Southern Housing (202314316)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202314316

Southern Housing

27 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. The complaint is about the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of problems with their hot water.
  2. We have also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident is the leaseholder and shared-owner of the property, which is a flat in a building (the building) owned and managed by the landlord. The landlord is responsible for the maintenance of the hot water and central heating system which serves the building.
  2. The resident says there have been periodic problems with the hot water system since they moved in in 2015. In particular, during the winter, at times of high use, they said the hot water in the bathroom was either lukewarm or cold.
  3. On 14 December 2022 the resident complained formally to the landlord about the “lukewarm water” in the bathroom. The landlord acknowledged the complaint on 10 January 2023.
  4. Following our intervention in April 2023, the landlord issued its stage 1 response on 9 May 2023. It said its contractor (the contractor) had tried to contact the resident on several occasions in January 2023 without success. It upheld the complaint and offered £100 compensation (£50 for delays and £50 for complaint handling errors).
  5. The resident wrote to the landlord on 10 May 2023 saying the contractor had not visited the property in the 5 years they had lived there.
  6. Following our further intervention in October 2023, the landlord issued its stage 2 response on 8 November 2023. It said:
    1. The contractor had failed to attend following the resident’s original report of problems, but had then texted them twice and emailed them.
    2. It was not aware of any issues with the communal heating system.
    3. It had been late in providing its complaint responses and had missed an appointment to visit the property.
    4. It increased its offer of compensation to £210 (£50 for the delay in providing the stage 1 response, £100 for inconvenience and time and trouble, £20 for a missed appointment and £40 for 2 “service failures”).
  7. In the resident’s referral to us they said they wanted us to investigate the landlord’s poor communication and find out what it was doing to solve the problem.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The resident says there have been problems with the building’s communal heating system since they moved in more than 5 years before these events. While we understand the resident’s frustration, we require residents to raise complaints within a reasonable period of the issues arising (usually within 6 months). The resident did not report issues with the hot water system in the 6 months prior to the complaint being made, so we have begun our investigation from the point of the complaint, in December 2022.
  2. We must allow landlords to respond to complaints before we investigate. The landlord provided its stage 2 response in November 2023. We have not investigated events occurring after this date as the landlord has not yet had the opportunity to respond to the resident’s concerns since then.

Response to the resident’s reports of problems with the hot water

  1. The landlord accepts that the contractor did not attend the property following the resident’s report of an intermittent problem with the hot water from the bathroom tap. It accepts that it should have visited. The resident said they were concerned that the lack of hot water would get worse as the weather grew colder and, particularly, over Christmas.
  2. The landlord’s repairs policy says it will aim to respond to reports of non-urgent repairs “as soon as possible and at a time that suits you”. On the evidence, the contractor failed to visit on the day of the resident’s contact which was 14 December 2022, or at any point before Christmas 2022. As the resident had said they wanted the matter dealt with before Christmas, the failure to even contact them before then was poor service and a breach of the landlord’s repairs policy.
  3. The contractor told the landlord that it texted the resident on 4 January 2023, 23 days (12 working days) after the initial contact. It says it received no response and texted again on 13 January 2023 and, having received no response, closed the case.
  4. However, the resident told the landlord in March 2023 that they had called the contractor back after receiving the texts and emailed it without receiving any response. The landlord has accepted that this occurred. This was poor communication by the contractor and a service failure. As the contractor was acting on the landlord’s behalf, this represents a failure on the landlord’s part.
  5. In the stage 1 response, the landlord said it had serviced the gas supply in April 2022 and everything was working properly. It invited the resident to contact the contractor if they had any continuing concerns. However, given that the resident had stated the property had occasional lukewarm water in December 2022, this was an inappropriate response. It awarded the resident £50 for delay but did not arrange an appointment to properly investigate the issue. Again, this was not an appropriate response. If it accepted there had been delay, it should have taken action to end that delay.
  6. It was appropriate that the landlord recognised it had failed the resident, apologised and offered compensation. However, £50 was insufficient to compensate for the poor communication the resident had experienced to that point, and the fact it had still not visited to investigate the issue.
  7. In its stage 2 response, the landlord said it was unaware of any systemic problems with the communal water heating system. However, this does not appear to be the case. In an email to the resident of 23 December 2022 the landlord said “With regards to the recent survey on 6 December 2022 and ongoing issues with the heating hot water supply our technical team will be liaising with [a contractor] in the new year to have the matter resolved. We cannot provide you with a date, however wider communication will be sent to residents in the new year”.
  8. We have seen no evidence that this occurred. This was a severe failure which, it appears, has never been remedied and therefore reaches the threshold for a finding of maladministration. So far as we can tell from the evidence provided, the landlord has never taken any steps to investigate the resident’s concerns about the hot water issue.
  9. In its stage 2 response, the landlord offered the resident £160 for its failures in dealing with the hot water system reports. It is encouraging that the landlord recognised its failures and sought to ‘put things right’ (in line with our dispute resolution principles) by offering financial redress. However, again, the sum it offered was not proportionate to the level of failure identified in this report.
  10. Within its offer, the landlord recognised a missed appointment with £20, which was appropriate. It is not entirely clear what the 2 service failures it recognised with £40 were. We deduce this was for failures by the contractor to contact the resident in January 2023 and these are taken into account.
  11. While the impact on the resident was not severe as the lack of hot water was intermittent, the landlord failed to address the problem over an unnecessarily lengthy period. We have, therefore, ordered it to pay the resident £400 compensation, inclusive of the £100 for time and trouble and inconvenience already paid, but exclusive of the £60 paid for missed appointments and service failure. This sum is in line with our guidance on remedies which says that compensation of between £100 and £1,000 is appropriate for a finding of maladministration.
  12. We have also ordered the landlord to communicate with the resident about their concerns and explain what it has done and will do to address them.

