Clarion Housing Association Limited (202430240)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202430240

Clarion Housing Association Limited

12 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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
1. rehousing requests.
2. associated complaint.

Background

The resident holds an assured lifetime tenancy with the landlord in a 2-bedroom flat on the 4th floor of the building and has done since August 2010. The building has 1 lift for the use of all residents. The landlord has recorded that the resident has medical vulnerabilities, including physical mobility issues and records that she has a high dependency on the lift.
On 2 April 2024 the resident raised concerns about the lift being out of service. The landlord’s record of this call was that the resident:
1. asked for help in moving because of health issues.
2. said she had to be carried by ambulance staff down the stairs and that when she had been released from hospital, she had to make her way back upstairs with extreme difficulty.
3. said she had been housebound since 15 March 2024.
4. asked the landlord to provide food vouchers, as she was reliant on take away food deliveries as she could not find a supermarket who would deliver to her on the fourth floor.
On 1 April 2025 the resident complained to the landlord. In summary she said her medical needs were not being met, that she had raised issues many times with the landlord, but it was not responding and because of issues with the lift she was anxious leaving home.
On 6 May 2025 the landlord issued its stage 1 response. In summary it said the resident would need to contact her local authority if she wanted to move on medical grounds. It also said there had been 3 reports of lift faults over the previous 12 months. It said it had arranged repairs within a few hours on each occasion and twice the engineer found the lift was working. It said that outside of these reports, the only other times the lift was out of service was during planned maintenance or inspections. It awarded £150 compensation but increased this to £250 following a call later that day.
The resident remained dissatisfied and escalated her complaint. On 20 May 2025 the landlord issued its stage 2 response. It reiterated its position that the local authority was responsible for re-housing on medical grounds but offered to support the resident through its mutual exchange process. It said there had been no major lift faults within the last year and encouraged the resident to report any faults as and when they happened. It also offered to explore reasonable adjustments with the resident for when the lift was out of service for prolonged periods.
When the resident referred her complaint to us, she said she wanted to be rehoused.

Events after the landlord’s internal complaint process

The landlord has discussed rehousing options with the resident. The resident has told us that the local authority has declined her rehousing application on medical grounds, but she has submitted an appeal on this.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

It has been mentioned that the resident has submitted applications to her local authority to be rehoused on medical grounds. These applications will not be investigated within this report and any mention of these is for context only. This is because any concerns relating to the decision or banding award of these applications would fall under the jurisdiction of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (the LGSCO) to investigate.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s rehousing requests.

