Barking and Dagenham Council (201911211)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 201911211

Barking and Dagenham Council

16 July 2021

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

This complaint is about the level of compensation awarded by the landlord for its delays in removing items from the communal area of the resident’s block and in its handling of the related complaint.

Background and summary of events

Background

The resident is a secure tenant of a one-bedroom first floor flat within a low-level block. The landlord is a local authority.
The landlord has a tenancy handbook that sets out that residents must not ‘leave any personal belongings or rubbish in shared stairways, halls and landings’ and that the landlord ‘will remove anything’ left in these areas and charge residents for this. It adds that it ‘will not be responsible for any loss’ caused if it has to move items.
The landlord has a fire safety procedure that it says it introduced in February 2020. This requires the landlord to:
1. rate the risk of items left in communal spaces through fire risk assessment inspections
2. remove items within 24 hours (highly flammable materials), 3 days (items blocking fire escape routes), 7 days (items partially blocking escape routes) or 20 days (minor items not blocking escape routes) depending on the risk
3. visit or write to the property that is responsible for the item to request removal within the timescales set out above
4. attach a notice on the item requesting removal within 24 hours where it is not clear who is responsible for it
5. arrange removal and re-charge the removal and storage costs to any resident who subsequently comes forward to claim the item.
The landlord’s website shows that it has a caretaking service, the main role of which is ‘to clean all the communal internal areas of our housing blocks’ by carrying out patrol of estates, repairing communal doors, replacing light bulbs, unblocking chutes and removing offensive graffiti and large items of rubbish.
The landlord has a two-stage complaints process with responses required within 10 working days at stage one and within 30 working days at the final review stage.

Summary of Events

The resident made a complaint on 26 August 2019. He complained that:
1. he spoke to a member of staff on 5 June 2019 about ongoing drain issues which led to an inspection the following day that recommended pipework repairs but no jobs had been raised
2. this had caused a blocked drain, bugs in the area and a potential rat problem
3. a caretaking supervisor attended on 11 June 2019 in response to what they had been told was a complaint about the cleanliness of the block (which the resident disputed as he said the regular caretaker does a good job) and commented on a chair and some carpet that had been left in the block and were apparently fire hazards
4. the landlord had taken no actions to remove the fire hazards since then and the resident referred to recent fire safety incidents in the borough and elsewhere.
The landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint on 27 August 2019 – it advised that it would respond by 9 September 2019. It sent a follow up email to the resident on 10 September 2019 to advise it would now respond in full by 23 September 2019.
The resident wrote to the landlord on 24 September 2019 to query why he had not received a response.
The landlord’s internal records show that emails were exchanged between a landlord services officer and caretaking staff on 15 October 2019 with a view to visiting the resident’s address to address any fire hazards on site.
The landlord wrote to the resident on 16 January 2020. It acknowledged that a response was outstanding for the complaint he made in August 2019.
The resident wrote to the landlord on 20 January 2020. He advised that the drain issue had not been addressed until 29 November 2019 and that the carpet and laminate flooring had not been cleared until 22 November 2019. He asked for a refund of all services he pays for dating back to 11 June 2019.
The resident chased the landlord on 5 February 2020 and 27 February 2020 for a complaint response.
Following contact from the resident, this Service raised the case with the landlord on 17 March 2020.
The landlord issued a complaint response to the resident on 15 June 2020 for the complaint about the drainage and fire safety issues. It apologised for the delay and concluded that:
1. the drain issue was fully rectified on 27 January 2020 and an apology was offered for the landlord’s failure to consider the resident’s request for a de-greaser
2. the carpet and laminate flooring were removed on 22 November 2019
3. caretaking teams do not have authority to remove items from communal areas until a warning is given to the residents who own the items – in this case, the warning was offered but there was a delay in removal of the items by caretakers
4. £75 compensation was offered for the delays in removal of items and the complaint handling but a caretaking charge refund would not be awarded as the block did receive a caretaking service.
The resident submitted a complaint escalation to the landlord on 15 June 2020. He requested a refund of caretaking charges and raised concerns that:
1. the caretaker manager had not treated the items in communal areas as a priority
2. the process to seek permission from a resident before removing a dangerous item was negligent
3. the cleanliness of the block is unimportant if it is dangerous to live there.
The landlord wrote to the resident on 27 July 2020 – this was its final complaint response. It concluded that:
1. when the issue of items in the communal areas was raised, there was a policy to allow residents 14 days to respond to a request to remove them
2. this policy had now been changed to allow for caretakers to remove ‘critical hazards’ within 24 hours
3. its £75 compensation offer was a reasonable offer for the delay in removing the items.
The resident wrote to this Service in August 2020 and October 2020 to explain that he did not accept the £75 compensation award was appropriate given this had been a fire safety issue and to contest that the landlord should instead have refunded his caretaking charges of £183.60 for the period 11 June 2019 to 29 November 2019.

