A2Dominion Housing Group Limited (202114719)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202114719

A2Dominion Housing Group Limited

8 April 2022

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

The resident complained about the landlord’s handling of her:
1. Transfer request.
2. Associated complaint.

Background and summary of events

Background

Since February 2011 the resident has lived with her four children in a second floor two-bedroom flat, owned by the landlord. The property has no lift. In 2017 the resident sought to transfer to a more suitable property on the grounds of overcrowding (insufficient bedrooms) and an ongoing medical condition (restricting her use of the stairs).
Having first applied for a transfer in 2017, the resident had been awarded a Priority band B on the grounds of overcrowding but a lesser priority band C for an ongoing medical condition (a banding she unsuccessfully disputed), giving her an overall priority band B. Under the allocations policy, had the resident been awarded a band B medical priority the two band Bs (on overcrowding and medical grounds) would combined have given the resident a composite band A priority for a move. However, it is events from March 2020 that formed the subject matter of the resident’s formal complaint to the landlord, and which fall to be considered here.

Summary of events

In March 2020, the resident told the landlord that her medical condition had deteriorated and provided the medical opinion of her doctor that her current flat was unsuitable for her restricted mobility. The resident’s doctor recommended she be transferred to either a ground floor property or one with a lift. In July 2020 the landlord’s medical advisor considered this medical opinion but maintained a band C award on medical grounds. This meant the resident’s overall band B priority for a transfer remained. In August/September 2020 the resident challenged this banding directly with the landlord and submitted further opinion from her doctor, but having considered this, the landlord’s medical advisor maintained that a medical band C was appropriate.
On 13 November 2020 the resident broke her leg and on 15 December 2020 she asked the landlord for an urgent reassessment of her housing needs. Through January 2021 the resident chased the landlord for a response and acknowledgement of receipt of medical documents, but her contact with a number of members of staff elicited no update. On 2 February 2021 she received the medical advisor’s assessment that a band C medical priority was still appropriate. The medical advisor had concluded that despite the resident’s long-term mobility issue, her recent leg fracture was of a shorter-term nature and so did not necessitate a banding upgrade.
The resident immediately disputed this conclusion with the landlord which explained the process by which new medical evidence could be assessed and put to the panel if a banding upgrade was recommended by its advisor. It explained that if no upgrade was recommended it would still update her.
The resident sought an occupational therapy (OT) assessment and sought the landlord’s assistance in obtaining this from the local authority. This required some chasing on her part until the landlord agreed to liaise with the local authority for its commission. The resident submitted her doctor’s opinion supporting a band A on medical grounds, followed on 7 April 2021 by an OT report recommending a high priority move due to overcrowding and the risk of the resident falling on the stairs. This was forwarded by the landlord to its medical advisors for assessment. The landlord’s records indicate that it was aware of a forthcoming panel hearing on 19 April 2021 and, noting its medical advisors’ backlogs, had asked that the assessment be prioritised.
The April panel meeting passed and by the end of April 2021, unaware of progress but aware of the forthcoming May panel meeting, the resident formally complained to the landlord about her medical banding and lack of updates from its lettings team despite her chasing.
During the course of the next month the landlord’s medical advisors reassessed the resident’s medical priority from band C to band B on receipt of further opinion from the resident’s doctor as to the longer-term implications of her leg break and a reiteration of the OT’s findings. As the two band B awards potentially entitled the resident to a composite priority band A for transfer to a 4-bedroom property, this needed to go before the lettings panel for a decision.
Meanwhile, on 9 June 2021 the landlord responded to the resident’s complaint. It confirmed her medical banding had been reassessed from C to B and would go before that month’s lettings panel. It outlined the transfer systems open to her to help facilitate a move. The landlord apologised for its poor communication, explaining its lettings team did not record calls made or received but that all unanswered calls were picked up by its customer service team and logged for a call back. It apologised if that had not happened. It said it had now made both its teams aware of the need to pass on information and return calls; and had also carried out staff training about record-keeping and reminded staff of the importance of maintaining clear, accurate and up to date records. It apologised that it had failed to acknowledge receipt of her OT report, failed to tell her of its advisors’ delays and failed to keep her updated.
On 17 June 2021 the lettings panel confirmed the medical band B, and a consequent composite band A priority move was awarded for a six month period with immediate effect, after which it would be reviewed. This time limit was on the basis that the resident was due an operation after which the landlord considered there might be some improvement to her condition. The landlord notified the resident of its decision and explained that owing to the existence of more three than four-bedroom properties she could continue to bid for a three-bedroom property in order to try and move sooner. This would alleviate, albeit not solve, the overcrowding issue at the property.
Having been notified of the revised banding, the resident challenged the six-month time limit on the grounds that her mobility issue was long-term. She declined to continue bidding for three-bedroom properties on the basis of the composition of her family, noting that despite having done so it had not helped her move any quicker. In response, the lettings team maintained that the six-month period of the composite band A would remain with effect from 17 June 2021. It pointed out the eventual review would not necessarily mean the banding would change but explained her right of appeal against the panel decision. With reference to her previous failed bids for three-bed properties, the lettings team explained that a system fault, now fixed, which had inadvertently allowed all applicants to bid on all property sizes would have contributed to this.
The resident appealed the panel decision, disputing it was unable to change the effective dates of priority bandings and citing as unfair the six-month time limit, as it was contrary to the medical evidence of her long-term medical need. She also sought an escalation of her complaint for review on the same grounds, but also on the grounds that the above system fault had led her to believe she was getting closer to securing a three-bed property.
In its complaint review the landlord explained that the priority banding effective date was the date the banding change was made, as per its allocations policy and that it had considered current medical evidence. It explained the need for the six-month review was because medical advice was that there could be some improvement to her medical condition following an operation, but that the review did not necessarily mean the banding would be downgraded. It apologised for the shortage of suitable accommodation on which to bid, reiterating she remained able to bid alternatively for three bed properties.

