Peabody Trust (202336678)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202336678

Peabody Trust

26 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 resident’s complaints are about the landlord’s handling of:
   1. Repairs including leaks, damp and mould, pest control and its arrangement of temporary housing.
   2. The complaints.

Background

2. The resident has an assured tenancy with the landlord. She lives in her property with her child, who she said has asthma. The property is a 2-bedroom ground floor flat in a 5-storey block. The flat above the resident’s is owned by a leaseholder who lives abroad, they sublet their flat to private tenants.
3. The resident said the landlord failed to carry out several repairs (including sealing gaps to pest proof her property) and she began legal proceedings in 2021. In September 2022 the landlord agreed to compensate the resident and do the repairs (which the solicitor categorised as “category 2 hazards”) within 84 days. The repairs included works to resolve rising damp, such as installing a vent and carrying out a mould wash.
4. Between August 2022 and April 2024, the resident raised 5 formal complaints to the landlord about its handling of repairs. She was satisfied with the compensation offer it made in the first 2 complaints. However, repairs were outstanding, and new issues occurred, so she complained again 3 times between April 2023 and April 2024. She asked us to investigate the landlord’s handling of these complaints which are referred to as the first, second and third complaint in this report.
5. In her first complaint to the landlord on 6 April 2023, the resident said the repairs listed in her legal claim (settled in September 2022) were outstanding. The landlord responded on 2 May; it explained the work it had done and offered £110 compensation. On 30 November 2023 the resident asked the landlord to escalate her complaint, she said works were still outstanding. She said the damp and mould was growing in her flat making her clothes smell. She also complained about the problems she had getting through to the landlord’s repairs service.
6. Between December 2023 and January 2024, the resident told the landlord her bathroom ceiling was flooding from the flat above. The water affected the electrics in the kitchen, so she had no cooking or showering facilities. She emailed the chief executive on 10 January 2024. She said there was brown dirty water dripping from her ceilings onto her flooring in her bathroom. She also contacted us and her MP. The landlord replied to her escalated complaint on 25 January 2024. It said her current leak was separate to the other repairs, but as it was urgent, it instructed a surveyor to attend. It offered her £200 compensation for the delay in responding to the repairs and to the complaint.
7. It is unclear when the landlord acknowledged the resident’s second complaint which she made to the chief executive on 10 January 2024. Its records show it logged the complaint on 16 February 2024, but there is no evidence it responded until 12 September 2024. In March 2024 she told the landlord the mould was making her child sick. She said “I am very, very, depressed. I cry all the time”. A few days later in March 2024, her housing conditions worsened as her bathroom ceiling collapsed. She asked the landlord to permanently rehouse her. The landlord temporarily rehoused the resident into a hotel.
8. The resident complained to the landlord for a third time on 18 April 2024. She was unhappy with its handling of her temporary housing and that her repairs were not finished in her home. She said the landlord had not extended the hotel stay, and when she returned from work her belongings were removed from her room. The following month she said her daughter waited in the hotel reception for 4 hours, as the landlord had not extended their stay again.
9. The dates are unclear from the evidence, but landlord provided the resident with a serviced apartment to move into from around August to November 2024. The landlord sent a combined final response to all 3 of the resident’s complaints on 12 December 2024. It withdrew its previous compensation offers and offered £1,800. It confirmed it had completed all the repairs. In March 2024 the resident told the landlord she had not received any compensation. The landlord offered an additional £100 for its delay in paying compensation and paid £1,900 to her in April 2025.
10. When investigating this case, we consulted with the resident and landlord in September 2025. The resident confirmed the landlord did the repairs, but the pest proofing was ineffective as she still has mice in her property. She is not satisfied with the landlord’s final compensation offer as she does not think it reflects the issues she experienced. She said, “it was the most trauma I have ever encountered in my life”. She remains dissatisfied with the landlord’s repair service. She told us it was difficult to get through to report repairs.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