Assessment and findings

In reaching a decision we consider whether the landlord has kept to the law, followed proper procedure and good practice, and acted in a reasonable way. Our duty is to determine complaints by reference to what is, in this Service’s opinion, fair in all the circumstances of the case.
It is not disputed that the landlord became aware of two items in the communal area of the resident’s block on 11 June 2019 – a chair and some flooring. It raised these with the resident, presumably in case he was aware of who was responsible for the items. It is of concern that the landlord has not offered any records of this visit and what level of risk it attributed to the items.
The landlord has advised in its complaint correspondence that it wrote to a neighbouring property about the items but has been unable to offer any evidence of this. The landlord has failed to demonstrate that any actions were taken until the items were removed in late November 2019, together with a front door that had also been left in the communal walkway. This meant that it took more than five months for the landlord to remove the items – this delay was unreasonable.
The landlord has since explained that it did not have a specific policy in place for removal of items in communal areas and that this was introduced in February 2020. However, there was a relevant condition in the tenancy handbook that the landlord could have relied upon to progress the removal (and tenancy enforcement if necessary) but there is no evidence that the landlord considered this. Its failure to do so was inappropriate, particularly given its staff had seemingly assessed that there was a health and safety risk in leaving the items where they were.
The resident submitted his initial complaint about this matter on 26 August 2019. Although the landlord acknowledged the complaint, it failed to provide a stage one complaint response until 15 June 2020. It should have provided the stage one complaint response within 10 working days and the delay of nine months was inappropriate.
The resident chased the landlord twice during the June-November 2019 period when the items were still in the communal areas. He also chased the related complaint response in January 2020 and February 2020, before approaching this Service to assist with a resolution. This demonstrates that the delay by the landlord caused unnecessary time and trouble for the resident.
The landlord refused the resident’s request for a refund of his caretaking charges on the grounds that the caretaker had continued to offer a service during the June-November 2019 period and that the resident had offered positive feedback on this. It was reasonable for the landlord to consider the range of responsibilities the caretaker had and determine that a full refund for this service was not appropriate given the main duties of the caretaker had been delivered during the period in question. The landlord’s decision to instead offer a compensation award was therefore reasonable.
The landlord acknowledged in its stage one complaint response that there had been delays in the removal of items and in the complaint handling and made a compensation proposal to the resident of £75 in recognition of this. Given the excessive delays of five months in the removal of items and nine months in responding to the resident’s complaint, this level of compensation did not offer sufficient redress to the resident.
In summary, there were delays in the landlord’s removal of items from communal areas, which it had assessed to be a fire safety risk, and in its stage one complaint response to the resident. Its compensation award of £75 failed to offer the resident sufficient redress for these service failures.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in the level of compensation it awarded for its delays in removing items from the communal area of the resident’s block and in its handling of the related complaint.

Reasons

The landlord delayed in removing items from communal areas of the resident’s block and in responding to his complaint about this and its compensation award was not sufficient given the circumstances of the case.

Orders

The landlord to pay the resident compensation of £200, comprised of:
1. £75 in recognition of the distress and inconvenience caused to him by its delay in removing items from communal areas
2. £125 in recognition of the inconvenience and time and trouble caused to him by its delay in responding to the complaint.

The landlord should confirm compliance with this order to this Service within four weeks of the date of this report.

Recommendations

The landlord to write to this Service within four weeks of the date of this report to explain how it will ensure that it prevents excessive delays in responding to complaints in future.