Origin Housing Limited (202510587)

Decision
Case ID	202510587
Decision type	Investigation
Landlord	Origin Housing Limited
Landlord type	Housing Association
Occupancy	Assured Tenancy
Date	19 December 2025

Background

In mid-2024, there were 3 separate leaks at the resident’s address. The resident reported these leaks. The landlord attended and has carried out repairs. The resident has complained about the way that the landlord dealt with her reports of flooding and other related problems.

What the complaint is about

The complaint is about the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of leaks.
We have also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Our decision (determination)

The landlord has made an offer of compensation and other actions which provided a reasonable redress for its failures.
There was no maladministration in relation to the landlord’s complaint handling.

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

Summary of reasons

Reports of leaks

The landlord accepted that it and its contractors had failed the resident. It offered her compensation for distress and inconvenience, apologised fulsomely and also provided reasonable compensation for damaged property.

Putting things right

Recommendations

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

Our recommendations
Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord is recommended to pay the resident the £2755.98 it offered in its stage 2 response, if it has not already done so. This recognised genuine elements of service failure and the reasonable redress finding is made on that basis.

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

Date	What happened
15 April 2024	The first blockage caused a flood in the resident’s kitchen. A contractor attended but had to attend again the next day to carry out further works.
17 May 2025	The second blockage occurred.
5 June 2024	The third blockage occurred. The resident was out so could not mop water. She said this allowed water to spread into hall.
20 August 2024	The resident complained about the landlord’s response to her reports of blockages. She said: She had experienced leaks in her kitchen caused by a blocked stack pipe. She was unhappy with the landlord’s response to the leaks, customer service and communication.
9 September 2024	The landlord wrote to the resident and extended its deadline for providing a stage 1 response.
20 September 2024	The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response. It said: 15 April 2024: Its contractor had arrived slightly outside its 2-hour service standard on 15 April 2024. They had had an altercation with the resident. A contractor had arrived the next evening to try to clean the property. It apologised for any failures. 17 May 2024: After the resident reported drainage problems, a contractor had attended. Despite the fact that the resident had asked that the original engineer should not attend in future, the same operative came. The resident said they were polite and cleared the blockage. Nonetheless, the landlord accepted it had failed in allowing them to attend. 4 June 2024: The same operative attended again. The landlord apologised. The professional cleaners did not arrive until the next day. The landlord apologised. It had surveyed the drains in September 2024. It “upheld” the resident’s complaint. It said it had had no record of her vulnerabilities on its systems so was not aware of any increased impact these events would have had on her. It asked the resident to provide these. It awarded her £460 in compensation including £200 for distress and inconvenience, £20 for the late attendance of its representative on 15 April 2024, £20 for failure to respond to emails, £50 for a failure to do a systemic investigation after the second leak. It said that, as the resident was £430 in rent arrears, most of the money would go to pay of these arrears.
28 September 2024	The resident asked to escalate her complaint. She said: The landlord’s accounts of the first and third leaks in the stage 1 response were inaccurate. She still had not received any payments for the damage caused by the leak. The landlord had no alerts on its systems about her mental health needs. The contractor who attended on 14 April 2024 had been unprofessional. She had had to make numerous phone calls to the landlord on 15 and 16 April 2024. The landlord had failed to consider housing her in temporary accommodation while it cleaned the property. The landlord’s failures had had a severe impact on her mental health and had interrupted a therapy session in June 2024. She said she wanted: An update on when her kitchen and bathroom would be replaced. An in-person apology from the contractor’s manager who dealt with her case. Compensation for her damaged property. Compensation for the stress and inconvenience she had suffered.
26 November 2024	The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response. It said: It had already formulated an action plan with a local disability organisation and the resident’s representative. It accepted that it had misstated the events of 15 April 2024 in the stage 1 response. It apologised but said that, on the available evidence, it had stated the facts correctly. It did not have information about the resident’s needs and vulnerabilities when the incidents occurred. It had now gathered information and these were on its system. It invited the resident to add to this information. It apologised for the unprofessional acts of its contractor and offered her £100. It apologised for a failure to consider rehousing her while the property was cleaned. It offered her £300. It increased its offer of payment for distress and inconvenience from £200 to £600. It confirmed that it would replace the kitchen and bathroom in the 2024/25 financial year. It agreed that its contractor’s manager would apologise to her at its office in person. It would pay her £950 for a new washing machine and a total of £1805.98 in compensation for distress, inconvenience, failures and compensation for damaged property.
25 June 2025	The resident asked us to investigate. She said she was not satisfied with the landlord’s response to her complaints. She said that the landlord’s failures had exacerbated her health conditions to the extent that she now needed permanent 24 hour a day 7 days a week care. She said she wanted them to improve their system relating to disabled people.

