognised genuine elements of service failure by the landlord.

Support for resident

The resident’s tenancy agreement contains a section about the support he should receive while at the property. It says there is a support charge to cover the costs of the support. During a meeting in September 2023 the resident told the landlord that he rarely received the support he should. He said his support worker was often absent and rarely did anything to help him.
The landlord investigated and, in an email of 14 September 2023, told the resident that his support worker had been off sick for 3.5 weeks. It said she had forgotten to put her out-of-office on her mobile and apologised for this mistake. It said it would reiterate to the worker that they must respond to messages and it would ask her to contact him that morning. It said that having no support for 3.5 weeks was “nothing out of the ordinary”.
The landlord also said the level of support a resident received was a matter of choice for each resident. However, given that the resident was paying for support, he should have received it or, at the very least, been offered it. The fact the landlord felt that this not happening was nothing out of the ordinary is evidence of a severe failing.
In its stage 2 response the landlord offered the resident a refund of £34.28 which was the amount he had paid for support during the 3.5 weeks the worker had been off. While this offer was appropriate, it was not adequate to compensate the resident for this failure. As this support was a charged service, it is not acceptable that this was the only response to the discovery that he had had no care for so long. The landlord should have had a system in place whereby it knew this and had arranged cover. The fact that the support was not in place for so long and the landlord was, seemingly, unaware of this, was a failure sufficiently serious to justify a finding of maladministration.
The landlord should have apologised for this error, explained what it would do to prevent such errors occurring in future and considered compensation. As it did not do so, we have ordered it to pay the resident £200. This is in line with our guidance on remedies which says that awards for maladministration should generally be between £100 and £600. We have reached this figure by considering that, while the failure was serious, we have no records of any serious detriment to the resident. We have also ordered the landlord to review its processes to ensure that it knows when staff members are off sick and arranges cover.

Concerns about UC and HB

The Government sets the rules about UC and HB. It says that those living in supported exempt housing who require state assistance to pay their rent must do so using HB and not UC. The landlord had taken advice from a consultant which confirmed this rule applied to its properties.
The resident received UC before he moved to the property. Therefore, when he was preparing to move in June 2023, the landlord informed him of this requirement and helped him with an application for HB. This was successful and his rent was paid in this way for the next few months.
It is not entirely clear from the evidence what happened next. The landlord said in its stage 2 response that the resident asked whether he could change back to UC as he wanted, “the option of having the (rent) monies paid directly to [him]” rather than direct to the landlord.
It is clear the resident was in communication with the council as well. It seems the council may have questioned the level of support the resident received and said he was eligible for UC. In any event, the resident made an application for UC at some point in September 2023. This would have had the effect of leaving the landlord unpaid as UC cannot be used to pay supported living rent. Therefore, when it was asked to approve the application in October 2023 it refused it.
The landlord communicated with the resident about his desire to have the rent paid directly to him. It said this would also be possible with HB and made the necessary arrangements. While the change over was organised, he fell into rent arrears and he appears to hold the landlord responsible for this. However, in our view, the landlord offered a good service in relation to this point. It correctly stated the legal position and helped the resident get the rent paid into his own account without undue delay.
While it is understandable that the resident was concerned to be in arrears for a short period, there is no evidence that this was a result of any failure on the landlord’s part. As a result, we find that there was no maladministration by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s concerns about UC and HB.

Requests for support when trying to move

The resident says the landlord did not do enough to help him move out of the property. He wanted to move to an area about 30 miles away and wanted support in finding a suitable property. However, the landlord is a social housing provider which does not operate in the resident’s desired area. It told him this and signposted him to an organisation in the relevant area which could help. Realistically, this was as much as it could do.
The landlord also allowed the resident to bid for properties on its own rehousing service and placed him in a higher “band” than he should have been. It allocates properties according to availability but gives greater priority to those in the highest band. Band 1 was the highest band. As he had adequate housing, the resident should have been in band 5, but the landlord placed him in Band 3 instead. This was a sensible and appropriate step and an example of good service.
Further, the landlord offered the resident £150 to help him with his removal costs. This was a generous offer which it was not obliged to make. For these reasons, we find that there was no maladministration by the landlord in relation to the resident’s requests to move.

