London Borough of Enfield (202439114)

Decision
Case ID	202439114
Decision type	Investigation
Landlord	London Borough of Enfield
Landlord type	Local Authority / ALMO or TMO
Occupancy	Secure Tenancy
Date	27 November 2025

Background

The resident reported damp and mould caused by a roof leak in early 2023. In March 2024, she reported a leak to the landlord. In December 2024, the landlord carried out works at the property. The resident felt these had not solved the problem and complained. The resident has advised that there are vulnerabilities in the household which the landlord is aware of. The resident in this case is represented in bringing the complaint by her daughter who lives with her. We have referred to them jointly as “the resident” for the sake of clarity.

What the complaint is about

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of
1. The resident’s reports of damp and mould.
2. The resident’s reports of cracks in the walls.
3. The complaint.

Our decision (determination)

We found:
1. Maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of damp and mould.
2. Service failure in the landlord’s handling of reports of cracks in the walls.
3. Service failure in the landlord’s handling of the complaint.

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

Summary of reasons

Reports of damp and mould

The landlord delayed in dealing with the resident’s reports of damp and mould and failed to carry out repairs either in time or at all.

Reports of cracks in the walls

The landlord failed to commission a contractor to repair cracks for some time.

Complaint handling

The landlord provided its complaint responses to a timeline which complied with the Code.

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.

Order	What the landlord must do	Due date
1	Apology order The landlord must apologise in writing to the resident for the failures identified in this report. The landlord must ensure: The apology is specific to the failures identified in this decision, meaningful and empathetic. It has due regard to our apologies guidance.	No later than 08 January 2026
2	Compensation order The landlord must pay the resident £1,150 made up as follows: £1000 for its handling of the resident’s reports of damp and mould. £100 for handling of the resident’s reports of cracks in the walls. £50 for its handling of the complaint. This must be paid directly to the resident and the landlord must provide documentary evidence of payment by the due date.	No later than 08 January 2026
3	Detailed inspection order The landlord must contact the resident and record a list of concerns. It must arrange for a survey of the property by an independent surveyor. It must then create a schedule of required works which sets out a timetable for completion and share it with us and the resident.	No later than 08 January 2026

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

Date	What happened
25 April 2024	The resident complained. She said: A leak was causing damp and mould throughout the property. The roofer who attended on 9 April 2024 had said the loft walls were wet. When she phoned to ask for progress, the landlord told her the matter was “with the technical team” and did not know when the works would be authorised. She wanted the roof repaired as soon as possible.
10 May 2024	The landlord sent a stage 1 complaint response. It said it was sorry to hear about unresolved issues at the property. It said it would survey the property on 20 May 2024 and decide on next steps.
Mid-December 2024	The resident asked to make a further complaint about the state of the property and the landlord’s lack of action. It treated this as an escalation request and said it would provide a stage 2 response.
17 December 2024	The landlord sent a stage 2 response. It said it had visited the property on several occasions. It said it had carried out works and: On 20 May 2024 it had assured the resident that it would work with her to solve the problems at the property. On 26 July 2024 it had commissioned a structural engineer to inspect cracks in bedroom walls. On 9 August 2024 it had repaired the plaster in the bedroom. On 30 August 2024, it had finished off the plastering in the bedroom to the required standard. On 2 December 2024 its surveyor had checked to see whether box guttering and flashings at the back of the property required replacement. On 13 December 2024 it had completed the works at the property. It concluded that there was no evidence of any failures in its handling of the resident’s reports of leaks or required repairs.
17 December 2024	The resident asked the Ombudsman to investigate. She said the property had been damp for almost a year. Her family had health conditions which made them vulnerable to damp and mould. The landlord had not completed works. The scaffolding erected earlier in the year remained in the garden and no works had been done to the roof. She said she wanted: An apology for the delay and for the landlord’s misstatements that it had completed the works. Compensation for the stress she had suffered. For the landlord to complete the works. A review of the landlord’s processes with contractors.

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.

Complaint	Reports of damp and mould
Finding	Maladministration

What we have not investigated

The resident also says that the landlord refused to move her daughter to alternative accommodation despite her health condition which meant she was particularly vulnerable to infections caused by damp and mould. However, she did not raise this issue in her complaints to the landlord. The landlord should have the opportunity to respond. We have not, therefore investigated these matters but, she can complain to the landlord about them. If she is not happy with its response, she can come back to us and we will consider investigating.
It is not clear when the resident first raised the issue of a leak at the property. She first mentioned damp and mould in the bathroom in early 2023 but it seems she did not raise it again with the landlord for a further 12 months. Due to the passage of time and the evidence available, it is fair to investigate events from March 2024 when her most recent reports were made. Any reference made prior to this date are for context only.