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 leaks
Finding	Reasonable redress

What we have not investigated

The resident has complained that she has suffered greatly because her mental health problems caused the landlord’s failures to have a greater impact on her. She also says that these events have worsened her mental health conditions. We cannot decide whether this is the case.
The resident may want to seek legal advice and to consider a personal injury claim against the landlord. A court is better placed to assess such matters and in particular whether any damages would be due to her for injury suffered. We have considered the distress and inconvenience these events have caused.
The resident has said that the landlord continues to fail her. She says that its failures in August 2024 caused her to attempt suicide twice. However, she did not mention this to the landlord in the complaints process and so it could not be expected to know about it or respond to it. These allegations, again, could be considered by a court.
In correspondence with us in August 2025, the resident says she wanted the landlord to install a new bathroom and kitchen to meet her access needs and attend the property at agreed times. She also wanted further compensation.
It is clear that the resident believes the problems at the property are ongoing. However, these ongoing issues were not considered in her complaints to the landlord in September and November 2024. For that reason, we cannot investigate them. Landlords must have a right to respond to a resident’s complaints before we can investigate them.
If the resident chooses to make a further complaint to the landlord about these matters, and is not satisfied with its response, she can ask us to investigate in due course.

Reports of leaks

The leaks were caused by blockages in a stack pipe in the block where the resident lived. The first blockage occurred on 14 April 2024. The landlord accepted that its operative arrived outside its 2–hour service standard and offered the resident compensation. The delay was short and, while there was an inappropriate delay, the operative then triaged the problem and returned the next day to carry out further works. The landlord sent a cleaner the next evening.
The resident says that the contractor failed to provide an adequate cleaning service. The landlord, on the other hand, says that it sent specialist cleaners. There is evidence on the file that the resident refused to accept the services of cleaners. For this reason, it is impossible for us to say, after so much time has passed, what actually occurred that day.
The resident says that the landlord should have had more regard for her vulnerabilities in April 2024. However, we have seen no evidence that the landlord knew or had any reason to know of these vulnerabilities at this time. It did not learn of them until she informed it of them during the course of these events. We cannot, therefore, hold it to account for a failure to bear them in mind. We note, though, that, having learnt of these vulnerabilities, it acted appropriately in agreeing and recording adjustments that it would make in future callouts. This was an example of good service.
The resident has complained that the landlord sent out a contractor to deal with the second leak in May 2024 and the third leak in June 2024 after she had told it that they had been rude and aggressive during the first callout.
The landlord has accepted that this was an error and has apologised and paid compensation as a result, as was appropriate. Fortunately, the resident accepted that, on subsequent visits, the operative was polite and helpful. The landlord has, in our view, fully compensated the resident for that error and has explained that it has taken steps to prevent similar failures in future. However, as these were emergency events, it is understandable that such failures sometimes occur.
Overall, the landlord accepted in its stage 1 response that it was responsible for a “catalogue of failures” over 4 months It provided a fulsome apology and compensation.
The resident has said that the landlord’s communications with her were poor. We do not have records of most of her direct interactions with it as she spoke on the telephone. We cannot, therefore, reach a view as to whether these communications were poor or not.
However, the resident representative who emailed the landlord on her behalf, sent many emails throughout 2024 and the landlord’s responses to these emails were generally extremely polite and considerate.
There was an occasion on 13 November 2024, after the stage 1 response when, at a moment of high tension, a member of the landlord’s staff accused the representative of making a “veiled threat”. This came after the representative said that, if the landlord did not send a plumber and carpenter to the property within 24 hours, there would be “serious implications”.
Both parties later accepted that this interchange came at a moment of high stress. It was, perhaps, therefore understandable, given the tensions at play, that the operative might have felt threatened. However, it does not seem to have been intended as such.
The landlord accepted in its stage 1 response that it had failed to respond to some emails in April 2024 and offered the resident £20 in compensation for that failure. This was part of its overall offer of compensation offer of £460 at stage 1. The resident did not consider this was sufficient and this was part of the reason that she asked the landlord to escalate her complaint to stage 2 of its complaints process.
In the stage 2 response, the landlord offered the resident a further £100 for missed communications in April 2024 which was sufficient to compensate her for any communication failures we are aware about.
At stage 2, the landlord also increased its overall offer of compensation from £460 to £2755.98 in total. This included £950 for a new dishwasher and £415.98 for items damaged during the initial flood. This was a reasonable approach by the landlord.
This compensation the landlord offered was sufficient, according to our guidance on remedies, to compensate the resident for its failures and the distress and inconvenience they caused.
The resident also said that the landlord should have placed her in temporary accommodation during the cleanup after the initial leak. The landlord accepted this criticism and offered her £300 for its failure. Having accepted that it was at fault, it was appropriate for it to offer compensation. It also offered £600 for stress and inconvenience caused by its failures over 4 months and confirmed its offers from stage 1. This, again, was sufficient to compensate her for these failures.
For that reason, we have found that the landlord has made an offer which provided reasonable redress for its admitted failures in responding to the resident’s reports of leaks at the property.

Complaint	The handling of the complaint
Finding	No maladministration

The landlord’s published complaints policy complies with the terms of our Complaint Handling Code (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.
In this case, the resident complained on 20 August 2024. The landlord provided a stage 1 complaint response on 20 September 2024. The resident asked to escalate her complaint on 28 October 2024, and the landlord provided its stage 2 response on 26 November 2024.
The evidence shows that the landlord appropriately wrote to the resident to extend the timescale to provide a stage1 complaint response. It also responded in line with its stage 2 complaint response timelines.
Therefore, a finding of no maladministration has been made.

Learning

Knowledge information management (record keeping)

The landlord’s recordkeeping was thorough and detailed.

Communication

The landlord’s communications, apart from its accepted lapse in April 2024, was appropriate.