Assessment and findings

The resident’s ability to bid for suitable properties is determined by the priority banding ascribed by the landlord to her transfer application and this banding is based on her identified rehousing needs. The banding accorded to transfer applications is decided by the landlord in accordance with its allocations policy as follows:
Band A – this is the emergency/top priority banding and can include an applicant that fits into two or more categories in band B and is judged to have a higher overall priority (as confirmed by its lettings panel); and an applicant whose life is considered to be in immediate danger should they stay, or the current housing is seriously impacting an emergency medical need.
Band B – this is classified as an urgent need to move and includes an applicant who is severely overcrowded (i.e. by 2 or more bedrooms); or has an urgent medical need seriously affected by their current housing.
Band C – this is an identified need to move and incudes an identified medical need shown to be affected by current housing. The policy explains that the combination of a band B and C will result in an overall band B priority banding.
For its medical determinations the landlord relies on the opinion of an independent medical advisory service which considers the documentation provided by the landlord, including evidence from the resident. The advisor’s assessment will determine any medical need and if so, which priority banding this should attract. If the recommended banding represents a change to an existing banding it will go before the landlord’s lettings panel for a final decision on the banding to be ascribed. If no change is recommended it will not go before the panel and the landlord’s lettings team will notify the resident of that fact. If a resident disputes a medical banding decision, they can request a reassessment by the landlord’s medical advisers, but only on the basis of new supporting evidence.
The landlord’s lettings panel can consider/assess cases outside the normal criteria; may make a decision relating to any provision of the allocations policy; and have discretion to waive a provision. Its panel meetings are held monthly, and its decisions relayed to the lettings team who inform the resident. Should a change in banding be approved the effective date of such a decision will be the date the decision was made. If unhappy with a lettings panel decision, a resident can appeal it within 20 working days if they believe the landlord has not acted in accordance with relevant policies.
As the resident will appreciate, it is for the landlord, not the Ombudsman, to determine a resident’s priority banding for a move. It does so through the application of its allocations policy, in consideration of the available medical evidence, and on the opinion of its medical advisors. The role of the Ombudsman is to consider whether in its handling of the resident’s request for a priority move and her subsequent complaint the landlord acted in accordance with relevant policies and procedures – namely its allocations, and complaints policies and procedures – and that its actions were fair and reasonable in all the circumstances of the case.
Although the Ombudsman is mindful of the fact that the resident had been pursuing an application for transfer since 2017, it is the events in 2020/2021 that formed the subject of her formal complaint to the landlord, and which fall to be considered here. Similarly, while her current housing position is unclear, events which occurred after the resident brought her complaint to this Service in September 2021 and which are not directly related to the events which led up to her complaint, are not relevant to the Ombudsman’s consideration in this report. So, turning to the complaint which falls to be considered here the Ombudsman has found as follows:
Transfer request: Having reviewed the available evidence, the central issue and the one which clearly caused the resident the most obvious and understandable upset was that in relation to the landlord’s medical advisors’ determination of the extent of her medical priority for a move. This essentially boiled down to a difference of opinion between hers and the landlord’s doctors. There is no evidence, however, that the landlord failed to submit the medical evidence she had provided on each occasion, or that it was slow to do so. Nor is there evidence that the medical advisors then failed to consider the relevant doctor’s and OT reports – as each of its decisions referenced such – but simply that its doctors, the medical professionals the landlord had appropriately instructed to determine the extent of her medical priority came to a different conclusion to that of her doctor.
Whilst understandably frustrating and upsetting for the resident, the landlord was entitled to rely on the opinion of the appropriately qualified medical professionals it had instructed to determine medical priority. And when their assessment was to maintain priority at band C, the landlord acted in accordance with its allocations policy in not putting the case forward to its panel for consideration of an overall priority re-banding. The Ombudsman has therefore found no evidence of service failure by the landlord with regard to events through 2020.
