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Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames (202422490)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202422490

Kingston upon Thames Council

7 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

  1. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of a gas safety inspection.

Background

  1. The resident is a secure tenant for a 2-bedroom, sixth floor flat owned by the landlord. The resident’s representative acted on her behalf during the complaint, we will refer to both the resident and her representative as ‘the resident’ in this report.
  2. On 12 April 2023 the resident complained the landlord had arranged an annual gas safety inspection for 3 April 2023, but its contractor had not attended at the agreed time. She said the contractor told her it would contact her to rearrange the inspection but she had heard nothing further. She wanted the landlord to explain why the inspection did not take place and for it to compensate her for the missed appointment.
  3. The landlord issued its stage 1 response on 26 April 2023. In this it:
    1. Explained the operative who had been scheduled to attend had been off sick. It apologised it had not informed the resident the planned inspection was not going to take place ahead of time.
    2. Apologised that it did not reschedule the inspection when the resident called its contractor on 3 April 2023. It said its contractor would contact her to confirm a new appointment.
    3. Told the resident that it would discuss the failings with its contractor. It said it would not be providing compensation for the missed appointment as this is not in line with its policies.
  4. The resident escalated her complaint on 3 May 2023. She said the landlord had wasted her time on 3 April 2023 and she wanted it to reimburse her for loss of wages. She said the landlord’s response did not provide any reassurance the issues would be addressed. She wanted it to make service improvements and provide a goodwill payment for the missed appointment.
  5. The landlord issued its stage 2 response on 2 June 2023. In this it said it considered its previous response was proportionate to address the resident’s concerns as it had acknowledged and apologised for the failings of its contractor. It also reiterated its position with respect to compensation and that stated that it would not consider loss of wages, in line with its policy.
  6. The resident escalated her complaint to the Ombudsman on 6 June 2023 as she remained dissatisfied that the landlord had not offered compensation.

Assessment and findings

  1. The landlord’s repair service standards say that its repair responsibilities include gas fittings and appliances. Its standards say that when a resident asks for a repair it will arrange for the repair to be carried out in the following timescales:
    1. Within 24 hours for urgent repairs, including a total or partial loss of gas supply.
    2. Within 20 working days for routine repairs.
  2. From the available records the landlord originally attempted to complete the annual gas safety inspection on 14 March 2023, but the resident asked it to reschedule this for the end of April 2023. The landlord told the resident it could not facilitate this and agreed for the inspection to take place between 1pm and 6pm on 3 April 2023.
  3. From the resident’s account of events, she phoned the contractor on 3 April 2023 after it did not attend during the agreed time. She said that the contractor told her it could not attend that day as it had assigned the appointment to an operative who no longer worked for it in error. The resident said the contractor agreed to call her back later that day to reschedule but this did not happen. The landlord said in its stage 1 response that the operative had not left the organisation but its system incorrectly recorded them as active when they were off work.
  4. The landlord’s response rightly accepted that it should have contacted the resident before the planned appointment to say this could not go ahead and that it failed to rearrange the appointment when she called. This inaction was not in line with its repair service standards.
  5. On 26 April 2023, the landlord rescheduled the gas safety inspection. It completed the inspection on 2 May 2023, 18 working days after the previous planned attendance. This was appropriate as, whilst the landlord should have arranged the inspection sooner, it completed it within the timescales of its repair service standards for routine repairs. Though the resident says she experienced anxiety that the gas supply might be turned off, because of the delay in completing the gas safety inspection, there is no evidence this risk was present. We also note that the resident had originally requested for the gas inspection to take place at the end of April 2023, close to when it took place.
  6. In terms of the impact on the resident we recognise the missed appointment and the delay in confirming a new inspection would have caused her a degree of frustration. In the Ombudsman’s view, the landlord took proportionate action to remedy this complaint and the impact on the resident. The landlord acknowledged its failings, explained why these happened and apologised. It also described what it had learned and what action it had taken to prevent a reoccurrence. This is consistent with what we would expect from an apology in line with our guidance on remedies.
  7. The landlord’s compensation policy says that it will consider offering reimbursement of a resident’s actual expenses as part of a complaint resolution. However, it specifies this does not cover a resident’s loss of earnings. The landlord’s decision not to reimburse the resident for loss of earnings was reasonable as it was consistent with its policy. Furthermore, our guidance on remedies also specifies that we would not expect a landlord to reimburse a resident for taking time off work to allow repairs to take place. Our guidance says we would normally only consider ordering compensation for inconvenience if a landlord repeatedly missed appointments or did not resolve the repair, which did not happen in this case.
  8. As such the landlord’s apology was a reasonable remedy to put right the complaint and the Ombudsman has not made any orders or recommendations on this case. We do not consider that the impact of the landlord’s actions on the resident was significant enough for it to be required to provide her with a financial remedy in addition to its apology.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53.b. of the Scheme, the landlord has made an offer of redress prior to investigation which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves its handling of the gas safety inspection satisfactorily.