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London Borough of Waltham Forest (202421867)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202421867

London Borough of Waltham Forest

31 July 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:
    1. Handling of the resident’s reports of broken glass in an internal communal door.
    2. Method of address when communicating with the resident.
  2. We have also considered the landlord’s handling of the associated complaint.

Background

  1. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord. The property is a 1-bedroom flat with communal areas in the building maintained by the landlord.
  2. The resident made a stage 1 complaint to the landlord on 29 May 2024. She was unhappy as she had reported broken glass in an internal communal door on 13 March 2024 and it had not been repaired. She also raised that she thought the landlord was not carrying out block inspections.
  3. The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 12 June 2024. It said:
    1. After the resident’s report of the repair, an emergency job was raised to make the door safe. This was done and a follow up job to replace the glazing on the door should have been raised.
    2. The contractor had made a mistake and had not registered this follow up job. The landlord said it had now raised the repair for its contractor to carry out.
    3. It apologised for the failure of its contractor to progress the repair. The landlord mentioned it had fed back to the contractor about this mistake.
    4. It had been inspecting the block and provided a brief schedule of these inspections.
  4. The resident wrote to the landlord on 2 September 2024. She was unhappy that the repair had not yet been completed and with the way the landlord was addressing her in its correspondence. In this email, the resident described how the landlord was giving her the title ‘Miss’ when the resident wished to be addressed as ‘Ms’. The resident has clarified in separate communications that this relates to what she feels is the erasure of her gender.
  5. The resident asked us for support in escalating her complaint. On 4 December 2024, we asked the landlord to provide its stage 2 complaint response by 16 December 2024.
  6. The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 16 December 2024. It said it:
    1. Had raised works for the glass in the communal door, but there had been no progress on this. The original manufacturer of the door needed to carry out the repair. The landlord said it had chased its contractor for an update and apologised for the delay.
    2. Apologised for the way it had addressed her in correspondence. The landlord said it meant no offence and it would try to address the resident appropriately in future.
    3. Upheld her complaint and offered her £25 compensation for the time and trouble in pursuing it.
  7. The resident referred her complaint to us on 1 January 2025 as she was unhappy with the landlord’s response to the repair and her complaint. The resident has said to us in an email of 18 July 2025 that the status of the repair is unclear.

Assessment and findings

The scope of the Ombudsman’s investigation

  1. We have limited the scope of this investigation to the issues and events up to the date of the landlord’s final complaint response. Generally we do this so a landlord has a fair opportunity to investigate and respond to any new issues before our involvement. In this situation, the resident has a further complaint with us which includes the repair that is the subject of this complaint. The landlord has not issued a final response on this. Consequently, we have considered issues up to the date of the landlord’s final response letter of 16 December 2024. This means that the new complaint can be considered separately to this one, as we have not considered events past this date.
  2. The resident has referenced that issues in the landlord’s method of address when communicating with her has been an ongoing issue for over a decade. The resident raised this issue with the landlord on 2 September 2025. We encourage residents to raise complaints in a timely manner, while the issues are live. This is because the quality and availability of any evidence that may have existed at the time may not be present now. The focus of this investigation will therefore relate to the way the landlord dealt with the issues raised by the resident at the time of the complaint.

The resident’s reports of broken glass in a communal door

  1. The landlord’s Repairs Policy and Process (the policy) says it is responsible for maintaining main entrance doors and communal doors. The landlord uses contactors to carry out its repairs. It has different repair timescales dependent on the contractor. For the contractor in this matter, the policy says works should be completed 14 days after an initial appointment with a resident. There is no stated timescale for communal repairs.
  2. The landlord’s policy says that the landlord might amend the timescale for a repair to take into account any unforeseen issues or specific circumstances. The policy gives the example of a requirement to order parts or materials, or where specialist works may need to take place. It also says that any change in timescale will be clearly recorded so there is an appropriate audit trail. The policy says that where work does not need to be carried out straight away, it could be carried out as part of a programme of similar works. It says that residents will be given regular updates on the likely waiting times.
  3. The resident has said she reported this issue to the landlord on 13 March 2024. There is no evidence of this, but it is not disputed by the landlord. The landlord’s contractor attended on 15 March 2024 to make the door safe. The landlord acted reasonably here as it quickly made sure the door did not pose a risk to any residents.
  4. The landlord’s policy says that works should be completed 14 days after the initial appointment. While it does not provide a timescale for communal repairs it is reasonable to use this as a guide for when the repair should have been completed. The landlord issued its stage 2 complaint response on 16 December 2024. It confirmed that no progress had been made to fix the glass in the door. This was 276 days since the contactor had made safe the door. The landlord failed to follow its policy on repairs in this instance as this was an inappropriate amount of time to complete the repair.
  5. In the same response of 16 December 2024, the landlord said that the repair needed to be carried out by the original manufacturer of the door. The landlord has explained to us that the door is a fire door. Because of this it needs to be reglazed in a specific way by a bespoke supplier. The landlord’s Repairs Policy and Process says that it can review the timescale for a repair in specific circumstances. It is reasonable that the landlord may have needed to review the timescale for the repair in this particular situation. However, it had been 276 days since the contractor first attended the door. While it might be reasonable for the landlord to extend the timeframe, this is not a reasonable timescale for a repair to take. The landlord did not act reasonably when reviewing and assessing the timescale for the repair.
  6. The Complaint Handling Code says that outstanding actions for complaints must be tracked and actioned promptly with appropriate updates provided to the resident. Given this, and the length of time the repair was taking, it would have been reasonable for the landlord to provide updates to the resident. The landlord has not provided any evidence that it updated the resident. Our Spotlight Report on Repairs and Maintenance recommends that communication to residents should be timely and transparent. The landlord did not act reasonably when keeping the resident updated on the status of the repair. If it had followed the Code and the recommendations in the Spotlight Report, it could have avoided failings here.
  7. While the landlord acted quickly to make the door safe, it did not complete the repair within its timescales. The landlord did not act reasonably in updating the resident on the repair. The landlord apologised for the delay in the repair in its complaint responses and offered the resident £25. This was a communal door that was still functioning, so the impact on the resident was minor. This was an appropriate response from the landlord.
  8. However, the landlord did not acknowledge its lack of updates to the resident. Because of this, we find service failure in the way the landlord handled the repair to the communal door.  We have ordered the landlord to pay an additional £40 to the resident, bringing the total compensation to £65. This is in line with our remedies guidance for service failure and reflects the inconvenience caused the landlord’s communication failures.

