Clarion Housing Association Limited (202231456)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202231456

Clarion Housing Association Limited

23 April 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 handling of compensation.
  2. We have also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord, a housing association. She has lived in the property, a 1-bedroom flat since May 2022. The resident has informed us that she has health vulnerabilities, and the landlord has confirmed that it is aware of them.
  2. The resident made a complaint on 11 April 2023 as the landlord had awarded her compensation for a disrepair matter, but the payment had gone to her rent account. She felt that the landlord should have paid the money directly to her as she had no rent arrears. The landlord acknowledged the complaint on 2 May 2023.
  3. The landlord issued a stage 1 response on 12 May 2023, and did not uphold her complaint. It said that it would not find a service failure as the resident did have arrears on her rent account, and its policy allowed it to pay compensation towards arrears. It explained that while the resident received housing benefit to cover her rent, it left a shortfall each month. It awarded a £50 payment because it did not issue the stage 1 complaint response within its policy timescales.
  4. On 29 May 2023 the resident told the landlord that she was not happy with its response. She explained that her housing benefit balanced out over the year to ensure there were no arrears, and felt the landlord should have been aware of this. The resident approached the Ombudsman in September 2023 as the landlord did not respond to her.
  5. Following contact from this Service the landlord issued a stage 2 response on 22 November 2023 and upheld the resident’s complaint. It explained that a member of staff had misinterpreted her rent account and acknowledged that she was not in arrears. It awarded £150 in additional compensation for the time taken to resolve the complaint, providing incorrect information, and a failure to follow its processes. It said it had retrained the staff member in question to prevent any future similar incidents. It also said that it would pay the £200 from her previous disrepair complaint, £50 from stage 1 and £150 from stage 2 directly to her bank account.
  6. The landlord processed the compensation on 24 May 2024 as due to internal errors the payment had gone to her rent account. The resident remains unhappy with the landlord’s handling of her compensation and feels that it did not offer a suitable amount of compensation.

Assessment and findings

The landlord’s handling of compensation following a complaint

  1. The landlord’s compensation policy states that it will pay compensation and discretionary payments to the rent account where there are arrears. If a resident has no arrears or is in credit, it will pay directly to the resident.
  2. The resident’s rent is covered by housing benefit, which is paid every 4-weeks however the rent is due monthly. This means that for 11 months of the year the rent account shows slight arrears but in the 12th month there will be 2 housing benefit payments. This 12th payment balances out the rent account.
  3. As the landlord is a provider of social housing, we expect that it would be aware of this payment pattern and ensure that residents are not penalised for a system which is out of their control. In this case, a staff member was unaware of this payment arrangement and believed that the resident was in arrears. This staff member informed the resident that she would need to make monthly shortfall payments to avoid accruing arrears. This information was incorrect.
  4. Positively, once the resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 of the complaints process the landlord realised its mistake and corrected it. In the stage 2 response it stated that it had retrained the staff member in question to prevent any future misunderstandings and this was reasonable.
  5. There is evidence, however, that several staff members were unclear on whether the compensation payment should be held on the account or would be paid to the resident. Internal notes show that there was discussion around whether it should retain the compensation as it was for a legal disrepair case. Following this, customer service staff and the stage 1 complaint handler also believed that the account was in arrears. We will make a recommendation at the end of this report for refresher training to be issued to all staff.
  6. During the period of investigation, the resident was undergoing treatment for leukaemia. She informed the landlord of the impact that the treatment was having on her physical and emotional wellbeing on multiple occasions. She also told it that the fact that it told her she was in arrears and would need to make additional payments added more stress and impacted her wellbeing. Although it did recognise that it had made an error in its calculation, she has told this Service that it was still chasing her for arrears. While it is possible this communication is automated, we recognise that this would have a negative impact on the resident.
  7. Following the stage 2 response, the landlord committed to ensuring that it paid the resident the compensation for the previous and current complaints within 7 days. However, because of additional processing errors it made the final compensation payments on 24 April 2024. The resident informed us that she was still receiving contact regarding arrears on her account in April 2024.
  8. There was service failure in the landlord’s handling of compensation following a complaint. While the landlord did offer compensation, it did not fully offset the distress and inconvenience experienced by the resident. It told her several times that she was in arrears despite records showing that it was a miscalculation. She also informed us that the landlord had chased for arrears the following year which caused her distress. Due to processing errors, it paid the last compensation payment 121 days after the date it promised and it did not offer any additional redress. The resident felt that she had to chase the landlord for the payment, which caused her additional time, trouble, and inconvenience.

The landlord’s complaint handling

  1. The landlord’s complaint policy states that it will respond to all complaints within 10 working days, and issue a stage 1 response within 20 working days. In this case, the complaint response came 22 working days after the resident made her complaint. It offered £50 compensation for the delay, which was reasonable given the short delay.
  2. After the resident requested the complaint escalation, the landlord did not acknowledge the request at all, and did not provide a response until the Ombudsman contacted it. In total, there was 123 working days between the resident’s request for escalation and the final complaint response.
  3. This is not consistent with its complaint policy which states that it will acknowledge requests for escalation within 10 working days and provide a response within 40 working days.
  4. The landlord offered £150 compensation in its stage 2 response but it did not specify how it came to this amount. It is also unclear how much it awarded for the substantive issue and how much for complaint handling. The decision to award compensation at both stages of the complaint was appropriate.
  5. In determining whether there has been service failure or maladministration we consider both the events that initially prompted a complaint and the landlord’s response to the complaint. The extent to which a landlord has recognised any failures and the steps it has taken to offer redress and learn from the complaint can be as relevant as the original mistake or service failure. In this case the landlord did not follow its complaints policy which led to delays for the resident and led to her contacting this Service for advice. However, it did offer compensation which proportionately reflects the impact of the delay on the resident and amounts to reasonable redress in this case.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of compensation following a complaint.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was reasonable redress in relation to the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of this report the landlord must:
    1. Apologise to the resident for the failures identified in this case. This includes, but is not limited to, miscalculation of arrears and failure to process compensation within a reasonable time. The apology should be in the format of the resident’s choosing and it must provide a copy to this Service.
    2. Pay the resident £100 compensation for distress, time, trouble, and inconvenience in relation to its handling of her compensation payments. This is separate from any compensation previously awarded. The landlord must pay this amount directly to the resident and provide proof of payment to the Ombudsman within 4 weeks to demonstrate compliance.
  2. Within 8 weeks of this report the landlord must provide refresher training to all staff to ensure they are aware of the difference in payment cycles for residents in receipt of housing related benefits. It should also ensure that it communicates how these differing cycles affect the management of rent accounts and compensation payments. The landlord must provide a copy of this training to the Ombudsman to evidence compliance.