Sheffield City Council (202334281)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202334281

Sheffield City Council

24 June 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 complaint is about the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports about a lack of cleaning in the communal areas.

Background

  1. The resident has been a tenant of the landlord for over 5 years. The property is a 2-bed maisonette in a block of flats (the block). The landlord cleans the communal areas in the block.
  2. On 23 August 2023 the resident complained about the communal areas at the block. He said they were “always dirty and covered in rubbish” which had caused him to fall on the staircase the previous year. He said the landlords claim, in a letter to the resident’s solicitor, that it cleaned the block every day, was false.
  3. The landlord responded at stage 1 of its complaints process on 28 November 2023. It apologised for the delay. It said it cleaned the block at least once a week and conducted, “spot cleans” as required. It said that after the resident’s complaint it had visited the block to check its condition on the same day. It said it was clean and tidy. It said it was not aware of the solicitor’s letter the resident referred to and asked to see a copy.
  4. On 6 March 2024 the Service asked the landlord on the resident’s behalf to escalate his complaint.
  5. The landlord did not send a stage 2 response. However, on 22 July 2024, it wrote to the Ombudsman, apologising for failings in its complaint handling. It set out the steps it was taking to improve its performance. It also provided evidence showing it attended on a weekly basis to clean the communal areas.
  6. In the circumstances the Ombudsman decided to accept the case for investigation despite there being no formal stage 2 response.

Assessment and findings

  1. The landlord apologised, in its stage 1 response, for its delay in responding to the resident’s complaint. Its complaints policy said it would respond to complaints at stage 1 within 28 calendar days of the start of its investigation. It took 97 calendar days. However, when it did respond, it said that it had addressed the resident’s complaint by immediately visiting the communal area the resident complained of. It reported that it was clean and tidy.
  2. The landlord failed to respond in line with its complaints process. It also failed to respond in line with the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, (the Code). This says that landlords must respond to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days.
  3. However, as the landlord had responded with an immediate visit to the area and as the records show that regular cleaning visits were made to the block between the time the resident complained and the date of its response, in this case, its complaint response delay did not cause the resident any significant adversity. Because of that, the landlord’s acknowledgement, explanation and apology for the delay were appropriate remedies.
  4. The landlord’s failure to respond at stage 2 of its complaints process was a further error. The landlord told the Ombudsman that the complaint had not been properly allocated. Therefore, it said its response was not “as detailed as expected.” In fact, it did not respond to this complaint at stage 2 at all. The response it refers to was in relation to a separate complaint about communal issues. Its 22 July 2024 response to the Ombudsman reveals that it had still not understood that it should have provided a separate stage 2 response to the issues raised in this complaint.
  5. Nonetheless, in its 22 July 2024 communication with us the landlord provided documents showing that the block was regularly cleaned. For example, the records showed that the landlord had undertaken 5 full cleans in August 2023 (around the time of the original complaint) and 4 spot cleans.
  6. The landlord also addressed the resident’s claim that he had had an accident because of the amount of rubbish present. It told us it had submitted a letter to the resident’s solicitors responding to a legal claim on 13 February 2023. It did not address the resident’s concern that it had falsely said it cleaned the area daily. However, if the letter did make such a claim, the landlord’s stage 1 response set out the position, correcting any misinformation about the regularity of cleaning. The evidence supports the landlord’s explanation of its actions.
  7. The landlord’s 22 July 2024 letter to the Ombudsman also said it accepted learning in relation to complaint management and that it should share responses in a timely manner. It said that it would align its complaint handling to the Code. However, it is not clear if it sent a copy of this letter to the resident. It would have been appropriate for it do have done so, as it had failed to issue a stage 2 response.
  8. There is no evidence that shows the landlord was not responsive to the resident’s reports about concerns with cleaning at the block. However, there were failings in the way the landlord handled this complaint, such as the main failing of responding at stage 2 to the resident’s concerns. This meant the issue remained unresolved for the resident, which is contrary to the Code which says that landlords should seek to resolve complaints at the earliest opportunity.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme there was service failure in the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports about a lack of cleaning in the communal areas.

Orders

  1. If the landlord has not already done so, it must give resident the same explanations and information it gave the Ombudsman in its 2024 correspondence.
  2. In light of the failings found in this report, and the inconvenience and delay caused to the resident, the landlord must pay him £150 compensation.
  3. Evidence of compliance with these orders must be provided to the Service withing 4 weeks of this report.