Complaint handling

  1. The resident asked the landlord to open a formal complaint on 14 December 2022. The landlord did not do so as, in its view, it was not a complaint but a report of a required repair. Our Complaint Handling Code (the Code) says, “a service request is a request from a resident to a landlord requiring action to be taken to put something right. Service requests are not complaints”. The landlord’s decision at this stage was, therefore, in line with the Code.
  2. The resident then complained again on 29 December 2022 and the landlord opened a complaint on 2 January 2023. This was appropriate as the resident was now complaining about the contractor’s failure to attend.
  3. The landlord asked the contractor for information to help compile its complaint response in February 2023 but we have seen no evidence that it responded. This adds to the evidence that the landlord’s communication with the contractor was problematic. The contractor’s failure to respond appears to be a major reason for the failure to provide a stage 1 response until 9 May 2023. However, the landlord also bears responsibility for its failure to chase the contractor for a response. We had to contact the landlord to ask it to provide the stage 1 response, which constitutes a failure on its part.
  4. The landlord’s complaints policy says it aims to provide a stage 1 response within 10 working days. In this case, the response took 89 working days. This was a severe failure. The landlord apologised for it and offered compensation, but its offer of £50 was not sufficient given the length of the delay. We have increased this to £100.
  5. The resident wrote to the landlord the day after receiving the stage 1 response, on 10 May 2023. They did not directly ask to escalate their complaint to stage 2, but it was clear they did not agree with the landlord’s findings and had outstanding concerns about the contractor’s actions.
  6. The Code says that residents do not have to provide reasons for an escalation request but, where they do not, landlords “are expected to make reasonable efforts to understand why a resident remains unhappy”. In this case, it was clear that the resident remained unhappy and so the landlord should have asked them whether they wanted to escalate their complaint. If it had done so, this would have prevented the delay in the stage 2 response.
  7. The landlord failed to escalate the complaint until we contacted it on 18 October 2023 and asked it to provide a stage 2 response. This was a further failure in its complaint handling.
  8. The landlord’s complaints policy says it should acknowledge an escalation request within 5 working days and, in most cases, provide a stage 2 response within a further 20 working days. The resident believed they had asked for their complaint to be escalated. They did not take any further steps to chase it. Nonetheless, the responsibility for the delay lies with the landlord. It provided its stage 2 response on 8 November 2023, 129 working days later. This was a severe complaint handling failure.
  9. When the landlord provided the stage 2 response, while it apologised for the delay, it did not offer any further compensation in recognition of the additional delay as it should have done. This compounded its failures and we have ordered it to pay a further £200 compensation in recognition of this specific delay.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
    1. Reports of problems with their hot water.
    2. Associated formal complaint.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord is ordered to provide us with evidence that it has:
    1. Sent the resident a letter of apology for the failures identified in this report.
    2. Paid the resident £700 compensation comprising:
      1. £400 for its handling of their reports of problems with the hot water (inclusive of the £100 already paid for time and trouble and inconvenience).
      2. £300 for complaint handling failures (inclusive of the £50 already paid).
    3. Conducted a review of its communications with the contractor and the contractor’s communications with residents and prepared a report setting out what can be done to improve them.
    4. Arranged for the contractor to visit the property and the building to investigate what can be done to improve the hot water situation.
    5. Written to the resident to explain what it has done and intends to do as a result of the survey of 6 December 2022 to improve the hot water supply at the property and the building. This update should include timescales for the completion of any proposed works.