11. The resident’s solicitor began legal proceedings against the landlord in November 2022 regarding its money settlement of the resident’s disrepair case. We are unable to consider matters which have formed part of legal proceedings. The resident also complained twice to the landlord between September 2022 and April 2023. She said she was satisfied with its response to these 2 complaints. As such, neither of these issues will be considered in this report.
12. We normally only consider issues which the resident formally complained to the landlord about and escalated to us within a reasonable period. This is usually within 12 months. However, in this case we have extended the period of our investigation. This is because the landlord combined its final response to 3 complaints, which spanned a 2-year period. This report will therefore consider the landlord’s handling of repair issues and the associated complaints, from April 2023 up to April 2025.
13. The resident said this situation had a detrimental impact on her and her family’s health and wellbeing. The courts are the most effective place for disputes about personal injury and illness. We cannot decide causation or liability for personal injury like a court can. However, we can consider the overall impact of the situation on the resident. If the resident wants to pursue a personal injury claim, she may wish to seek independent legal advice.

The landlord’s handling of repairs including leaks, damp and mould, pest control and its arrangement of temporary housing.

14. The landlord’s repair policy says it will respond to urgent repairs within 4 hours and non-urgent repairs within 28 calendar days. It says it will complete planned repairs, such as “damp works” within 60 calendar days. In this case the landlord failed to adhere to its policy timescales for completing the repairs, as they were excessively delayed.
15. In its first complaint response on 2 May 2023 the landlord explained the repairs it had completed, such as a mould wash in the kitchen in March 2023. It acknowledged works were outstanding and it was appropriate that it agreed to compensate the resident from the point of her last complaint up until the works were completed. It later offered her £110 compensation. However, it failed to manage the resident’s expectations about when it would resolve the outstanding repairs. The works included pest proofing the property and resolving the root cause of the damp issue. Instead, it said it could not comment on them as they formed part of her legal claim (which was settled out of court in September 2022).
16. Landlords are responsible for ensuring a resident’s home is fit for human habitation and free from hazards. Therefore, regardless of any legal claim, the landlord must investigate and complete repair issues within its policy timeframes. In this case the landlord was not proactive in making sure the resident’s home was safe. This went against its own policy which says, “We keep residents informed and look to achieve an effective and early resolution that maintains their health and wellbeing”.
17. This was a complex repairs case concerning multiple repairs throughout the resident’s property, including damp and mould and leaks from a leaseholder’s flat above. Also, there was a pest infestation due to gaps near pipework. However, the landlord’s service severely failed the resident in this case. An example of this was when she raised serious safety concerns, and loss of cooking and bathing facilities in December 2023. She said operatives turned the electrics off in her kitchen due to water leaking onto the wires. She said wires were hanging down in her bathroom, so she could not use the bath. Despite these extremely hazardous conditions, the landlord failed to urgently rehouse the resident, which was not in line with its decant policy.