What we have investigated

After the resident’s report of damp and mould on 5 March 2024, the landlord arranged for a survey on 12 March 2024. This was within its policy timeframe of 21 days. The surveyor reported that the leak was coming from the roof. The resident agreed with this diagnosis because she believed the damp and mould would get worse whenever it was wet and there was a dark stain on the brickwork near the roof.
The landlord arranged for a roofing contractor to visit on 9 April 2024. The resident was concerned that the contractor would not be able to do anything about any damp and mould without scaffolding because the property is a 3-storey building. She rang the landlord which told her that, if scaffolding was needed, the contractor would discover this during their visit.
The contractor visited as arranged. The resident heard nothing more and phoned the landlord on 25 April 2024.
After receiving the complaint, the landlord wrote to the resident on 30 April 2024 and said that its records showed that it had addressed the issue of dampness and had carried out repairs on 9 April 2024. The landlord’s records show that this was not the case. It had not inspected the roof and the only job it had carried out was a mould treatment on the bathroom ceiling. Clearly, while this may have addressed the issue of mould, it did not address the underlying cause of that damp. This was, therefore, an inaccurate statement.
The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 10 May 2024. It said that it would arrange for a surveyor to visit the property to determine next steps. This was an inadequate complaint response to the points the resident raised. It was, rather, a response to a report of required repairs. It did not analyse the landlord’s failures to date, as we would expect.
Further, the landlord did not apologise other than to say that it was “sorry to learn of unresolved repairs”. It did not offer compensation for the failure to address the issue effectively to date. The offer of a further survey was not a proper response to the resident’s complaint. A survey had taken place 3 months earlier and the repairs should have been well under way by this time.
When a further survey took place in June 2024, the landlord found that, as the resident had said, it would be necessary to erect scaffolding to address the problems in and around the roof. The survey report stated that the rear gutters were choked with plants, the brickwork around the rear window required repointing and an overflow pipe from a water tank in the roof was pouring water over the front door.
The landlord’s repairs policy says it will complete “routine” repairs within 30 days of receiving a report from the resident. It says it will aim to survey a property after a report of damp and mould within 21 days. It says that it will then carry out the works promptly and inspect all works 8 weeks after completion.
The landlord arranged for works to be done but said that it would need to erect scaffolding before they could take place. It wrote to the resident on 18 September 2024, 6 and a half months after the January reports, to say that it had raised a job for roof repairs and it would appoint a scaffolding contractor shortly. This was well outside its policy timeframe for repairs and not in line with best practice. It failed to acknowledge this in its complaint response.
In October 2024, the landlord carried out works in and around the roof. It also discovered that other works were required.
It is not clear when the resident asked to escalate her complaint to stage 2 of the landlord’s complaints process but the resident has said she did so in December 2024. The landlord provided a stage 2 complaint response on 17 December 2024. It said it had completed all works on the roof on 13 December 2024 and that it had found “no issues” with its handling of repairs. It therefore did not uphold the complaint.
This was a poor complaint response. The landlord had failed to comply with its own policy. It had delayed considerably in responding to the resident’s reports of damp and mould and in arranging for remedial works. For these reasons, we would have expected to see an apology, an explanation for the failures and an offer of compensation. The landlord did none of these things.
Further, the evidence does not support the landlord’s claim that the works were, complete. Only works at the front of the property appear to have been completed and the resident has continued to report problems with damp and mould at the property. The scaffolding remained in place at the property until mid-2025. This was inconvenient to the resident.
The evidence we have seen suggests that the required repairs have not been completed and that the problem is not resolved. The landlord was unclear as to what works had been completed in its complaint responses and this failure contributed to the resident’s concerns about persistent damp and mould. Further, it was unable to say that the works it had completed had solved the problem. New scaffolding was recently erected at the property which has provided evidence that the problems persist.
The issues remained ongoing over a long period which ran from late 2023 and are yet to be resolved. The resident and her household are vulnerable, and the failures identified have had a significant impact on them. For these reasons, we have ordered the landlord to pay compensation of £1000. This is at the top end of our usual range of awards for maladministration, and is in line with our guidance on remedies.
The failures identified in this report have damaged the relationship between the resident and landlord. The appointment of an independent surveyor as stated in our orders will reassure her that there is no bias in the findings of their report.

Complaint	The resident’s reports of cracks in the walls at the property
Finding	Service failure

The first evidence we have of the resident reporting cracks in the walls of a rear bedroom came in her complaint of 25 April 2024. The landlord raised a job to deal with this problem on 30 May 2024. The landlord says that it aims to deal with reports of routine repairs within 30 days. In this case, it did not raise a job to deal with it until more than a month had passed. A contractor attended to carry out the work on 17 June 2024.
This was an inadequate response to the resident’s report of cracked walls as there was delay which meant that it had missed its service standard for completing the works before it even raised a job for them to be done. However, it then completed the works within 3 weeks. The landlord’s initial delay did not cause the resident significant additional inconvenience.
However, where a landlord fails to meet its service standard, in order to remedy any impact, it would be reasonable to acknowledge that and set out what steps it might take to avoid such instances in the future. In this case the landlord did not apologise or acknowledge any failures in its complaint responses., We have ordered it to pay her £100 in recognition of its failures.

Complaint	The handling of the complaint
Finding	Service failure

Our Complaint Handling Code (the Code) sets out when and how a landlord should respond to complaints. Our findings are:

The landlord’s published complaints policy complies with the terms of the Code in respect of timescales which says that landlords should provide a complaint response within 10 working days of a complaint. It must provide a stage 2 response within working 20 days of a request for a stage 2 review. It can ask for a maximum of 20 extra working days to deal with complex complaints which require further investigation.
The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 10 May 2024, which is exactly 10 working days after receiving the resident’s complaint. This was in line with its policy.
We have dealt with most other complaint handling failures above in the section on damp and mould as these failures were relevant to the way in which the landlord responded to the resident’s reports of damp and mould.
However, in this section we note that we have seen no evidence to indicate that the landlord formally acknowledged the resident’s complaint. This was a complaint handling failure. The Code states that complaints must be acknowledged within 5 working days, The landlord must set out its understanding of what the complaint is about in the acknowledgement. The fact that it did not do so means the resident missed an opportunity to ensure it had the correct understanding of her complaint, and was left not knowing when, or if, it would respond to his complaint.

Learning

Complaint handling

The landlord’s responded to complaints with its policy timeframe. However, it failed adequately to address the resident’s concerns.

Knowledge information management (record keeping)

The records provided by the landlord do not show conclusively that the problems with damp and mould at the property have been adequately addressed. It should aim to provide fuller records in future.

Communication

The landlord sometimes delayed in responding to contacts from the resident. On one occasion it failed to respond for 2 months. It should ensure that similar failures do not occur in future.