Barking and Dagenham Council (202211917)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202211917

Barking and Dagenham Council

21 February 2023

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 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 repairs to a gate to a communal garage, and the subsequent offer of compensation for this.

Background

2. The resident is a shared-ownership leaseholder of the landlord. She has a parking space in her estate’s communal garage’s gated, private car park.
3. The resident reported to the landlord on 9 February 2022 that the gate to the communal garage on her estate was not opening. An operative from it attended this on the same day and found damage that caused the gate to not fully open, and that the gate required further repair works. A separate repair order was therefore raised by the landlord so that follow-up works could be completed for this.
4. The resident’s stage one complaint of 8 March 2022 to the landlord expressed her dissatisfaction that the car park gate had not yet been repaired by it, despite her paying service charges to it. She also reported that people were entering the garage unauthorised and behaving inappropriately, as this was open, and she sought for it to resolve the issue.
5. Following the resident’s complaint, the landlord’s contractors attended the car park on 12 March 2022 and carried out a full inspection, in which the gate was found to be damaged. The contractors reported that they therefore replaced the fuse, tested the gate, and left this in good working order.
6. The landlord’s stage one complaint response of 22 March 2022 apologised for failures in the service that it had provided to the resident, and for any resulting inconvenience to her, thanking her for her patience. It explained that its contractors were unable to repair the car park gate on their first visit, as they required additional materials to complete this. The landlord further explained that the contractors had therefore performed an additional visit on 19 March 2022, and had completed the repair of the gate.
7. The resident responded to the landlord on the same day, and she reported that the car park gate was still broken and had been “wide open since yesterday”. She requested that it review the issue, and its contractors then attended the site again on 5 April 2022. After a full inspection, they recorded that they were unable to find a fault with the gate that was left operational.
8. On 13 April 2022, the resident requested that her complaint be escalated to the final stage of the landlord’s complaints procedure because the car park gate had not been repaired yet. She expressed that she was frustrated that she could not get through it on the telephone, and that other cars were getting free use of the garage’s charging ports.
9. The landlord therefore arranged for another inspection of the car park gate for 19 April 2022, and the contractors found that the gate was left open. They were unable to perform a required test for their subsequent repairs to the gate, however, as they needed a remote key fob to do so. The gate was therefore left open until this test could be performed, and until they could return to carry out further works to the gate. Following this visit, the landlord chased internally to organise giving its contractors the remote fob that they required for testing on 20 April, 10 and 20 May, and 13 June 2022.
10. On 14 June 2022, the landlord’s contractors found that the car park gate’s remote system was not working, and the contractors needed to use a temporary remote system to fully test the gate. They returned to this on 4 July 2022 and repaired the gate, which was tested and left fully operational. A further inspection on 24 July 2022 confirmed that the gate was operational, with no faults found, and reported to be in full working order.
11. On 29 July 2022, the landlord’s contractors attended the car park gate again, and installed a remote unit, with their testing finding that this was in good working condition. However, they also discovered that new remote key fobs for the gates were needed to replace the residents’ old ones. A quote was subsequently provided to the landlord for the new fobs on 12 August 2022.
12. The resident then contacted this Service on 5 September 2022, as she had not received a final stage complaint response from the landlord. In response to a request by us on 26 September 2022, it provided its final stage complaint response to her on 29 September 2022. The landlord explained the above events that had caused the delay of almost six months in repairing the car park gate, including the complexity of the repair, the need for several parts for this, its lack of regular updates to the resident, and the gaps between its visits.
13. The landlord further explained that the resident’s stage one complaint should not have been closed by it, as this would have allowed it to monitor the car park repair better, and to communicate to her in the interim without her having to spend time pursuing its staff and escalating her complaint. It acknowledged that the repair had exceeded its website’s service standards of seven days, even when considering unavoidable delays from having to source and install new parts and conduct tests, and it offered her £175 compensation to “remedy the injustice caused” by this.
14. Following the landlord’s final stage complaint response, the resident expressed her dissatisfaction to it at the £175 compensation offered, and requested £315 from it for the cost to her of using the garage over the past six months of gate repair delays. She also stated that, according to her contract, the car park was not “functional”, and she requested that it review the CCTV for this.
15. The landlord responded that it did not have access to the car park’s CCTV as this was held by a third party, but that it did not dispute the resident’s reports about the car park’s security due to the length of time taken to repair the gate there. It clarified that the £175 compensation offered to her was intended to reflect the delay in completing the works to this, and the resulting inconvenience to her, and not to reimburse her for the cost of using the car park that she was still able to park in, so that it was unable to reimburse her in full.
16. The resident subsequently complained to this Service because the car park gate was still open, and she was dissatisfied that the landlord had not accepted her request to offer her increased compensation of £315. She reported that the garage was not functional as per her agreement for this, and that her car insurance was not valid while the car park was not secure.
17. The landlord chased internally regarding the distribution of the remote key fobs to its residents on 20, 26, 30 September, and 4 and 26 October 2022. The remote fobs were then confirmed to have been distributed to them by it on 9 November 2022, and the car park gate was “activated” that evening. On 11 November 2022, however, the resident was unable to access the garage, as she had not been provided with a remote fob to do so.
18. The resident subsequently further complained to this Service on 22 November 2022 that the car park gate was still broken. The landlord’s contractor then confirmed that this was a separate issue with the drive-arm of the gate, and that this was not related to the previously broken remote unit. One gate was left operational in manual mode, while the other gate remained operational automatically, with it subsequently seeking to organise the repair of this fault.