The first occasion the resident mentioned rehousing was during a call on 2 April 2024. At that time the lift had been out of service since 8 March 2024. The resident asked for help to be rehoused and food vouchers. In summary she said, because the lift was out of service, she was housebound and was reliant on takeaways as she could not arrange a shopping delivery to deliver to her on the 4th floor.
In response to this, the records show that the landlord made some internal enquiries to establish what assistance could be offered to the resident and if a temporary move could be arranged whilst the lift was out of service. The landlord has not provided evidence of any response to those enquiries.
The landlord returned the resident’s call on 3 April 2024. The landlord’s record of that call was that it offered £200 in food vouchers. It also issued another 2 weeks of food vouchers on 9 April 2024. It was positive that the landlord did this as it ensured the resident did not have any additional expenses due to the delay repairing the lift.
However, in the record of its call with the resident on 3 April 2024, the landlord does not include any evidence that it explored the resident’s circumstances in relation to her request to be rehoused, and this is a failure.
Had the resident’s needs been explored the landlord would have established if the residents request was to be moved on a temporary or permanent basis. There are some occasions when a landlord will offer a temporary move and because of the resident’s mobility issues and delay in the lift repair it may have been appropriate for the landlord to have considered a temporary move at that time.
The landlord’s policy relating to moving a resident to alternative accommodation is called the ‘decant policy’. It states that temporary moves will “only last as long as it takes to complete the repair works” and includes the circumstances in which it will offer one. They are:
1. emergency health and safety works are required because the whole or a significant part of the property is uninhabitable, and / or unsafe or hazardous (for example an unplanned event such as a fire, flood, storm damage or major leak, condensation, damp or mould works)
2. work is required to a building that may be harmful to the household, e.g. chemical work or large-scale removal of asbestos
3. the loss of a significant proportion of the property for more than one week and works cannot be sequenced to prevent this.
The landlord has not provided any evidence that it considered any alternative housing for the resident at that time. This is a failure.
The resident next requested assistance to be moved on 24 June 2024. In this report she explained she was concerned she was going to become housebound as the lift was “broken again”. She said as a resolution to her concerns she would like to be moved to a house or ground floor flat for her medical needs. The evidence shows that, whilst the lift was not out of service on 24 June 2024, it had been on the previous day. It had been attended to by an engineer within 1.5hrs who found it working on arrival.
The landlord has not provided any evidence that it contacted the resident in relation to her request to be moved. The landlord ought to have contacted the resident at that time and explored her housing needs and options. The fact that it did not is a failure.
When the resident contacted the landlord via live chat on 14 January 2025 she said:
1. she had been advised to make a formal complaint that her property was not suitable for her medical needs.
2. she had applied to her local authority on medical grounds but had been turned down.
3. she had no success in getting a home swap.
4. she needed help in moving.
5. no one was helping her, and she was being pushed between the local authority and the landlord.
During the chat the landlord said:
1. if her request was on medical grounds, the local authority would be the right place to apply.
2. it did not directly assist with moving but could offer advice – and the options for a move on medical grounds were a mutual exchange or applying to the local authority.
3. the only type of move it offered was a management transfer and these are offered usually in relation to anti-social behaviour or where there was a clear threat to a resident’s life.
The landlord’s response in relation to the resident’s application to her local authority and the mutual exchange process was appropriate and reasonable. However, the landlord did not give an accurate overview of its management transfer policy.
It is noted that the landlord’s management transfer policy states that “residents who need to move to level-access accommodation due to ongoing medical needs are not within the scope of the policy. This is because they are already given “high priority” within the allocation policy or by local authorities via the nomination arrangements where it does not maintain its own housing register”.
However, it also states that “in very exceptional circumstances the landlord can use a management transfer where the resident has had a significant change in their circumstances and is no longer able to access their home, e.g. discharge from hospital after a life changing injury or disability.
The landlord’s allocation policy says that it offers a percentage of its available homes to people nominated by the local authority. The landlord has confirmed that this applies to 75% of its properties. The other 25% of its available properties are held back by the landlord to be used for management transfers or when temporary accommodation is required.
