Haringey London Borough Council (202501855)

Decision
Case ID	202501855
Decision type	Investigation
Landlord	Haringey London Borough Council
Landlord type	Local Authority / ALMO or TMO
Occupancy	Secure Tenancy
Date	7 November 2025

Background

1. The resident’s ground floor flat, owned by the landlord, is part of a supported housing scheme. She called the landlord for emergency assistance in February 2025. She complained about the landlord’s handling of this, which had required the emergency services to force entry, and its subsequent handling of the door replacement. She asked us to investigate as she remained unhappy with the landlord’s final response.

What the complaint is about

2. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
   1. Request for emergency assistance and door replacement.
   2. Complaint.

Our decision (determination)

3. We found that the landlord offered reasonable redress to the resident in respect of its handling of her:
   1. Request for emergency assistance and door replacement.
   2. Complaint

We have not made orders for the landlord to put things right.

Summary of reasons

Emergency assistance and door replacement

4. The landlord acknowledged and explained how it had attended the resident’s request for assistance with the wrong door key and made the forced entry necessary. It accepted its poor communications and delays in arranging for the door to be replaced. It apologised and offered the resident reasonable compensation of £500 for the impact of these failings.

Complaint handling

5. The landlord accepted and apologised for its delays in escalating the resident’s complaint and providing its final response. It offered reasonable compensation of £150 for its poor complaint handling.

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.

Recommendations

Our recommendations are not binding, and a landlord may decide not to follow them.

Our recommendation
The landlord should pay the resident any part of its £650 compensation that it has not already done so.

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

Date	What happened
7 February 2025	The resident called the landlord having collapsed in her home. It attended with the wrong key and so the emergency services forced entry. It completed a temporary repair to secure the front door.
16 February 2025	The resident complained about the landlord’s handling of the matter and that her door was now unsafe.
24 February 2025	The landlord apologised for its key error and said that the door was secure. It confirmed that the door would be replaced and measured it ahead of this.
28 April 2025	We told the landlord to escalate the resident’s complaint following her report to us that nothing further had happened about the door.
17 July 2025	The landlord’s final response apologised for its delay and offered £150 compensation for this. It apologised for its delays and poor communications about the door, and for its initial error with the key. It offered £500 compensation for this. It confirmed that the door was secure and that it would install the new one once it was delivered.
9 September 2025	The landlord installed the new door.
Referral to the Ombudsman	The resident asked us to investigate as she remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response. She described new issues with the door installation that she said had led to it being replaced a second time, and associated service failings.

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.

Complaint	Request for emergency assistance and door replacement
Finding	Reasonable redress

Investigation scope

6. No evidence has been seen that the resident has formally complained about the new issues she described during and after the installation of her door in September 2025. Because of that these matters have not been considered in this report. The resident could consider making a new complaint about this to the landlord. She could then return to the Ombudsman and ask us to consider her new complaint.

Emergency assistance and door replacement

7. The resident has explained she has serious health conditions. She described how unwell she had been when she returned home from hospital, on 7 February 2025, immediately prior to her collapse.
8. As the landlord later accepted, its error with the key led to the forced entry. The evidence shows that it attended the same day and fitted internal and external wooden boards over the uPVC door panel that had been broken.
9. The resident’s complaint, on 16 February 2025, stated her unhappiness with the landlord’s door key error, and with the length of time that she said it had told her the manufacture of a new door could take. She expressed her view that the temporarily repaired door was unsafe.
10. The landlord’s stage 1 complaint response, on 24 February 2025, explained and apologised for its key error, and said it had taken steps to prevent it happening again. It offered assurance that the door was secure. It acknowledged that the resident’s availability had delayed its measurement of the door, but that it would do it that day, which it did.
11. The resident had made requests related to her vulnerabilities, such as operatives wearing masks, which the evidence show the landlord’s consideration of. It also later attended to confirm the continued security of the door. However, as it later accepted, its communications from March 2025 onwards were poor, and it failed to consider her vulnerabilities in its prioritisation of the door replacement.
12. The landlord’s stage 2 response, on 17 July 2025, was appropriately empathetic. It expressed its regret and apologised “for the preventable inconvenience caused during what was already a very difficult time for you”. It acknowledged the impact of its poor communications, and explained and apologised for its delays in replacing the door.
13. The landlord confirmed the door remained secure and that it was expecting delivery of its replacement “in the coming weeks”, which it would install as a priority. Its offer of £500 compensation was in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance (the Guidance) for cases of this nature. It installed the door 7 weeks later.
14. Overall, the landlord readily accepted and apologised for its door key error, poor communications, and door replacement delay. It acknowledged that the impact of this was worsened by the resident’s vulnerabilities, and offered compensation in line with the Guidance.

Complaint	The handling of the complaint
Finding	Reasonable redress

15. The landlord handled the resident’s stage 1 complaint in line with the timeframe in its policy and the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code. However, there were significant delays in it escalating her complaint and providing a final response, even after our intervention.
16. The landlord again readily accepted and apologised for its “complaint handling failures”. It demonstrated its understanding of the impact on the resident, and of the importance of “timely communication and resolution”. Its offer of £150 compensation was again in line with the Guidance for complaint handling failures of this type.