London & Quadrant Housing Trust (202425812)

Background

1. The resident lives with his family in a 2-bedroom flat within a block. Water penetration following a roof leak caused damage inside his property. The landlord said that an external wall affected by the leak needed to dry before repair work to address the internal damage could begin. He raised concerns about the landlord’s communication and its handling of his complaint.

What the complaint is about

2. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of:
   1. Issues relating to a roof leak.
   2. The complaint.

Our decision (determination)

3. We have found that there was:
   1. Maladministration in the landlord’s handling of issues relating to a roof leak.
   2. Service failure in the landlord’s handling of the complaint.

We have made orders for the landlord to put things right.

Summary of reasons

4. In summary, we found that the landlord:
   1. Often delayed communication with the resident.
   2. Delayed its investigation into issues with the external wall. This caused an avoidable delay for the resident to arrange internal repair work.
   3. Its compensation offer was not proportionate to the delays experienced by the resident.

Putting things right

Where we find service failure, maladministration or severe maladministration we can make orders for the landlord to put things right. We have the discretion to make recommendations in all other cases within our jurisdiction.

Orders

Landlords must comply with our orders in the manner and timescales we specify. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of compliance with our orders by the due date set.

The complaint procedure

What we found and why

The circumstances of this complaint are well known by the parties involved, so it is not necessary to detail everything that’s happened or comment on all the information we’ve reviewed. We’ve only included the key information that forms the basis of our decision of whether the landlord is responsible for maladministration.

5. Following the resident’s previous complaint, he made the landlord aware that the external wall was still damp, something it had asked him to do. He asked it to confirm what action it would take to investigate why the external wall was still damp.
6. The evidence shows that the resident chased the landlord for updates on multiple occasions between 29 May 2024 and 22 July 2024. Its failure to effectively communicate caused him avoidable time and trouble to resolve the matter.
7. The evidence shows that the landlord’s communication with the resident regarding the matter was poor. It failed to keep him updated on its actions leading to him needing to chase it for information. There were instances of it failing to respond to contact he had initiated which likely left the resident feeling frustrated and ignored.
8. The landlord failed to attend to inspect the wall on the date it had agreed to in its stage 2 response. It conducted an inspection on 24 October 2024, 5 months after the resident had notified it that the wall had remained damp. Given it had asked him to get in touch if the wall had not dried out, and it was aware that the issue was affecting his living conditions, it should have attended sooner. It did not offer an explanation for this delay in its complaint responses.
9. In its final response the landlord apologised for the inconvenience, its handling of the matter and offered £20 compensation. It subsequently completed its investigation of the issues concerning the wall in January 2025, a further 5 months after its final response. Due to this we have determined its offer of compensation was not proportionate to the delays and detriment the resident experienced with the matter continuing for over 8 months. With consideration of our remedies guidance, we have made orders for it to apologise and pay increased compensation. This is in line with our dispute resolution principles to be fair and put things right.

10. The landlord operates a 2-stage complaints process. It acknowledges complaints within 5 working days. It responds to stage 1 and 2 complaints within 10 and 20 working days respectively. This is compliant with the Complaint Handling Code (the Code).
11. The landlord did not correctly monitor its complaints process which indicates a record keeping failing. It failed to log the resident’s communication of 5 July 2024 as a complaint and only did so following his contact to chase a response on 22 July 2024. Further, it did not seem to be aware of its failing.
12. There were delays in the landlord acknowledging and responding to the resident’s complaint at stage 1. It provided its acknowledgement 9 working days later than the timescales set out in its policy. It sent its response 4 working days later than its published timescales. Although the resident had queried why its response was late it did not provide any explanation which was unreasonable. It did not acknowledge, apologise or offer any redress for its delays.
13. The landlord’s stage 1 response did not address the issues raised by the resident in his complaint. This caused further delays in it resolving the issue as well as avoidable time and trouble on the resident’s part. It was reasonable that it recognised this, apologised and offered redress to the resident in its final response. Its compensation offer of £40 recognising the resident’s time and trouble was in line with our remedies guidance.
14. We have made an order for the landlord to apologise and pay an additional £35 in compensation to the resident for the inconvenience caused to him by the delays at stage 1 of its complaint process. This is in line with our dispute resolution principles to be fair and put things right.

Learning

15. The landlord should have referred to its previous complaint response upon receiving the resident’s initial report of the wall remaining damp. Had it done so it would have had a better understanding of the matter and may have avoided the confusion that delayed resolving the issue.