When the resident broke her leg towards the end of 2020, however, the Ombudsman has found evidence of administrative shortcomings in the landlord’s handling of the process thereafter. While the landlord was not itself directly responsible for the delays and backlogs of its medical advisors (which the landlord says were the result of increased requests during the pandemic), it was aware of these backlogs and as such ought to have passed that information on to the resident. Rather, the landlord appears to have taken the view that until it had something to report, i.e., a medical adviser’s assessment or a panel decision, it had no cause to communicate with the resident.
The Ombudsman considers it was unreasonable and lacking in necessary customer focus for the landlord to assume that unless a decision had been made no information or update was required by the resident. To be told of likely timescales in advance, although disappointing, can at least enable a resident to prepare themselves, practically and emotionally, for the wait and spare them the inconvenience and frustration of chasing progress unnecessarily. Further, when an update is requested, the landlord ought to be in a position to provide it, while at the same time providing it with a prompt to review of progress and identify any potential need for intervention.
The Ombudsman welcomes the landlord’s confirmation that it now has in place a process to not only inform residents about current delays with medical assessments; to confirm assessments/decisions in writing; and to respond and acknowledge emails and documents received from residents which are of a medical nature. This last point is important because in cases such as this it would help ensure any relevant change of circumstance for the resident and potential need to expedite an assessment are promptly identified by the landlord.
Directly related to the landlord’s failure to advise the resident of delays and manage her expectation as to timescales was its failure to return the resident’s calls and respond to her emails. This service failure was an understandable and considerable source of increasing frustration for the resident through 2021. Although the available evidence here is somewhat patchy, largely as the lettings team did not keep a record of incoming/outgoing calls, the Ombudsman has seen evidence of the resident repeatedly chasing the landlord for updates and progress on the reassessment and of having been promised call backs that did not materialise.
The landlord has acknowledged that it failed to do so, and specifically that its lettings and customer service teams failed to work together sufficiently well to ensure queries and call back requests were responded to. It is therefore appropriate that the landlord identify learning from the complaint and take action to ensure against any similar failure in the future. The Ombudsman therefore welcomes the fact that as a result of the complaint the landlord has carried out staff training on record keeping and reminded staff of the importance of returning calls and passing on information.
Nevertheless, the Ombudsman expects a landlord to keep accurate and up to date records sufficient to enable oversight of its responses to enquiries and to provide an audit trail of its actions and decisions. Its failure to do so in this case resulted in the resident’s enquiries effectively falling down the gap between its respective teams, resulting in its failure to provide her with the prompt replies and updates to which she was entitled.
As it is such a fundamental aspect of good administration for a landlord to maintain a clear audit trail of advice given and decisions made, to have had no record of calls to and from its lettings team was poor administrative practice. As a result, the Ombudsman would like clarity on what the landlord has done through staff training and revised working practices to ensure that going forward it has a full record of the communication between its lettings and customer service teams and residents, and specifically how this will be managed to prevent enquiries and requests for updates/call backs falling down between the gaps.
Turning now to the delays themselves, the Ombudsman has specifically considered the impact of these on the resident. There is some evidence of time being lost between February – March 2021 when the landlord was slow to respond to the resident’s request for help in obtaining the OT report from her local authority, during which time she chased and prompted the landlord to respond. This delay evidently caused the resident some stress and inconvenience.
Although there was then a further three weeks from the landlord’s receipt of the OT report on 16 April 2021 and its receipt of its medical adviser’s assessment on 10 May 2021, the delay here lay with the medical advisors, not the landlord. Furthermore, the landlord acted appropriately, in light of the OT recommendation, in asking that its medical advisors prioritise assessment of the case, effectively taking it out of turn. Nevertheless, as the advisor’s resulting assessment was for a retention of the medical band C, the case would not have been put to the next panel meeting on 14 May 2021 in any event. Thus, the preceding delay, whilst frustrating for the resident, made no material difference to the position of her priority banding at that point. Subsequently, the time taken before the next scheduled panel meeting on 17 June 2021 and the granting of a composite band A, was due to a difference of opinion between the resident’s doctor and OT, and the landlord’s medical advisors. Again, whilst evidently upsetting and exasperating for the resident, this was not the result of service failure by the landlord.
