Rochdale Boroughwide Housing Limited (202402942)

Background

1. The resident reported experiencing problems with repairs to her property since 2019. Her kitchen ceiling had a sizeable hole, there was a crack from the floor to the roof in her kitchen wall to the bathroom and she needed a new kitchen to be fitted. She has complained about several missed appointments and poor communication over the years. Although the landlord has now resolved the matter, the resident feels that the landlord’s offer of £100 in compensation was not fair or reflective of her poor experience which has lasted several years.

What the complaint is about

2. The complaint is about the landlord’s:
   1. level of compensation offered in relation to the handling of the repairs.
   2. handling of the complaint.

Our decision (determination)

3. There was maladministration in the landlord’s level of compensation offered in relation to the handling of the repairs.
4. There was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the complaint.

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

Summary of reasons

Level of compensation offered

5. Based on the records provided, the resident first raised the complaint in August 2023, yet the landlord did not complete the repairs until May 2024. The resident also reported several communication difficulties throughout the process. The landlord’s complaint responses failed to address the time taken to resolve the problem and the level of distress and inconvenience caused. Nor did it make a reasonable offer of compensation for these.

     Complaint handling

6. The landlord provided its stage 1 and stage 2 responses outside of its policy timeframes. It also attempted to log a new stage 1 complaint, instead of escalating the resident’s existing complaint on the relevant matters.

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.

Recommendations

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

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

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.

What we have not looked at

7. The resident has mentioned the impact this situation has had on her mental health. It would be fairer, more reasonable and more effective for the resident to make a personal injury claim for any detriment to her health which she feels the landlord is responsible for. The courts are best placed to deal with this type of dispute as they will have the benefit of independent medical advice to decide on the cause of any injury and how long it will last. We’ve not investigated this further. We can decide whether a landlord should pay compensation for distress and inconvenience.
8. The resident said she had been experiencing issues with repairs since 2019. At the time of this complaint, the Complaint Handling Code allowed landlords to exclude matters which occurred over 6 months prior to the complaint being raised. Therefore, we have only considered the landlord’s actions over this period.

What we have looked at

9. The landlord’s repair policy at the time of this complaint said that, for planned or programmed repairs, the timeframe to complete them will be by mutually agreed appointment. Routine repairs were given a timeframe of 20 working days.
10. The landlord’s repairs log shows the landlord booked an inspection for 28 April 2023 which was logged as ‘no access’ as the landlord failed to email the resident to advise her when it was coming despite her request for email contact. The landlord raised a further inspection on 7 May, but the repairs history shows that this was abandoned with no clear notes explaining why.
11. The landlord raised another inspection on 8 June 2023 which it carried out on 16 June 2023. The notes show that the landlord decided to refer the work to contractors. It is unclear what happened following this.
12. The landlord logged another repair on 5 July 2023 which it attended on 11 August 2023. However, the notes state it recorded a further no access. The resident raised a complaint later that day, stating that the landlord had failed to inform her of the appointment by email – as she had requested.
13. The landlord logged further repairs on 17 August 2023 in response to the complaint. It re-fixed the kitchen radiator on 25 August 2023, but it did not inspect the plastering until 6 February 2024, where it noted that contractors were required for this job. However, the landlord already established this in June 2023 and seemingly failed to progress the repair since.
14. The resident complained of communication issues which led to the delays. In its complaint responses, the landlord acknowledged that multiple historical repairs had been abandoned, and it had overlooked the resident’s preference of email contact when arranging appointments. It is reasonable to conclude that the landlords failure to follow the resident’s contact preferences led to several missed appointments and delays that lasted a significant period as referenced above.
15. As the resident reported the repair issues in April 2023, it was not reasonable for the landlord to tie them into its kitchen programme and potentially leave the resident living with outstanding repairs until the programmes target end date of 31 August 2024.
16. Within its complaint procedure, the landlord upheld the complaint and offered £100 in recognition of its failures. The resident did not feel this was a sufficient amount of compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused to her. She said she had to spend time at her daughter’s house as she found the conditions of her home to be inhabitable.
17. Considering that the landlord is expected to resolve issues in a reasonable, mutually agreed timeframe for planned repairs, it is clear from the available evidence that the landlord’s handling of this case fell below expected standards in line with its own policy and what is considered reasonable. Based on the initial inspection date recorded in the repair logs, the landlord took over 370 calendar days to complete the identified repairs. Given the excessive length of time taken to complete the repair, alongside multiple aborted and missed appointments and inadequate communication, the landlord’s handling of the matter amounted to maladministration.
18. Under our Remedies Guidance, compensation should reflect the severity of the impact on the resident, including the upset, disruption, and prolonged inconvenience experienced. In this case, the resident faced an unreasonable amount of time without suitable kitchen conditions which causing significant distress and inconvenience. Given the circumstances of the case and for the reasons stated above, the resident is entitled to a higher compensation amount associated with maladministration. As a result, we order the landlord to pay her £300 in further compensation.

19. The landlord’s complaint policy stated that its approach followed the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) at that time. It said it would respond to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days. For stage 2 complaints, it would respond within 20 working days of the complaint being escalated.
20. The landlord sent its stage 1 complaint response on 27 September 2023 which was 21 working days after it informed the resident it had raised a stage 1 complaint. The landlord’s response fell outside its policy’s timescale and we have not seen evidence it agreed any extension with the resident.
21. The version of the Code in effect at the time of this complaint said that “if all or part of the complaint is not resolved to the resident’s satisfaction at stage one it must be progressed to stage two of the landlord’s procedure”. However, when the resident expressed continued dissatisfaction, the landlord initially sought to repeat the stage 1 process despite the complaint being about a continuation of the issues. It only agreed to escalate the complaint to stage 2 after the resident objected to this.
22. The landlord issued its stage 2 response on 17 April 2024, which was 99 working days after the resident submitted her escalation request. The landlord agreed extensions to provide this response with the resident so that it could commence the works beforehand. However, the Code required that a complaint response be sent to the resident “when the answer to the complaint is known, not when the outstanding actions required to address the issue are completed”. The landlord delaying its response in this manner was unreasonable.
23. Given that the landlord did not handle the complaint in line with its own policy, there was a service failure found in the complaint handling. Therefore, we order the landlord to pay the resident compensation of £100. This is in keeping with the amount recommended in our Remedies Guidance for minimal failures which are unlikely to have affected the overall outcome for the resident.