London Borough of Camden Council (202341248)

Background

1. The property is a flat. It receives heating and hot water from a communal boiler maintained by the landlord. The resident pays a weekly charge for this within his service charge. On 6 November 2023, the resident’s daughter reported that he had lost heating and hot water supply to his flat.

What the complaint is about

2. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s loss of heating and hot water.
3. We have also assessed the landlord’s complaint handling.

Our decision (determination)

4. There was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s loss of heating and hot water.
5. There was no maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

We have made orders for the landlord to put things right.

Summary of reasons

6. The landlord’s contractor delayed unreasonably in restoring the heating and hot water supply. It attended multiple times to diagnose the same issue. It also failed to appropriately communicate with the resident’s daughter causing her to repeatedly approach the landlord for assistance.
7. The landlord handled the resident’s complaint in keeping with the timescales listed in its policy.

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.

Orders

Landlords must comply with our orders in the manner and timescales we specify. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of compliance with our orders by the due date set.

Recommendations

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

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

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.

8. The landlord has told us that the resident is listed on its records as an ‘enhanced tenant’ due to his age. Its website says that “If you are an enhanced tenant, then we will try to prioritise your repair request. We will look for the earliest possible appointment and move your appointment forwards if another slot becomes available.”
9. The landlord’s repairs handbook lists a “total or partial loss of space or water heating” during winter as an emergency repair. It says where this is reported during office hours its contractor “will be asked to attend before 8pm the same day”.
10. The resident’s daughter first reported that he had no heating or hot water on 6 November 2023. The landlord appropriately logged an emergency repair. Its communal heating and hot water contractor attended the same day in keeping with its policy. The contractor recorded that “Engineer attended site. Heating and hot water left working. Job complete”.
11. The resident’s daughter called the landlord on 7 November 2023. She reported that he had lost his hot water supply again. She said the engineer who had attended the day before had attempted a fix but said that this may fail – in which case the mixer valve needed replacing. The contractor’s notes did not appropriately reflect this. If they had, this would have better informed it to resolve the issue and reduced the delays that followed.
12. On 7 November 2023, the landlord raised a new emergency repair to its contractor. It arranged for the contractor to attend the following day, as the resident was not available to grant access until then. This was reasonable and had been agreed with the resident’s daughter during the phone call. However, we have not seen any evidence that the landlord’s contractor attended on 8 November 2023 as scheduled.
13. In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord said that its contractor also “identified a communal heating problem” on 7 November 2023. The contractor erroneously closed the repair for the resident’s property on 14 November 2023 due to the communal issue being resolved. We have not seen any evidence that it contacted the resident about this. Had it done so it would have identified that the repair was separate to the wider communal issue.
14. The resident’s daughter called the landlord again on 9 November 2023. The landlord logged another emergency repair. The landlord’s records show that its contractor appropriately attended this the same day but was unable to access the property. We note that during a later phone call with the landlord, the resident’s daughter mentioned that she was unsure whether the door entry intercom to the property was working. This may have contributed to the difficulty in gaining access.
15. On 16 November 2023, the landlord raised another emergency repair after the resident’s daughter called it. On this occasion, its contractor did not attend the property until the following day. This failed to meet the landlord’s policy’s emergency repair timescale, and we have seen no evidence this delayed attendance was agreed with the resident or his daughter. The contractor diagnosed that it needed to return and replace the mixer valve. As established above, its engineer had already told the resident’s daughter this 10 days earlier.
16. The resident’s daughter called the landlord again on 22 November 2023. She said she’d not heard from the contractor since its visit on 17 November 2023. She said she had tried to obtain an update from the contractor, but its staff had been ‘rude’, ‘unhelpful’ and told her there was not a manager available to escalate her concerns to.
17. The landlord’s response to this was to log a further emergency repair, despite the previous one still being open and follow on works pending. Considering the circumstances, it would have been appropriate for the landlord to try and communicate with the contractor itself and obtain an update. This approach would have been more effective than repeatedly raising new repairs to the contractor.
18. We note, however, that during a later phone call the landlord told the resident’s daughter that its only means of communicating with the contractor was via the same public customer services number that she had used. We have made a recommendation about this above.
19. The landlord’s records show that its contractor attended the property on 23 November 2023. This was a second failure to attend an emergency repair within the landlord’s policy timescale. The contractor was unable to access the property, or to reach the resident by phone and arrange a further appointment.