Similarly, while the resident disagreed with the June panel’s decision to review the re-banding after six months, this decision was based on the professional opinion of the landlord’s medical advisors, upon which the landlord was entitled to rely. And it was a decision against which the resident ultimately had, and exercised, a right of appeal. It was not service failure on the part of the landlord.
With regard to the information and advice that was given to the resident, the Ombudsman notes that once the resident had been awarded an overall band A priority for a move, the landlord’s advice that she could also bid for three bed properties was given in accordance with its allocations policy. This states that in order to make best use of its housing stock to assist overcrowding, when there may not be a suitable property, a resident may be allowed to bid on a bigger property than their current one but smaller than they need. It is not clear precisely what problems the resident encountered in bidding for three-bedroom properties. However, her disappointment at wrongly being led to believe she was getting close to being successful in her bidding is understandable. The landlord acknowledges a system fault – now fixed – was partly the cause of this. In light of the fact that the resident chose, for entirely legitimate family reasons, not to ultimately pursue the option of a three-bedroom property, the Ombudsman does not see that the system fault at that time caused her any lasting detriment.
Finally, regarding the landlord’s handling of the transfer application following the award of the composite priority band A, the Ombudsman notes that the landlord’s explanation of the effective date of its decision was in accordance with its allocations policy. Its advice regarding her right of appeal against the decision was also appropriate. It would appear the resident appealed on the same day she was told of her right to do so (22 June 2021). The Ombudsman considers it would have been better administrative practice for the landlord to have notified her of that right at the same time it notified her of its decision (18 June 2021). The information coming later, however, caused a delay of only a matter of days which was of no real detriment to the resident, with the landlord then promptly acknowledging the appeal the day it was submitted.
Complaint handling: Firstly, it is not clear why it took over five weeks for the landlord to provide its initial (Stage 1) complaint response, when under its complaints procedure it aims to reply within 10 working days. This was therefore a considerable delay and one which will have done little to give the resident confidence that her complaint was being considered with due expediency.
With regard to the substance of the complaint, however, the landlord appropriately addressed both elements, namely the banding determination and its communication. Its decision to partially uphold the complaint was in the Ombudsman’s view evidence-based and clearly explained. Having identified that its lettings and customer service teams had not worked together sufficiently well, it was right that the landlord explain how it had learnt from the complaint, together with its assurance that action had been taken to prevent a similar failure in the future. In acknowledging its failures, however, the landlord did not go on to consider whether any further remedy might be due to the resident for the impact on her of that failure. That omission, and the delayed response constituted service failure.
With regard to its (Stage 2) review of the resident’s complaint, the evidence indicates the landlord’s response reasonably addressed the specific points of the resident’s complaint; it accurately explained the effective date as per its allocations policy; and reasonably explained that the six-month review was the result of medical opinion and carried no guarantee of a downgrade. And unlike its initial response, the review was not unduly delayed: the resident had requested an escalation on 18 June 2021; the landlord had replied on 19 July 2021; and under its complaints policy the landlord undertakes to do so within 20 working days. It did, however, fail to take the opportunity to consider redress for its earlier identified failings.

Determination (decision)

In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s transfer request.
In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders

Within four weeks of the date of this determination the landlord is ordered to:
1. Pay the resident £250 compensation for the communication failures identified in this report.
2. Pay the resident £100 compensation for its delayed complaint response and inadequate consideration of redress.
3. Provide the Ombudsman with details of the changes it has since made to its administrative processes to ensure a record is kept of communication between residents and its lettings and customer service teams; and to ensure respective enquiries are responded to by the appropriate team at the earliest opportunity.
4. Provide this Service with evidence of compliance with these orders.