18. It was not until the repair issues seriously escalated, and her bathroom ceiling collapsed in March 2024, that the landlord offered temporary housing. The landlord acknowledged in its final complaint response her decant experience had been “problematic” and offered compensation. However, its compensation offer did not go far enough to recognise the stress and inconvenience to her in this case. Such as in May 2024 when she told the landlord she felt humiliated when it had not extended her stay in a hotel room. She said her daughter had been unable to revise for her GSCE exam as she had been waiting in the hotel reception for several hours due to the room being cancelled.
19. The impact on the resident has been significant in this case. When escalating her first complaint on 30 November 2023, the resident said mould was growing on her walls and cupboards. She said it was making her clothing smell. She told the landlord in March 2023 that her child had asthma, and she was concerned for her health. When reporting the leak from the flat above in December 2023 she told the landlord “I am being flooded. I am so tired of living like this. Debris and dirty smelly water seeps through my bathroom ceiling”.
20. The landlord acknowledged its failures and apologised in its complaint responses on 12 September and 12 December 2024. In its final response on 12 December it combined its response to all 3 complaints. It confirmed it had completed all the repairs. The level of compensation the landlord offered was disproportionately low when considered against its policy and our remedies guidance for a complaint in these circumstances where a resident and her family were caused severe levels of distress, inconvenience, and frustration.
21. The landlord’s compensation policy says it will compensate residents on a discretionary basis. It will award a maximum of £650 where “a service failure has occurred” which “has been high impact and high effort to resolve, and/or extended time to complete actions, and failure to communicate or follow procedure”. This case concerns 3 separate complaints, the first was raised in April 2023 and all of them were concluded in December 2024. Given the length of time it took to resolve the issues, including her time and trouble making 3 complaints, loss of some of her cooking facilities, we consider a higher award to be more appropriate to reflect the resident’s overall difficult experience.
22. The landlord’s policy also says it will consider compensating residents up to 25% for the loss of a bathroom. It says it may offer this in exceptional circumstances on top of payments for distress and inconvenience. There is no evidence the landlord considered this. Given the extremely unsafe conditions the resident reported, with wires hanging down and brown water seeping through the bathroom ceiling, the landlord should compensate the resident for this, in line with its policy. This includes the period from when it should have fixed the repair (at the end of December 2023) to when it temporarily rehoused her, approximately 12 weeks later (at the end of March 2024). The resident’s rent was £164.26 per week at that time, so we equate this to £495 (rounded to the nearest £5).
23. In summary, we found severe maladministration in this case. The landlord failed to respond to the ongoing repairs within a reasonable timeframe and did not act quickly enough in offering temporary rehousing when her property became unsafe. It then took a long time to complete all the repairs and poorly managed her temporary rehousing arrangements.
24. When deciding on the level of compensation, we considered the overall impact on the resident. She said the issues had affected her mental wellbeing, caused her embarrassment, and affected her daughter’s studying for her exams. She told the landlord “My home is supposed to be my haven, my place of comfort safety and security” and she was shocked at how her repairs had been handled. In line with our remedies guidance, additional financial compensation of £1,000 compensation is appropriate in this case.