The landlord’s method of address when communicating with the resident

  1. It is not our role to determine how a landlord should address a resident. When investigating a complaint about a landlord, we look at the landlord’s overall response to a resident’s concerns. The landlord does not have any policies or procedures that would cover its method of address for a resident. When there are no policies or procedures, we make an assessment based on what is reasonable in all the circumstances of the case.
  2. The resident raised concerns about the landlord’s method of address in an email to the landlord on 2 September 2024. She said she had told the landlord on numerous occasions the correct way to address her and believed the use of ‘Miss’ was done to provoke her. The landlord responded to the resident’s concerns in its stage 2 complaint response of 16 December 2024. The landlord has not provided any evidence that it looked into the resident’s complaint. It would have been reasonable to contact the resident to find out more about what her concerns were, before addressing it formally in its stage 2 complaint response.
  3. The landlord did limit the resident’s ability to contact it from 17 September 2024, it said it would not accept any communication from the resident for 3 months but would review this on the week beginning 9 December 2024. We recognise that this could be the reason that the landlord did not contact the resident to find out more about her concerns. However there was still 11 working days before this period that the landlord could have contacted the resident to ask for more information on her concerns. The landlord also said that it would address any previous complaints according to its procedures. Therefore, it would still have been reasonable for the landlord to contact the resident about her concerns. The landlord did not act reasonably when considering this element of the resident’s complaint.
  4. In the stage 2 complaint response, the landlord apologised for its method of address and told the resident no offence was intended. The landlord said that it had been reminded to address the resident appropriately in future. An apology was reasonable in the circumstances, however the landlord did not describe if it was taking any specific action to prevent this happening again. The landlords response was not reasonable in the circumstances because it did not show that it was taking any action to address the resident’s concerns.
  5. It is clear from the evidence supplied to us that this is an issue that the resident feels strongly about. The landlord should have considered this and informed the resident what it was doing to prevent the issue occurring in the future. However, beyond the frustration that this caused the resident, there was no further impact. There is no evidence that this was a deliberate act from the landlord. We therefore find service failure for this element of the complaint.
  6. The landlord has explained to us in an email on 28 February 2025 the changes it has made to ensure the resident’s wishes are respected. It said it has changed the resident’s account settings to remove automated acknowledgements and made notes on the resident’s account about her preferred method of address. We have ordered the landlord to confirm the same information in writing to the resident for reassurance.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint

  1. The landlord’s Complaints Handling Policy says that it will log a stage 1 complaint upon receipt and contact the resident within 48 hours. For a stage 2 complaint, it says it will acknowledge the escalation request from a resident within 5 working days of receiving it. The policy says a stage 1 complaint response should be sent to a resident within 10 working days from receipt of the complaint. It says a stage 2 complaint response should be sent to a resident within 20 working days of the acknowledgement of the resident’s request for the complaint to be escalated.
  2. The resident submitted her stage 1 complaint on 29 May 2024. There is no evidence that the landlord acknowledged the resident’s stage 1 complaint. The landlord failed to follow its Complaints Handling Policy in this instance. The landlord sent its stage 1 response to the resident on 12 June 2024. This was 10 working days from the complaint being received. The landlord followed its Complaints Handling Policy here.
  3. The resident submitted her stage 2 complaint on 2 September 2024. The landlord never formally acknowledged the escalation. The landlord sent its response on 16 December 2024, this was 75 working days from when the resident escalated her complaint. The resident contacted us in that period to assist her in getting a response from the landlord. The landlord did not address this delay in its stage 2 complaint response. This was a failure from the landlord to follow its Complaints Handling Policy and it was inadequate that it did not acknowledge the amount of time it had taken to respond.
  4. The landlord did not acknowledge the resident’s stage 1 complaint or her stage 2 complaint. It did not address the delays to its stage 2 response. The delay caused distress and inconvenience to the resident and was not in line with the Complaint Handling Code. We therefore find maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the complaint. We have ordered the landlord to apologise to the resident and pay the £100 compensation. We believe this to be reasonable in the circumstances considering our guidance on remedies.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was service failure with the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of broken glass in a communal door
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was service failure with the landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns with the landlord’s method of address.
  3. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration with the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this determination, the landlord must provide evidence that it has:
    1. Paid the resident £65 for the inconvenience caused to the resident by the way it handled the resident’s reports of broken glass in a communal door.
    2. Paid the resident £100 for its handling of the resident’s complaint.
    3. This is inclusive of the compensation previously offered by the landlord for any elements of the complaint. Therefore, the landlord may deduct from this total any compensation it may already have paid in relation to this complaint.
    4. The payment should be made directly to the resident and not offset against any debt that may be owed.
    5. Apologised to the resident for the distress and inconvenience caused by its handling of the resident’s complaint.
  2. Within 6 weeks of the date of this determination, the landlord must provide evidence that it has written to the resident to explain what it has done to ensure it is using the resident’s preferred mode of address.