Since a management transfer could have been considered in “very exceptional circumstances”, the landlord should have established if the resident’s medical circumstances had changed significantly and made her eligible for consideration. There is no evidence that the landlord did this, and without doing so, it could not be sure if the resident met its eligibility criteria or not. This was a failure and a missed opportunity for the landlord to properly check if a management transfer was a viable rehousing option for the resident. That being said, we cannot say the resident would have been eligible had the landlord fairly considered her personal circumstances.
The landlord’s evidence shows that it received an email from the resident on 31 March 2025. It has not supplied a copy of that email. However, it has provided its response and in this it:
1. signposted the resident to her local authority to submit medical evidence in support of any application to transfer on medical grounds.
2. signposted her to its website, where she could find available homes to rent and details on mutual exchange.
3. advised it had raised her concerns with its allocations team.
The landlord has not provided any evidence that its allocation team contacted the resident and discussed her housing options with her at that time and this was a missed opportunity to offer the resident guidance and support.
In her complaint to the landlord on 1 April 2025 the resident said she was unhappy that her medical needs were not being met and that she needed help. In its scoping call with the resident on 1 May 2025 the landlord established that the resident wanted to be rehoused on medical grounds because she said, when the lift was out of service, which it frequently was, she was effectively housebound.
The landlord used both of its complaint responses to tell the resident that it could not assist in her rehousing request. It said this was because, in circumstances where residents required a move based on medical grounds, those applications were handled by the local authority. It did, however, offer assistance with the mutual exchange process which was a positive step in seeking a resolution for the resident.
One of the resident’s main concerns, in her request to be rehoused, was the frequency of the lift being out of service (because of her mobility issues) and it was appropriate that the landlord also addressed this in its complaint responses. It listed the service history of the lift in the 12 months before it issued its response and told the resident that it considered the lift to be dependable.
The resident told us she felt the landlord’s response was not a true reflection of the issues with the lift. In line with our Complaint Handling Code (The Code), we would have expected the landlord to have considered events in the 12 months prior to the complaint. Instead, the landlord considered events in the 12 months before it issued its response. This was not appropriate as by doing this it failed to include the time when the lift was out of service for 33 days.
The evidence provided shows that between 8 March 2024 and 1 April 2025 there were 4 service requests for lift issues, all of which were attended to within 6 hours. On 3 occasions the lift was operating when the engineer attended. On 1 occasion, between 8 March 2024 and 10 April 2024, the lift required a replacement part and remained out of service for 33 days.
Overall, the landlord’s records show that its initial response to each reported lift issue was reasonable. On the occasion when the lift could not be repaired immediately there is no evidence to suggest that there was any avoidable delay in its repair or that there was any reoccurring issue with the lift that required further investigation.
Therefore, whilst its complaint responses did not include the full period of time it should have, its failing to include this is unlikely to have changed its position. Its response that there was no evidence to suggest that any further adjustments with the lift were required was appropriate in the overall assessment of the frequency of the lift issues.
Overall, the advice, regarding the local authority and its appeals process provided by the landlord was reasonable. However, the landlord missed the opportunity to consider if temporary accommodation would have been appropriate in April 2024, when the resident’s circumstances and lift outage meant she could not easily access her home. It also missed opportunities to establish if the resident’s individual circumstances meant she could be considered for a transfer under its management transfer policy.
Throughout its complaints process and responses, the landlord did not identify these failures. The landlord has provided evidence that, after the internal complaints process, on 27 June 2025, it spoke with the resident about her rehousing options and what assistance it could provide in relation to these. Its call note states that it discussed its management transfer policy and her eligibility for that.
Whilst it is positive that the landlord has now considered the residents circumstances in relation to its management transfer policy, its failure to do so before this caused an unnecessary delay to the resident exhausting all available rehousing options with the landlord. We, therefore, conclude there has been maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s requests to be rehoused.
We order the landlord to pay the resident £100 compensation for the impact its handling of this issue has had on her.
For additional reassurance to the resident, we have made some recommendations below in relation to any future instances when the lift is out of service.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s associated complaint.

