Peabody Trust (202420819)

Background

1. The resident lived in a flat on the 10th floor of a newbuild block. She had two young children living with her under the age of 10. Her balcony door became detached shortly after she moved in.

What the complaint is about

2. The resident’s complaint is about the landlord’s handling of:
   1. The replacement of the balcony doors.
   2. The associated complaint.

Our decision (determination)

3. We have found that:
   1. There was severe maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the replacement of the balcony doors.
   2. There was maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

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

Summary of reasons

The landlord’s handling of the replacement of the balcony doors

4. There was prolonged delay in replacing the balcony doors. The landlord did not carry out a safety assessment and did not recognise the risk posed to the resident’s young family. Its communication with the resident was inconsistent and confusing.

The landlord’s complaint handling

5. The landlord did not acknowledge the resident’s complaint for 4 months until we intervened. It delayed for more than 1 month in acknowledging her escalation request.

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.

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.

6. We understand from the resident that the balcony doors were replaced in May 2025, 13 months after she reported that they were broken and would not shut.
7. The resident had 2 very young children living in the property, of which the landlord was aware. The balcony doors had blown hinges and had not been able to close since April 2024, posing a serious health and safety hazard. The gap also let in the rain and wind, causing the family to experience cold.
8. The landlord acknowledged at stage 1 that the balcony doors had come off their hinges. Its contractor tried to use a crowbar to close the balcony doors, causing more structural damage, without resolving the issue.
9. Whilst the landlord tried to negotiate with the developer about whose responsibility it was to replace the doors, there was no effort to make safe these doors until October 2024. The matter should have been treated as a safety emergency. Records do not show the landlord carried out any risk assessment.
10. Records showed it was not until October 2024 when the landlord ‘drilled shut’ the doors as a temporary solution. For 6 months the resident and her young family were left in this position with a broken balcony door, constantly posing a health and safety risk.
11. As the landlord acknowledged, its communication with the resident was often inconsistent, causing her distress and confusion about what it planned to do. It had already recognised in May 2024 that the doors were damaged beyond repair, and a replacement would be necessary. It told her it was progressing this, but despite further inspections, there was no progress for 7 months in terms of ordering new doors.
12. In July 2024 the landlord told the resident it would explore a like-for-like replacement but then started to consider an alternative design. That did not happen. It then told her again in January 2025 that it was reverting to its original position and would replace like-for-like. It has offered no explanation for this change in its position, nor any reassurance that the new doors would be safe.
13. The resident has shared with us that the landlord kept offering reassurances that it would take 6 weeks to order new doors. However, it was not until after she had come to our service that it started progressing ordering the new door. In December 2024 it told her there was a ’10-12 week lead time’ and it would aim to install the doors by April 2025.
14. It was not until September 2024 that the landlord tried to offer draught excluders and thermal curtains to the resident as mitigative measures. While these were some positive steps to take, the landlord did not offer these until 5 months after the initial report. It would have been appropriate to offer these temporary measures early on, rather than after prolonged delay. It is also important to note these were not a solution to the problem and did not address the serious health and safety risk posed by the balcony doors hanging on by loose hinges.
15. We understand that there was further delay and the installation was not complete until May 2025.
16. Records showed the landlord held a lot of interdepartmental discussions about this situation, but for a long time made little progress towards resolving the matter. While it carried out many inspections by different surveyors with a view to getting the doors replaced, this did not result in a clear strategy forward. It also neglected a risk assessment. Overall, there was a lack of ownership of the issue, indicating the landlord was unclear about its responsibility.
17. The landlord has already acknowledged that it delayed significantly in resolving the issue, and that its communication with the resident was inconsistent. It apologised for the frustration and inconvenience caused and offered £425.
18. However, we consider the landlord did not go far enough to recognise the significant impact caused by its passive approach to taking ownership. Its prolonged delays, lack of certainty and lack of communication caused significant distress and worry. It should have taken emergency action much sooner to mitigate the risk. At no point did it acknowledge the full extent of the risk and the impact caused to the resident and her young family due to the lack of timely action and responses. It did not demonstrate that it had taken on learning from these events.
19. Due to those reasons, we find severe maladministration in the landlord’s handling of replacement of the balcony doors.

20. In line with our Complaints Handling Code, the landlord’s complaint process has 2 stages. Its complaints policy states that it would acknowledge both stages within 5 working days. It says the resident should then receive a formal response to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days and stage 2 complaints within 20 working days of the complaint acknowledgement.
21. In this case, the landlord did not comply with its policy. Its approach was passive. It failed to acknowledge and progress the resident’s complaint until she wrote to the CEO and also contacted our service. It did not issue a stage 1 response until we intervened in December 2024, 4 months after she made the original complaint.
22. It subsequently also failed to progress her escalation request in good time. There was more than 1 month’s delay in acknowledging that her complaint should progress to stage 2.
23. The landlord has apologised for these delays and recognised those failings. It offered £50 for the failure to action her escalation request but did not offer anything else at stage 2 for the other failings. We consider this does not go far enough to reflect the time and trouble the resident experienced in pursuing this complaint over more than a year.
24. We therefore find maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Learning

25. The landlord’s communication with the resident was inconsistent. It did not offer clear explanations for its change in position regarding replacement of the doors. It kept missing deadlines for actions without providing clear updates and explanations to the resident. If it could have communicated more clearly some of the impact to the resident could have been mitigated.
26. While according to the resident, the landlord replaced the doors in May 2025, it did not provide the relevant repair records to us until we requested this information a third time. The landlord should ensure its databases are up to date and its staff are able to access the information so it could provide this information in a timely manner.