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Citizen Housing Group Limited (202338215)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202338215

Citizen Housing

18 November 2024


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 a gas leak at the property.

Background

  1. The tenant holds an assured tenancy. Another occupant of the property has represented the tenant throughout the complaint, and she will be referred to as ‘the resident’ throughout this report.
  2. The property is a 2-bedroom semi-detached house.
  3. The resident had a new boiler installed on 23 December 2022. The resident smelt gas in her property on 5 September 2023 and reported this to Cadent. Cadent came out to inspect and found no issues on 5 September 2023. The resident made a new report on 9 September 2023 and Cadent came out once again. They found that flux residue had corroded the anaconda pipe. It repaired the problem leaving the supply live and in use.
  4. The resident contacted the landlord on 11 September 2023 to raise a complaint. She was unhappy with the landlord’s boiler installation carried out at the end of 2022, believing this was the cause of the gas leak and felt this could have led to an explosion or damage. The landlord sent a contractor the following day to inspect the boiler – they found no faults.
  5. The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 26 September 2023. The landlord confirmed that it had attended and found no issues, nor outstanding works. It also said that it was unable to uphold her complaint as it had not seen any evidence that there was a fault when completing the install. The landlord also provided the resident with an update about her request for external insulation, informing her it had been successful in its bid to the Social Housing Decarbonization Fund. It said it would be in touch with her about the timescales for this work and provided £50 compensation for failing to update her about this.
  6. The resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 of the complaints process on 2 October 2023. She felt that the landlord was covering up its failure in installing her boiler correctly. She said that it was workers not being careful which had led to flux residue on the anaconda pipe.
  7. The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 31 October 2023. It again did not uphold her complaint. It said it had contacted Cadent asking for their report on the boiler, but it was yet to receive this. It said that it had not seen any information to suggest that it had been at fault for the leak, suggesting that the age of the anaconda pipe may have caused this. The landlord also agreed to send out a gas inspector to investigate further and to discuss this with the resident.
  8. The resident contacted the Ombudsman on 25 January 2024, asking us to consider her complaint. She said that the landlord’s unsafe work had put her family’s life at risk. She said she would like the landlord to take responsibility for the leak and to provide compensation for the distress and inconvenience that this had caused.

Assessment and findings

  1. The landlord’s repairs policy has 3 timescales for dealing with repairs. At priority 1, the landlord says it will attend to calls within 2 hours. At priority 2, the landlord says it will attend on the same day. At priority 3, the landlord says it will deal with repairs within 10 working days. The landlord lists a gas leak as a priority 1 job, with all other boiler issues falling under priority 2 repairs.
  2. The landlord also has a complaints policy. This says that at stage 1 of the complaints process, it will aim to provide its response within 10 working days. At stage 2 of the complaints process, it says it will aim to provide its response within 20 working days. These timescales are in line with the recommendations set out in the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
  3. The landlord responded to the resident’s report of boiler problems within its priority 2 timescales. When the resident raised her complaint, she informed the landlord that Cadent had been out to stop a leak. Given this, the landlord’s response to the resident’s report was reasonable and within the timescales set out in its repairs policy.
  4. There was a 9-month gap between the landlord installing the new boiler and the resident’s first reports of smelling gas. The landlord’s records demonstrate that it completed the boiler installation on 23 December 2022. There is no record of any post-inspection following this work, nor any earlier reports of concerns about the quality of work. Whilst it would have been good practice for the landlord to inspect the new boiler after its installation, as there were no concerns reported about this at the time, it would not have been essential for the landlord to do so. 
  5. The landlord fully investigated the resident’s concerns that the flux residue had resulted from its contractors handling of the boiler installation. It spoke with the relevant contractors, sent someone out to perform an inspection, reviewed its gas safety inspection that had taken place in January 2023 and contacted Cadent to obtain their report. Overall, the landlord took all of the steps that the Ombudsman would expect it to when investigating this issue.
  6. As part of its submission to the Ombudsman, the landlord has provided Cadent’s reports about the gas leak. Cadent’s report says that the ‘anaconda pipe was corroded with flux residue’. This does not however explicitly state how this happened, nor does it place any blame for this on the landlord’s boiler installation 9 months earlier.
  7. As part of its stage 2 complaint response, the landlord also arranged for a gas safe registered engineer visit the property. The purpose of this visit was to inspect the system and to speak with the resident face-to-face about the leak. The engineer provided a technical report to the landlord following this visit. This determined that the leak ‘could not have been caused from the boiler install’. The reason for this is that in the engineer’s experience, when they had ‘seen flux come into contact with an anaconda in the past it becomes a significant issue almost immediately because of the corrosive nature of the flux’. If the landlord has not provided a copy of this report to the resident, it should consider doing so.
  8. Having reviewed all the evidence available to it, the landlord felt that there was not enough evidence to conclude that the leak was associated with the work it had carried out 9 months earlier. Having reviewed this evidence, it was fair from the landlord to reach this conclusion. It clearly explained its position to the resident regarding this in both its stage 1 and stage 2 complaint responses.
  9. The landlord dealt with the resident’s complaint in line with the timescales in its policy. The responses clearly outlined the steps the landlord had taken, or the steps it intended to take moving forward. There was no evidence of any service failure when handling the resident’s complaint.
  10. Overall, there was no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the reports of a gas leak. The landlord undertook all reasonable steps to investigate, responded in a reasonable timeframe, and spoke with all of the relevant parties. It discussed this with its contractors and found no evidence that their actions had led to the gas leak.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of a gas leak at the property.

Recommendations

  1. If the landlord has not provided the resident with a copy of the November 2023 technical report made by its gas safe registered engineer, it should consider doing so.