On 24 June 2024 the resident raised a complaint on the landlord’s website. In this she said she had recently had an operation and with her medical issues could not live on the top floor. She said that because the lift was “broken again” she was worried she would become housebound again and she wanted to be moved.
Amongst other functions, the landlord’s website allows residents to raise a repair request or make a complaint. It is evident that the resident used the complaint option to notify the landlord of her dissatisfaction. However, the next question in that option asks if the complaint is related to repairs, and because the resident selected yes, her enquiry was first sent to the repairs team.
The landlord dealt with this as a service request. It said it did this, in line with its complaints policy, because it was the first time the resident had raised this issue. Doing this meant that, in accordance with its complaint policy, the responsibility was on the resident to go back to the landlord if she was not satisfied with its response.
The key points in the landlord’s definition of a service request are that:
1. it is “‘a request from a resident to the landlord requiring action to be taken to put something right”.
2. it “will usually be the first time you have made us aware of your dissatisfaction with our service”.
3. “service requests are not considered to be complaints”.
4. if the resident is “dissatisfied with our response to a service request, then we will consider this to be a complaint and we will follow the process laid out in this policy.”
The landlord’s position that it was the first time the resident raised this issue was not accurate, as the resident discussed the same issues with the landlord on 2 April 2024.
In addition to this, the wording used by the resident was indicative of a complaint. The landlord’s policy defines a complaint as “‘an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions, or lack of action by the organisation, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting an individual resident or group of residents.
The landlord’s policy also states that “you do not have to use the word ‘complaint’ for it to be treated as such. Whenever a resident expresses dissatisfaction, we will give them the choice to make complaint”. There is no evidence the landlord contacted the resident to establish how she wanted to progress with this issue.
Therefore, it was not appropriate that the landlord raised this as a service request. It should have been raised as a complaint, and not doing so was a complaint handling failure.
The landlord missed the opportunity to raise a complaint again on 14 January 2025 and 1 April 2025 when the resident contacted it to do so. The landlord sought our assistance and on 30 April 2025, we told the landlord that it must provide a response to the resident by 8 May 2025.
The landlord accepted and acknowledged the stage 1 complaint on 1 May 2025. This was 219 working days after we consider it ought to have raised a complaint (24 June 2024). This was an unreasonable delay which prolonged the time taken to investigate and respond to the resident’s complaint issues.
The landlord issued its stage 1 response on 6 May 2025. This was in line with its complaint policy in which it commits to issuing a stage 1 response within 10 working days of its acceptance.
The landlord’s stage 2 response was issued in accordance with the timeframe of its complaints policy. The landlord also used this to tell the resident it had reviewed its level of compensation and its procedure in crediting compensation to rent accounts in circumstances where there were rent arrears. It confirmed it would have to follow this procedure if the circumstances applied to the resident. This was a reasonable response and in line with its complaint policy.
The landlord does not dispute there were failures in the service it provided. When a landlord admits failings, our role is to consider whether it resolved the resident’s issue satisfactorily in the circumstances and offered appropriate redress. In considering this, we assess whether the landlord’s actions were in line with our dispute resolution principles: to be fair, put things right and learn from outcomes.
Within its complaint responses the landlord acknowledged that it had failed to raise a complaint. Although not explicitly stated, it is likely this was in relation to the residents attempt to raise a complaint on 1 April 2025. The landlord offered an apology and offered £250 compensation in recognition of its failure to follow its internal complaints policy and procedure, consideration of the household vulnerabilities and inconvenience suffered by the resident. It also explained how it addressed the issue with its colleagues to prevent similar issues occurring.
The overall compensation offered by the landlord was proportionate for the failures identified in this investigation, and in line with our guidelines. However, we cannot make a finding that it provided reasonable redress. This is because the landlord failed to identify there were prior occasions when it could have raised a complaint for the resident, which had it done could have resolved the issue for the resident sooner than it did. This was a significant failing for which the landlord hasn’t demonstrated learning.
We, therefore, find there has been maladministration and order the landlord to apologise for this. We do not order the landlord to pay any more compensation.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s requests to be rehoused.
In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s associated complaint.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

Within 4 weeks of this report the landlord is ordered to:
1. apologise to the resident for the failures identified in this report.
2. Pay the resident a total of £350 compensation. This is inclusive of the £250 already offered by the landlord and is made up of:
  1. £100 for the impact of the landlord’s handling of the resident’s requests to be rehoused.
  2. the £250 compensation already offered for the impact of the landlord’s failure in its handling of the residents associated complaint.
Within 6 weeks of this report the landlord is ordered to review the failures identified in this report. A report detailing the outcome of the review should be sent to us. This report should give particular attention to its website complaint reporting function and identify if there is any learning to be taken from the resident’s experience of using this.

Recommendations

In line with its offer, we recommend the landlord contacts the resident to review any reasonable adjustments that could be made to assist her on occurrences of prolonged periods the lift is out of service.
We recommend that the landlord considers its obligations under Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025, with a specific focus on whether it would be appropriate to have a personal emergency evacuation plan (PEEP) in place for this resident.