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Southwark Council (202317287)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202317287

Southwark Council

2 September 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 response to the resident’s claims of a conflict of interest in regard to a Fire Risk Assessment for his building.
  2. The Ombudsman has also considered the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Background

  1. The resident has been a leaseholder of a flat with the landlord, a local authority, since 25 February 2021. The property is a two-bedroom flat within a purpose-built, three-storey block consisting of six units. The block is approximately six metres in height and is the middle of three blocks.
  2. In November 2020 the landlord conducted a fire risk assessment (FRA) at the resident’s building. Its report said the cladding on the building carried a low fire risk and that it planned to remove it in the future.
  3. The resident disputed the landlord’s comments about the cladding and complained to it in 2021. He said the comments were causing issues with him being able to sell the flat as lenders and buyers were concerned about the cladding. It did not uphold his complaint, saying its comments were correct and the FRA complied with all relevant legislation at the time.
  4. The resident was unhappy with the landlord’s response and brought his complaint to the Ombudsman. We issued our determination under case 202203904 on 20 April 2023 and found no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the FRA.
  5. The resident made a subject access request to the landlord for documents relating to the FRA. Upon receipt of these documents, he informed the Ombudsman he had seen an email which suggested a named member of management had interfered with the FRA’s comments about the cladding. We advised him to raise this as a new complaint with the landlord, which he did on 1 August 2023.
  6. Due the nature of the resident’s new complaint, the landlord said it would go straight to providing a stage 2 response, which it did on 28 October 2023. It said it found no evidence of a conflict of interest and did not uphold his complaint.
  7. The resident was dissatisfied with the landlord’s response and brought this complaint to the Ombudsman. He said the email in question showed a member of management had told the Fire Risk Assessor to add comments about needing to remove the building’s cladding. He said these comments had led him to lose two buyers for his flat, as well as rental income. He wanted the landlord to amend the FRA and provide compensation for financial hardship its comments had caused.

Assessment and findings

Scope of Investigation

  1. The Ombudsman has already issued a determination about the landlord’s handling of the FRA in April 2023. The resident’s concerns about a conflict of interest had not been raised during the internal complaint’s procedure for the complaint this determination was regarding. This issue was therefore not considered as part of that investigation.
  2. For the sake of clarity, this determination centres on the alleged conflict of interest issue and not the landlord’s handling of the FRA. Any reference to its handling of the FRA is for context only.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s claims of a conflict of interest

  1. The landlord’s Fire Assessment Policy says the role of the Fire Safety Manager is to line manage the fire safety team and develop its FRA programme, including signing off any FRA action plans. The role of the Fire Safety Assessor is to complete FRA’s in line with the landlord’s programme and to develop an action plan on each building inspected.
  2. When the resident complained to the landlord he said he had seen an internal email which he believed proved there had been a conflict of interest around the FRA produced for his building. He said information had been added to the FRA stating exterior wall cladding would be removed in the next major works (the implication being that there was a cladding risk for the building). He explained this was incorrect or inaccurate, and the evidence showed the Assessor who had conducted the FRA had included this information at the direction of the landlord’s Fire Safety Manager (whom the resident named), who had then blocked the Assessor from removing it.
  3. The resident said this showed the Assessor had been influenced by the Manager and the findings about the cladding were therefore biased. He said these comments had caused him to lose two potential buyers of his flat. He also said he had moved a tenant out of the flat to sell the property but as this had not been possible he had also lost rental income. He wanted the landlord to amend the FRA and pay him a total of £25,000 compensation.
  4. In October 2023 the landlord said due to the nature of the resident’s complaint it would only provide a stage 2 response. In this response it said it had found no evidence of a conflict of interest between the Assessor and Manager regarding the FRA as the Manager only started working for it after the FRA had been written and issued. It maintained the FRA had been completed in line with its policy and relevant legislation at the time.
  5. The evidence supports the landlord’s response. Internal emails show that the Manager started working for the landlord in September 2021 which was 10 months after the assessment took place and 9 months after it had sent the report to the resident. As such it would have been impossible for this manager to have influenced or amended the report. Nor has any evidence been seen suggesting a different manager had requested the FRA be amended or have any influence on it in the manner suggested by the resident..
  6. Additionally, when the Manager replied to the Assessor’s query about the information in the FRA he acknowledged the cladding on the resident’s building was low risk but the landlord’s plan was to remove it anyway as part of its general risk reduction programme. As such, he said the FRA was accurate and should not be amended.
  7. The landlord’s policy states the manager has sign off on all FRA action plans, so it was appropriate for the Assessor to seek approval for any amendments. Furthermore, should the manager not agree with proposed amendments they had the right to not approve them. Accordingly, it was reasonable for the Manager to respond to the Assessor’s query following the resident’s challenge.
  8. Overall, the landlord’s response to the resident’s complaint was reasonable. The evidence proved the named manager could not have been involved in a conflict of interest due to him not being employed by the landlord at the time the report was written, and the actions taken give no meaningful indication of a conflict of interest.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint

  1. The landlord’s Complaints Policy says it has a two stage complaints procedure. It says it aims to respond to stage 1 complaints within 15 working days of receipt and stage 2 complaints within 25 working days of receipt.
  2. The resident complained on 1 August 2023. It took the landlord 64 working days to respond to his complaint on 28 October 2023. This exceeded the timeframes in its complaints policy, as well as those set out in the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code). The Ombudsman also had to chase it twice to provide a response. It failed to acknowledge this delay in its response or offer redress for this failing. This was not appropriate as the delay was significant and the Code says complaint handling failings should be addressed in responses.
  3. The landlord emailed the resident on 25 October 2023 to advise that due to the serious nature of his complaint it would escalate his complaint to stage 2. While it was appropriate for it to notify him of this decision, it provided no further explanation as to why it was taking this approach, and the seriousness of a complaint would not usually be a relevant reason on its own to skip part of the complaint process.
  4. The landlord also did not mention this in its stage 2 response. This approach is not in line with its policy or the Code and was therefore not reasonable. It meant the resident did not have the opportunity to challenge its response with it directly, which he would have been able to do had a stage 1 response been issued.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was no maladministration by the landlord in its response to the resident’s claims of a conflict of interest in regard to a Fire Risk Assessment for his building.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in its complaint handling.

Orders and recommendations

  1. Within 4 weeks of this determination the landlord is ordered to:
    1. Pay the resident £150 compensation for the complaint handling delays and failure to provide a stage 1 response to his complaint.
    2. Provide evidence of this to this Service.