A2Dominion Housing Group Limited (202324654)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202324654

A2Dominion Housing Group Limited

3 October 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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of:
1. The resident’s reports of damp and mould at the property.
2. The resident’s requests to be rehoused.

Background

The resident has been the assured tenant of the property, which is owned by the landlord, since 2012. She and her husband are both named on the tenancy agreement. The property is a 2-bedroom flat. They have 3 children.
The resident and her husband first reported damp and mould at the property in 2012. A damp report provided in 2014 stated that the cause was condensation. They raised the matter on several more occasions and, in 2016, the landlord replaced some of their furniture. They have raised the matter frequently since then. In November 2022, they complained formally to the landlord about its failure to address their concerns about damp and mould.
In December 2023, a damp and mould survey found that the damp in both bedrooms, the living room and the bathroom was caused by condensation. This was caused by overcrowding. It recommended that the resident should open windows and move furniture away from walls.
The resident has been applying for 4-bedroom properties on the landlord’s bidding system without success for some time. In November 2023, she asked to amend her details so she could apply for 3-bedroom properties as well.
In November 2023, the resident wrote to this Service asking us to investigate her landlord for its failure to deal with her reports of damp and mould and to rehouse her family. As we had no evidence that she had complained recently to the landlord, we asked it to set up a complaint and deal with her concerns both about damp and mould at the property and about the landlord’s failure to rehouse the family.
The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 10 January 2024. It apologised for delays in dealing with her recent reports of damp and mould. It had had to cancel a damp and mould survey of the property in December 2023. It had arranged another. It apologised and offered her £145 in compensation for these failures.
In response to the resident’s complaint about not being rehoused, it said that it had done all it could. There were not many 4-bedroom properties available. It noted that she wanted to be able to apply for 3-bedroom houses as well and said it would assist in this process. It provided her with advice about other options to increase her chances of finding another property.
The resident was not satisfied with this response and asked to escalate her complaint to stage 2 of the landlord’s internal complaints process on 2 February 2024. She said she also wanted the landlord to address the fact that it had closed her original complaint from November 2022 without responding to it or informing her.
The landlord provided a stage 2 response on 9 February 2024. It said it had “soft closed” the November 2022 complaint in December 2022. It said its contractors had carried out some works but its service had fallen below the required standard. It offered the resident a further £390 compensation, making a total of £535, in consideration of delays in completing works, distress and inconvenience and poor communication.
The resident was not satisfied with this offer and asked this Service to investigate her concerns. She said she wanted the damp and mould treatments to be completed and more compensation.
The landlord approved works to address the outstanding issue of mould at the property in February 2024. However, on 29 February 2024, the local council issued a Hazard Awareness Notice (HAN), requiring the landlord to carry out remedial works on the property. These included fungicidal treatments, investigation of the cause of the mould, a check on a positive input ventilation unit (PIVU) which was not blowing hot air, checks on the radiators and on an area of paving which had subsided and might indicate another issue.
Works have continued throughout 2024. Two different contractors have attended the property but they did not have complete instructions and some works have not been completed.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

The resident has raised concerns with the landlord about damp and mould over a lengthy period. The Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme) states, at paragraph 42.b, that the Ombudsman may not normally consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, were brought to our attention more than 12 months after they exhausted the member’s complaints procedure. At the time of the events set out in this report, this was around 6 months.
In this case, there are reasons to investigate further back than this and we have considered events from November 2022, the date of the previous complaint made by the resident which was closed without response by the landlord. However, in line with the Scheme, we have not investigated the entire history of the resident’s reports of damp and mould at the property. Where it is mentioned, this is as background to the complaint.
The resident says that the condition of the property has impacted on her family’s health. However, this Service is unable to establish a causal link between reports of the health issues experienced by complainants and the actions of landlords. The resident may wish to seek legal advice about this as a personal injury claim may be a more appropriate way of dealing with this aspect of her complaint. Nonetheless, we have considered the general distress and inconvenience which these events may have caused.