Complaint handling

While the landlord refers to its stage 1 response of August 2023, no copy has been provided to this investigation. We have seen a response from the call centre manager to the complaint about the CH. It seems possible, therefore, that the landlord deals with initial complaints at departmental level rather than through its complaints department.
Our Complaint Handling Code (the Code) sets out our view of best complaint handling practice. Compliance with the Code is now a legal requirement though it was not at the time of these events. The Code says that landlords must have a complaints department with authority and autonomy to resolve disputes promptly and fairly. Landlords should learn from complaints and see complaint handling as a core service.
The Code also sets out how landlords must log and respond to complaints. They must log each complaint and send a complaint acknowledgment which sets out the complaint as the landlord sees it within 5 workings days. They must provide a stage 1 response within 10 working days of receipt. They must provide a stage 2 response within 20 working days of receipt in most cases. Where a complaint is complex, landlords may take up to a further 20 days if they write to the complainant and explain the reason.
In this case, though we accept that there must have been a stage 1 response, the landlord did not follow this procedure, or has provided no evidence that it did. This is a complaint handling failure. Further, because of the lack of transparency in the process, it is not clear when any complaints were made and therefore we cannot say with absolute certainty how long each stage of the process took.
On the available evidence, the landlord appears to have provided its stage 1 response within an acceptable period. However, its stage 2 response took 36 days, from about 16 August to 4 October 2023. There is no evidence the landlord explained the delay to the resident and this was a further complaint handling failure.
The landlord’s complaint handling was sufficiently poor to justify a finding of maladministration. We have therefore ordered it to pay the resident compensation of £100. This is because our guidance on remedies says awards for maladministration should generally be between £100 and £600. We generally award lower compensation for complaint handling failures, since the level of impact is more moderate than for the substantive issue.
Since February 2024 we have had a duty to monitor landlord’s compliance with the Code. We assess landlords using our Compliance Framework and take action where there is evidence that they are not meeting the Code’s requirements. For that reason, we have made no orders about the landlord’s compliance with the Code. However, we have ordered the landlord to review its handling of the complaint in this case, alongside the provisions of the Code in order to: understand how the failings occurred; identify areas for improvement; and note where current practices may be at odds with the requirements of the Code.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was:
1. No maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
  1. Concerns about UC and HB.
  2. Requests for support when trying to move.
2. Service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports about the condition of the property on moving in.
3. Maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
  1. Support needs.
  2. Complaint handling.
In accordance with paragraph 53 of the Scheme the landlord made an offer of reasonable redress in relation to the resident’s reports of bad language by the CH during a telephone call.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord is ordered to provide evidence that it has:
1. Written to the resident to apologise for the failures identified in this report.
2. Paid the resident £506.32 as follows:
  1. £71.50 for cleaning products.
  2. £100 for its handling of reports about the condition of the property on moving in.
  3. £200 for its handling of the resident’s support needs.
  4. £34.82 offered in recognition of support he did not receive.
  5. £100 for its complaint handling.
3. Reviewed its recording of support staff absence to ensure that similar lengthy absences do not go unnoticed.
4. Reviewed its handling of the complaint in this case, alongside the provisions of the Code in order to: understand how the failings occurred; identify areas for improvement; and note where current practices may be at odds with the requirements of the Code.

Recommendation

Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord is recommended to, if it has not already done so, pay the resident £250 as follows:
1. £100 offered in its stage 2 response for poor customer service. This sum recognised genuine elements of service failure and the reasonable redress finding is made on that basis.
2. £150 to help with moving costs. It has committed to making this payment and it should honour this offer.