20. In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord said its contractor had “successfully delivered” a temporary heater to the property on 23 November 2023. The resident’s daughter disputed this when escalating her complaint. She said the heater “did not arrive”. The landlord failed to respond to this point in its stage 2 response.
21. The landlord’s records show that its contractor had arranged an appointment to deliver the heater on the afternoon of 23 November 2023. However, there is no indication that it did so. It would have been appropriate for the contractor to have provided the resident with the heater on 17 November 2023, when it attended and was unable to restore heating to the property. The 6 day delay in arranging this was unreasonable, particularly considering the resident’s vulnerabilities and status as an ‘enhanced tenant’.
22. The landlord’s contractor returned to the property on 24 November 2023. Its notes state that it found a new mixer valve was needed. This was the third time it had visited and diagnosed this issue and was over 2 weeks since it had first identified it. This poor record keeping directly contributed to the delays in restoring the resident’s heating and hot water.
23. It is evident that the contractor returned on 27 November 2023, however there are no records from this visit. This is a further record keeping failure. It is apparent that after it left the resident still did not have heating and hot water.
24. Following this, the resident’s daughter chased up the contractor via the landlord on 8 and 12 December 2023. Based on this phone call it appears the contractor was awaiting parts to complete the repair but had not provided any timeframe for their arrival.
25. The resident’s daughter mentioned she had also tried unsuccessfully to pursue this with the contractor directly. She described it as being ‘rude’ and ‘unhelpful’. We have not been provided with any records of her contact with the contractor to enable us to assess. However, when escalating the complaint, the resident’s daughter said she’d had “to chase them up almost daily”.
26. In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord said that it had restored the resident’s heating and hot water on 20 December 2023. The landlord referred to the resident having “experienced intermittent issues” throughout this period. However, when escalating the complaint, the resident’s daughter clarified that “at no time was there any hot water for over 6 weeks”. It is unclear from the evidence provided how much of the 6 week period the resident was without heating for.
27. The landlord also said that the issues had been “attended to promptly and addressed” by its contractor. The evidence, as set out above, does not support this conclusion. This failing is aggravated by the resident’s vulnerabilities. Due to this we make a finding of maladministration.
28. The landlord’s ‘remedies policy and procedure’ says that it will:
    1. “Make refunds based on the gross weekly charge” to residents who have experienced a supply failure of landlord-controlled heating or hot water for 3 consecutive days or more. The refund will include the initial 3 days.
    2. Pay additional compensation where this supply failure lasts longer than 5 days and it has not “provided alternatives”. This is set at £3.50 per day for a loss of both heating and hot water. This compensation is also payable for the initial 5 days.
29. In its stage 2 complaint response, the landlord signposted the resident to its website to submit a claim for a ‘rebate’ for the period he had been without heating and hot water. The landlord’s remedies policy and procedure makes no mention of residents being required to claim this via its website. It is therefore unclear why the landlord asked the resident to take further time and trouble making this claim. It would have been appropriate to offer him the applicable amount as part of its complaint resolution.
30. We have not seen any evidence that the resident submitted a claim for a rebate. Therefore, we have ordered the landlord to refund him his heating charge for the 6 weeks and 2 days he was without hot water. Due to uncertainty over the exact period the property had no heating supply, we have also ordered it to pay the resident £3.50 compensation per day for this same period.
31. In addition to this, we order a further £200 compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused by the landlord’s contractor’s:
    1. Poor communication with the resident and his daughter.
    2. Repeated visits to diagnose the same issue.
    3. Failure to meet the landlord’s emergency repair timescale on 2 occasions.
    4. Inappropriate closure of the repair on 14 November 2023.

32. At the time of this complaint, the landlord’s complaints policy said that it would:
    1. Respond to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days.
    2. Respond to stage 2 complaints within 25 working days.
33. The landlord’s complaint responses in this case were provided within these timescales. There is no evidence of maladministration in its complaint handling.

Learning

Knowledge information management (record keeping)

34. The contractor’s notes on the records provided by the landlord for this investigation were poor. They lacked detail as to the action taken, next steps required and when it expected to take these.
35. The contractor also delayed in updating the records following its visits. There were multiple occasions where notes were only added to the repair records several days after the visit they pertained to. This meant that the landlord often did not have visibility of these when the resident’s daughter called it and was unable to provide timely updates.

Communication

36. The resident and his daughter expressed that the landlord’s communication with them was good, and we have not identified any issues with this. We have not been provided with any records of the contractor’s communication with them, which was the source of their dissatisfaction.
37. It is unclear whether this is due to the landlord not having access to the contractor’s records or just failing to provide them to us. If it is the former, it is concerning that the landlord’s contract management team has no oversight of its contractor’s communications with residents on such a large and prevalent contract as communal heating and hot water.