Reports of damp and mould at the property

The landlord had a duty under the tenancy agreement to maintain the property in a fit condition. This included keeping it free of damp and mould. Its repairs policy says it will aim to complete “standard” repairs within 20 days.
The Ombudsman issued a special report “Spotlight on Damp and Mould: It’s not lifestyle” in 2021 It states that landlords should have a “zero-tolerance” approach to damp and mould. It required landlords to assess themselves against the recommendations set out in the report and to make improvements to their processes and polices in line with these recommendations.
The landlord has provided its self-assessment to this Service. It says it now has special trackers on its systems to allow it to manage cases effectively. It adds that it has robust processes in place so that customers will not have to escalate issues of damp and mould to its complaints process. Where complainants do complain, it will ensure that these complaints are resolved effectively to prevent the need for residents to contact the Ombudsman.
It is agreed by the resident and the landlord that she has been reporting damp and mould at the property for many years. The landlord accepts that it wrongly closed a complaint from the resident in December 2022 because she had not made any reports of damp and mould in the previous 12 months. However, the November 2022 complaint was, itself, a report of damp and mould.
There is no provision in the landlord’s complaints policy seen by this Service that would explain this decision. There is nothing inherently wrong with a landlord treating a complaint as a request for service. However, the landlord accepted in its stage 2 response that its response to this complaint had been inadequate.
There is no evidence of the landlord taking proactive steps to manage damp and mould between November 2022 and October 2023. A surveyor visited the property in December 2022 and found, on the evidence, that works were required but no works were completed. The landlord initially said it had carried out the works in February 2023 but later acknowledged there was no evidence for this. It was only after the resident asked for an update on 10 October 2023 that the landlord considered the problem.
Even after this date, the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of damp and mould was slow. Give the lengthy delay to that point, the landlord should have ensured that a survey was completed as a matter of urgency. In fact, the survey was scheduled for 7 December. The surveyor did not attend. It took place on 20 December 2023 and found that the rooms should be mould washed and passive vents installed. The landlord failed to progress these works by the time of the final complaint response. This was another failing on the landlord’s part.
In its stage 1 response, the landlord said that it recognised that there had been an unacceptable delay in dealing with the resident’s concerns. It offered a total of £145 compensation. This was made up of £75 for “the time it will take to complete the most recent damp and mould repairs”, £50 for distress and inconvenience and £20 for the missed appointment in December 2022. This was insufficient given the extent of the delay and the failure to act in line with its own commitments given in response to Spotlight on Damp and Mould.
At stage 2, the landlord increased this offer, belatedly, to £535. It said this was for “£150 for poor communication with our customer, £75 for poor internal communication and job management, £100 for the time it has taken, £85 for the delays in completing the works and £100 for the distress and inconvenience this has caused you”.
The landlord’s compensation policy says that it will pay £50 for minor disruption and/or effort caused to a resident. It will pay £150 to £350 for moderate disruption or effort and £350 to £750 – and sometimes more – for extensive disruption and/or effort. In this case, the landlord failed to address the resident’s concerns for over a year. Further, it did not address them immediately after the stage 2 response. The amount of compensation offered was, therefore, inadequate as it did not meet its own compensation criteria.
In April 2024, the landlord increased its offer of compensation by a further £300 to reflect the ongoing delays that took place after the stage 2 complaint response. This was a welcome recognition by the landlord of the ongoing inconvenience it had caused to the resident and her family. However, even this offer failed to increase the amount on offer for the landlord’s failures prior to the stage 2 complaint response.
On 29 February 2024, the local council issued a HAN requiring the landlord to carry out remedial works. It issued this HAN after its private property inspection officer carried out an inspection of the property and found that there was significant damp and mould present at the property.
This Service accepts the HAN as good evidence that the property suffered from mould as the resident claimed and casts doubt on the findings of the landlord’s survey of December 2023. For this reason, the sum offered was not appropriate. This Service has ordered the landlord to pay a greater sum in line with our, and the landlord’s, own guidance on remedies.
The HAN required the landlord to carry out works. These included wiping down the walls and painting them with fungicidal paint. The landlord also needed to inspect and assess radiators, external paving and a soundproof panel to try to discover the cause of the damp. This Service has seen no evidence that the works have been completed to a satisfactory standard 7 months later.
The evidence shows that, on several occasions, contractors arrived and failed to complete the works as they had not been given the correct instructions. This indicates that, despite the failings acknowledged by the landlord through its complaints process, it did not learn sufficient lessons from the outcome of the complaint as the works recommended by its own inspection, and that of the local council, were similarly delayed.
In summary, the landlord has failed to comply with its commitments made in its self-assessment under Spotlight on Damp and Mould. It has failed to meet its obligations under the tenancy agreement and its own repairs policy. The service it provided over a year was inadequate and its offer of redress was insufficient given the circumstances of the case.

Requests to be rehoused

The landlord is a private registered provider of social housing. Most of its stock in any given area is allocated by the local council which has a duty to provide housing for those in need. It therefore has a limited ability to rehouse tenants through its own channels. It has “percentage nomination rights” allowing it to allocate some of its own stock but the large majority of its stock is allocated to local authority applicants.
The landlord has set out allocation priorities in its housing stock allocations scheme. These are to provide housing to local authorities first, then its own priority bands, with emergency and urgent cases taking priority. In this case, it placed the resident in Band B of its own allocations scheme due to overcrowding. This was appropriate.
In its complaint responses, the landlord explained all these facts to the resident and provided advice on other avenues she could take in order to get rehousing. These included applying to her local council and via the Locata website. This is a property bidding site used by west London councils. This was good advice. The landlord was not responsible for the lack of suitable housing for the resident and the advice it gave was appropriate.
However, the resident also asked the landlord to help her change her registration on its website so that she could bid for 3-bedroom houses. On the evidence seen by this Service, it took 6 months to make this change. This was an unacceptable delay and a failure on the landlord’s part.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of damp and mould at the property.
In accordance with paragraph 52 of the scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s requests to be rehoused.

Orders

Within 4 weeks of the date of this decision, the landlord must:
1. Write to the resident and apologise for the failings identified in this report.
2. Pay her the sum of £1100, inclusive of the £835 already offered, broken down as follows:
  1. £1000 for its failures in handling her reports of damp and mould.
  2. £100 for its failures in handling her requests to be rehoused.
Within 8 weeks of the date of this decision, the landlord must:
1. Create a schedule of outstanding works required at the property and identified in the HAN, to be completed within a reasonable timeframe. If, for instance, the works will take longer than 2 months, the landlord should provide an evidenced explanation to both the resident and the Ombudsman.
2. Explain to the resident how it will ensure works are completed to the standard set out in the HAN and confirm a point of contact she can liaise with if she has concerns about the quality of works.
3. Inform this Service when it has done so.