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The Guinness Partnership Limited (202346714)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202346714

The Guinness Partnership Limited

27 August 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 the resident’s gas safety inspections, including scheduling and missed appointments.

Background

  1. The resident is an assured tenant of a 2-bedroom house owned by the landlord, which is a housing association. The resident has health vulnerabilities that affect his mobility and wellbeing. The landlord is aware of his vulnerabilities.
  2. The resident first reported issues in January 2024 when the landlord’s gas contractor failed to attend a scheduled appointment on 9 January 2024. He explained that this was not the first time the landlord had missed appointments. He said he had experienced missed gas safety appointments in previous years. He had wasted many hours waiting indoors, sometimes up to 6 hours at a time, which caused him distress and affected his health.
  3. On 24 January 2024 the resident made a formal complaint to the landlord. He was unhappy about the missed appointment on 9 January 2024. He also said that the landlord booked a new appointment with a 6-hour time slot on 25 January 2024 without consulting him first, and he requested a 2-hour appointment window.
  4. The landlord issued its stage 1 complaint response on 7 February 2024. It upheld the complaint. It apologised for the missed appointment and agreed to the 2-hour appointment window. It offered £60 compensation broken down as £40 for time and trouble and £20 for poor communication.
  5. The resident was unhappy with the stage 1 complaint response and requested escalation of the complaint on 9 February 2024. He said the compensation did not reflect the 30 hours he believed he had wasted across multiple missed appointments, nor did it address his request for a 2-hour appointment window.
  6. The landlord issued its stage 2 complaint response on 8 March 2024. It again upheld the complaint and acknowledged that the contractor failed to attend the 9 January 2024 appointment. It accepted that the contractor should have communicated better and confirmed that it had provided feedback to the contractor. The landlord apologised, recognised the distress caused, and increased its compensation offer to £100, broken down as, £80 for time, trouble, and inconvenience and £20 for poor communication. It said it could not investigate missed appointments in 2018 and 2019 due to the passage of time but confirmed that it had raised the resident’s concerns about imposed timeslots with the contractor. It said it had requested that the contractor offered shorter timeslots in future and confirmed a gas safety appointment for 12 March 2024 between 9:30 and 11:30am.
  7. Following the stage 2 complaint response, the landlord completed the gas safety check on 12 March 2024 and issued a gas safety certificate.
  8. The resident remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response and escalated his complaint to us. He wanted a formal apology, recognition of the time he had lost, a guarantee of shorter appointment windows in future, and compensation proportionate to his distress and wasted time.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

  1. In communication with this Service, the resident said this situation had had a detrimental impact on his health. The courts are the most effective place for disputes about personal injury and illness. This is largely because independent medical experts are appointed to give evidence. They have a duty to the court to provide unbiased insights on the diagnosis, prognosis, and cause of any illness or injury. When disputes arise over the cause of an injury, oral testimony can be examined in court. While the Ombudsman cannot consider the effect on health, consideration has been given to any general distress and inconvenience which the resident experienced because of any service failure by the landlord.
  2. The resident said he has experienced issues regarding multiple missed appointments in the property for the past 7 years. The Ombudsman encourages residents to raise complaints with their landlord in a timely manner. This is so the landlord has a reasonable opportunity to investigate the issue while it is still ‘live’ and sufficient evidence is available to reach an informed conclusion. As issues become historical it is increasingly difficult for either the landlord, or an independent body such as an Ombudsman, to conduct an effective review of the actions taken. This investigation relates to the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of a missed appointment on 9 January 2024, and his displeasure over imposed appointment time slots, which was the subject of the complaint that exhausted the landlord’s complaints procedure on 8 March 2024.

The resident’s gas safety inspections, including scheduling and missed appointments

  1. The landlord is responsible for carrying out an annual gas safety check under the tenancy agreement and its gas management policy. Its gas management policy states it will service and check the safety of gas appliances that it is responsible for annually. It will service and maintain gas appliances in line with legislative requirements. It states it will ensure all reasonable steps are taken to access properties where it has a responsibility to maintain gas appliances. Where access is not provided, it will pursue legal action to gain the required level of access.
  2. The landlord did not inform the resident that its contractor would not be attending the appointment on 9 January 2024. This failure to communicate with the resident regarding nonattendance of the appointment understandably caused unnecessary distress and inconvenience. The landlord in its stage 1 and stage 2 complaint responses appropriately identified and apologised for this failing.
  3. The resident confirmed that the landlord attended his property on 23 January 2024. He explained he was unwell and could not wait 6 hours for an appointment. He said he would be willing to accept a 2-hour wait time period in the future. Despite the landlord assuring him they would consider his request; he was upset to receive a message from the landlord’s contractor on 24 January 2024 stating that he had a 6-hour time slot appointment for 25 January 2024. The resident subsequently received further reminders on 23 February and 1 March 2024, escalating threats to legal action. These letters undermined the efforts to agree a tailored slot and caused avoidable distress.
  4. The landlord later explained in its correspondence that the letters were system generated. However, it should have taken reasonable steps to pause or update these letters to reflect the resident’s circumstances.
  5. In his correspondence to the landlord on 2 February 2024 the resident confirmed that the head of service for the landlord’s contractor had called to offer a formal apology and offered a 2-hour timeslot. However, the resident stated this was not acceptable and said he wanted the landlord to resolve the complaint first and requested £300 compensation for the missed appointment. It was reasonable of the landlord’s contractor to apologise for the missed appointment and to agree to the resident’s request for a 2-hour time slot.
  6. In its stage 1 complaint response of 7 February 2024 the landlord appropriately explained that it could not consider the previous missed appointments the resident referred to in 2018 and 2019.This was reasonable and in line with its complaints policy regarding timeline for investigating complaints. It was also reasonable of the landlord to explain the missed appointment and offer £60 compensation for the time and trouble and poor communication. This was reasonable and within the amounts prescribed in its compensation policy for minor distress and inconvenience. It appropriately considered the resident’s requests for 2-hour time frame and was willing to facilitate an appointment that reflected this.
  7. In its stage 2 complaint response the landlord again apologised for the missed appointment and poor communication. It offered increased compensation of £100 and provided an appointment in line with the resident’s preference.
  8. In this case, there were minor failings by the landlord in terms of the missed appointment and poor communication. However, the landlord made reasonable attempts to put things right by apologising, offering other appointments in line with the resident’s requests and offering compensation. The £100 compensation was at the upper end of the range of awards set out in our remedies guidance for situations where there was a minor failure by the landlord in the service it provided and was proportionate to the impact in the resident. The landlord’s actions therefore constitute reasonable redress.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53.b. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has offered redress to the resident which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, satisfactorily resolves its handling of the resident’s gas inspections, including scheduling and missed appointments.

 Recommendations

  1. We recommend that the landlord:
    1. Pays the resident the £100 compensation previously offered in its stage 2 complaint response on 8 March 2024 if it has not already done so.
    2. The finding of reasonable redress for its handling of the resident’s reports of the resident’s gas inspections, including scheduling and missed appointments is dependent on the payment of this sum.
    3. That the landlord considers the resident’s vulnerabilities and confirms a suitable time slot with him before making appointments in future.