The Riverside Group Limited (202315579)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202315579

The Riverside Group Limited

4 March 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. This complaint is about the landlord’s handling of reports of rats at the resident’s property.

Background

  1. The resident held an assured tenancy.
  2. The property is a 3-bedroom terraced house. The resident lived in the property with her 2 children but gave notice to leave shortly after the events that led to this complaint.
  3. The resident called the landlord on 7 July 2023 to report rats in her kitchen. The landlord attended her property on the same day to provide her with a letter about the infestations. It said it had organised a technical inspection to see how rats were entering the building. It also informed the resident that, as per the terms in the tenancy agreement, she may be responsible for the cost of pest control. The resident raised a complaint with the landlord about the rat infestation on the same day.
  4. The landlord’s records indicate that pest controllers visited the property, although the exact date they first did so is unclear. The landlord agreed, after speaking with the resident about the ongoing infestation, to temporarily move her on 14 July 2023. The resident told the landlord on 9 August 2023 that she would be terminating her tenancy. She asked the landlord for compensation for the items she had added to the property such as blinds, carpets, flooring and decorations. The pest controllers provided a formal report on the infestation to the landlord on 14 August 2023.
  5. The landlord sent its stage 1 complaint response to the resident on 16 August 2023. It confirmed pest controllers had undertaken treatments and that the resident’s property was now ready to return to. It said it would not be providing any compensation for the resident terminating her tenancy but that she was welcome to take any items from the property she wished to. It also said it had raised an inspection for damp and mould in the property.
  6. The resident called the landlord on 6 September 2023 to escalate her complaint to stage 2. She remained unhappy that the landlord had not agreed to refund her for items such as carpets, blinds and alarms which she would not be able to remove from the property. She reiterated that she felt she had to leave her property due to the landlord’s failure to eradicate rats.
  7. The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 12 September 2023. It partially upheld her complaint, providing £131.55 to cover expenses whilst she was in a hotel. It said however that it would not be providing any further compensation as the resident had left the property of her own accord.
  8. The resident e-mailed the Ombudsman on 12 September 2023 asking us to consider her complaint. She was unhappy that the landlord had delayed its response to the reports, and that it had taken a week to move her and her children. She said the landlord’s failure to act had forced her out of the property due to the infestation and that it should have paid her compensation for this. She also said she was unhappy that the landlord had not paid all of the expenses that she had submitted to it.

Assessment and findings

  1. The resident’s tenancy agreement states that the landlord is not responsible for infestations ‘unless it is due to our failure to comply with out repairing obligations’. The landlord’s repairing obligations are also set out in the tenancy agreement and include the ‘structure and exterior’ of the property.
  2. The report from the pest control professionals that the landlord instructed clearly demonstrates that the rats were able to get into the resident’s property through a neighbouring property. Upon getting into the wall cavities, rats were then able to access the resident’s property. Given this, the responsibility for the rat infestation was the landlord’s.
  3. Nevertheless, the landlord responded to the resident’s reports in a reasonable timeframe. It contacted pest controllers on the same day she reported the issue and visited the resident to discuss the problem. It provided the resident with a letter which advised her on what steps it was taking and advice on how to manage rats entering the home.
  4. The landlord has not provided evidence of the exact dates the pest controllers visited. However, from later correspondence, it appears that its contractors visited the property within 7 days of the report being made. The contractors’ report says they attended on several occasions in order to place equipment and to carry out follow-up visits. This was between 7 July 2023 and 14 August 2023.
  5. The contractor provided the landlord with a plan for resolving the problem. Given the nature of infestations, it is not possible for a landlord to immediately resolve a pest problem. However, the landlord’s actions in attempting to manage the rat problem were appropriate.
  6. The landlord’s decant policy says that these will be offered ‘only where it is unsafe for a customer to remain in situ, due to physical hazards or complex vulnerabilities’. The landlord in this instance provided the resident with temporary accommodation for 35 days. This was in a hotel with breakfast and evening meals provided.
  7. The landlord’s policy also states that ‘if the alternative accommodation has no cooking facilities, then a reasonable payment must be made to the customer towards the cost of meals’. The landlord’s guidance for the cost of a lunch in its Travel & Subsistence Rates Manual is £10 per day. The landlord’s payment of £131.55 across 35 days only represented £3.75 per day.
  8. Although the hotel accommodation did include a breakfast and an evening meal, there were no cooking facilities. It therefore would have been reasonable for the landlord to make an additional payment to cover the resident for the cost of at least lunches whilst she was away from her property. According to the landlord’s own guidelines, this would have been approximately £350 towards the resident’s expenses.
  9. The landlord did pay the resident for several expenses that she incurred. This totalled £131.55. The resident also sent invoices for additional costs which would have totalled £182.05. These were for the associated costs of buying clothing for her daughter as well as underwear. The landlord said it would not pay for these costs. There was no evidence the landlord ever agreed to pay for these, or that its policy says it would. In the circumstances, the landlord’s decision not to pay the residents for these costs was reasonable.
  10. The landlord also failed to keep to the timescales it specified in its complaints policy at stage 1 of its process. The landlord says it will acknowledge complaints within 2 working days and then aim to respond and put things right within a further 5 working days. In this instance, it failed to provide its complaint response until 28 working days after the resident raised her complaint. This again would have caused the resident distress and inconvenience and uncertainty about how it intended to resolve the pest problem.
  11. The resident informed the landlord she wished to end her tenancy following the rat infestation. She later told it that she felt the landlord’s failure to properly deal with the rats in the property forced her to move out and she sought compensation for this as part of her stage 2 complaint. The compensation the resident requested was for specific items she had to leave behind including carpets, blinds and alarms. The landlord told the resident she was able to take these items with her. This was fair and demonstrated an attempt to minimise the inconvenience caused by her decision to leave the property given the pest issue.
  12. Overall, the landlord attended the resident’s property promptly and arranged pest control treatments when it received reports of rats. The landlord’s actions in arranging temporary accommodation were resolution focused. However, it failed to follow its policy for temporary accommodation payments and its stage 1 response delay impacted its communications.
  13. For these failures, the landlord should pay the resident £400 compensation. This is in addition to the payment the landlord made for expenses in its stage 2 complaint response. This is in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance which recommends figures in this range where there has been a ‘failure which adversely affected the resident’.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of rats in the property.

Orders and recommendations

  1. It is ordered that within 4 weeks of the date of this letter, the landlord:
    1. Pays the resident £400 compensation for the impact on her of its failures in the handling of her reports of rats in the property.
    2. Apologise to the resident in writing for the failures identified in this report.
    3. Provide evidence that it has done so.