The landlord’s complaint handling

25. Landlords must have an effective complaint handling process to provide a good service to their residents. An effective complaint process means landlords can resolve problems quickly, learn from their mistakes and build good relationships with residents. In this case, it took 3 complaints over a 2-year period (from April 2023 to April 2025) for the landlord to resolve and remedy the resident’s overall complaint.
26. Landlords must handle complaints as per their own policies and our Complaint Handling Code (the Code). The 2022 version of the Code contains guidance landlords were expected to follow at the time of the resident’s earlier complaints. This was replaced by our 2024 version, which landlords must follow. Both versions of the Code say landlords should have a 2-stage complaint process and respond to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days and stage 2 complaints within 20 working days. The landlord’s policies mirror these timescales.
27. The landlord delayed its response to all 3 of the resident’s complaints. An example of this was in her second complaint when she complained to the chief executive on 10 January 2024. The landlord’s records are unclear, but they suggest it did not log this complaint until 16 February. It then significantly delayed its initial response to her complaint, as it sent its reply 8 months after she complained, on 12 September 2024. Similarly, when the resident complained a third time on 18 April 2024, the landlord first responded almost 5 months later, on 12 September 2024. These were significant delays which went against its policy and the Code.
28. The landlord provided a third “follow on” response to the resident’s first complaint which she initially made on 16 April 2023. It gave its first stage 2 response on 25 January 2024, and then its final response on 12 December 2024. This was a further failure as it was not in line with the landlord’s policy, or the Code, to issue a third complaint response. The Code encourages early resolution of complaints. It says, “it is not appropriate to have extra named stages” as “this causes unnecessary confusion”. In this case, given the time it was taking to resolve the issue, and the extent of the failures, it should have instead opened a new complaint at an earlier stage.
29. One of the resident’s main concerns was her reported difficultly in accessing the landlord’s repairs service and having to instead raise a complaint. She told the landlord about this on 11 December 2023. She said “Your repairs service is inaccessible. It is virtually impossible. I would rather do it online, but online reports are blatantly ignored. No point in reporting a repair via any method if you don’t respond and then you wonder why your phone lines are so busy or why your complaints numbers are so high month on month as reported in the newsletter – It’s unacceptable”.
30. The landlord acknowledged its repairs and complaint handling service had been poor in its stage 2 response to the resident’s first complaint on 25 January 2024. It apologised, offered an explanation, and outlined plans to improve its repairs service. It said, “This is rather than residents having to make a complaint for issues to be noticed and addressed”. Its apology and explanation went some way to remedying the resident’s issues. However, it was not proactive in resolving repairs in this case despite her repeated complaints. The resident has also told us this remains an issue. As such the landlord has not demonstrated it learned from the resident’s multiple complaints in this case.
31. The compensation the landlord offered on 12 December 2024 in its final response to the 3 complaints went someway to remedying its severe complaint handling failures. However, it was unclear what portion of the £500 it offered for “Distress, Time, Trouble and Inconvenience/Complaints handling” was intended to be solely for its poor complaint handling. Regardless, its overall offer did not reflect the overall poor complaint management experienced by the resident in this case. This includes her repeated time and trouble she spent raising the multiple complaints, which she also escalated to the landlord’s chief executive.
32. The landlord’s complaints policy says it will award between £201 and £300 in cases where there has been “An extensive failure to follow the complaints policy or procedure, or to investigate a complaint correctly, causing a significant impact on the complainant”. In this case, we do not consider the landlord’s offer to be proportionate, when considering it failed in its handling of all 3 complaints.
33. In summary, the landlord’s multiple complaint handling failures resulted in a protracted complaints process for the resident, this delayed the resolution of her complaint. Were it not for its attempt to remedy its poor complaint handling issues by offering compensation, we would have made a finding of severe maladministration. However, instead we found maladministration. In considering an appropriate level of compensation we have considered the landlord’s poor handling of the 3 combined complaints, which it took the landlord 2 years to resolve. In line with our remedies guidance, additional financial compensation of £300 is appropriate for the likely inconvenience caused by the landlord’s complaint handling.

Wider order

34. We made a wider order in August 2024 about the landlord. This included lengthy delays when dealing with repairs, a lack of communication throughout the process and no evidence of learning from complaints. We made 31 recommendations to the landlord. One of these was to “review the communication plan a surveyor has with the resident before, during and after the works are completed to ensure that all parties are aware of the works being carried out, why and what resolution looks like”.
35. The failings identified by this complaint mirror those identified by the wider order that are part of the ongoing improvement work, for which we remain in liaison with the landlord. As such, and in view of the age of this complaint, we have not made any similar orders.

Determination

36. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was severe maladministration in the landlord’s handling of repairs including leaks, damp and mould, pest control and its arrangement of temporary housing.
37. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

38. Within 4 weeks from the date of this report the landlord must:
    1. Provide a written apology to the resident, from a director, for the failures identified in this report.
    2. Pay the resident a total of £1,795 compensation. This amount is in addition to what it has already offered the resident. This is made up as follows:
       1. £1,000 for its handling of repairs including leaks, damp and mould, pest control and its arrangement of temporary housing.
       2. £495 for the loss of a room for 12 weeks.
       3. £300 for its complaint handling.
39. As the resident has said the pest control proofing works have been ineffective, the landlord must:
    1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, inspect the work it has completed and decide if it has been completed to a satisfactory standard. The landlord must ensure the inspection is completed by someone not involved in the repairs. Any make good or snagging works must be started within 2 weeks of the inspection date.
    2. Within 8 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord must provide evidence of its inspection and details of whether it has started works.
40. The landlord must provide us with evidence of compliance with these orders by their respective deadlines.

Recommendation

41. We have not made orders relating to the landlord’s repairs service as we remain in communication with the landlord following our wider order investigation. However, we recommend the landlord contacts the resident within 4 weeks of this report to explain to her the steps it intends to take, or has taken, to improve its access to its repairs service.