Assessment and findings

Scope of Investigation

19. While the resident reports that the condition of the car park gate is contrary to the terms of her separate contractual agreement with the local authority landlord for her parking space, this is outside the scope of this investigation to consider. This is because complaints concerning contractual agreements with local authority landlords that are not part of residents’ occupancy agreements fall properly within the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.
20. The resident has also complained to this Service that the car park gate is still broken, and the landlord’s records show a further fault was identified with this on 22 November 2022. While we sympathise with her frustration that the issue appears to be ongoing, there is no evidence that a complaint from her about the new gate repair has exhausted its complaints procedure yet, and it therefore has not had the opportunity to resolve this through the procedure. As this Service may not consider complaints made prior to the exhaustion of the landlord’s complaints procedure, this aspect of the resident’s complaint is also outside of the scope of this investigation.

The landlord’s handling of repairs to a gate to a communal garage, and the subsequent offer of compensation for this

21. Under the landlord’s website, the right to repair scheme is to ensure that repairs are completed within a certain period of time, but that if further or more permanent works are required then these will be arranged by appointment after the initial visit. It is required to repair broken door entry phones within seven working days, and states that any unspecified repairs that are its responsibility are to be carried out within 20 working days.
22. As acknowledged by the landlord, its communication with the resident regarding the timescale within which the car park gate repair would take place was poor. It failed to inform her that, following its repair of the initial fault with the gate on 9 and 12 February and 19 March 2022, a second fault had been identified with the gate on 19 April 2022, or that the gate would be left open pending further testing. Landlords are instead expected to provide clear next steps to manage a resident’s expectations regarding such further works, and to prevent further inconvenience to them from these by completing the additional works promptly, but the landlord did not do so.
23. Instead, the resident had to wait a total of nine months for the car park gate issues that are the subject of this investigation to be resolved. This is because she first raised a repair report on 9 February 2022, and the repairs for this were not completed until 29 July 2022, while the activation of the gate and the distribution to residents of the new remote key fobs for the gate did not begin until 9 November 2022 onwards.
24. While there were multiple issues with the car park gate that required separate repairs, and intervals within this timeframe when the gate was functional, the resident was not told that there were separate issues. The repair was also far beyond the landlord’s website’s repair timeframes of seven to 20 working days, and she was not kept informed of any ongoing works.
25. When failings on a landlord’s part are identified, this Service’s role is to consider whether the redress offered by the landlord has put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily. This is in accordance with our dispute resolution principles to be fair, put things right and learn from outcomes.
26. In this case, the landlord partly put matters right by acknowledging the car park gate repair delay in its complaint responses and explaining the events to her that had caused the delay. Furthermore, it apologised to her in its stage one complaint response for the failings in its service, and it thanked her for her patience during the delay. The landlord’s final stage complaint response also acknowledged that it had incorrectly closed the resident’s complaint following its stage one response, and that the delay could have been reduced and she could have been better informed throughout the process had it not closed this.
27. However, there was additionally an onus to offer a fair and proportionate amount of compensation to the resident in recognition of the failings in the resident’s case on the landlord’s part. Its final stage complaint response offered £175 compensation to her for its failures to keep her updated, monitor the case, and escalate her complaint at the correct time. This nevertheless did not recognise all of the landlord’s failings, especially when taking into consideration all of the circumstances of the resident’s case.
28. The landlord did not show that it used these failings as a learning opportunity to improve its future service by learning from the outcome of the resident’s case. It has therefore been recommended below to review its staff’s training needs with regard to their handling of prolonged outstanding communal repairs, and of their communication with residents on the status of these. This is in order to seek to ensure that they communicate about these promptly and regularly to prevent the landlord’s repair and communication delays in the resident’s case from occurring again in the future.
29. Moreover, despite the contractor delivering the new remote key fobs for the car park gate to the landlord on 13 September 2022, it did not confirm that the gate had been activated or that these had begun to be distributed to its residents until 9 November 2022. This added approximately a further eight weeks to the resolution of this issue, which was unreasonable, because the distribution of the key fobs was the only barrier to it doing so.
30. The landlord’s website outlines that its complaints procedure states that a final stage complaint will be acknowledged within five working days, and that a final response will be provided within 30 working days. If it is unable to meet this timescale, the complaints procedure outlines that the resident should be sent a progress report.
31. There is no evidence, however, that the landlord acknowledged either of the resident’s stage one or final stage complaints. This was contrary to its complaints procedure, and to this Service’s complaint handling code, which requires stage one complaints to be acknowledged within five working days, and so this was a failing on its part. This led to the resident being inconvenienced, as she had to contact this Service on 5 September 2022, for us to ask the landlord to respond to her, before she received a final stage complaint response from it on 29 September 2022. Acknowledgements also serve to inform residents about the complaints procedure, which would have benefitted her.
32. Furthermore, the landlord’s final stage complaint response of 29 September 2022 was 114 working days after the resident’s escalation of her complaint to the final stage of the complaints procedure on 13 April 2022. It appropriately acknowledged that it did not provide a final stage complaint response when she initially attempted to escalate her complaint. The landlord also said that the repair may have been completed quicker had the complaint not been closed, but it failed to explain why it had closed the complaint before providing a response. It nevertheless considered this failing, among others, when it awarded her £175 compensation.
33. The satisfactory resolution of the resident’s complaint was not prevented by the landlord’s complaint handling failings. However, this was unnecessarily delayed by over five months from her first attempt to submit a stage one complaint to it on 13 April 2022 onwards. The landlord has therefore been recommended that it review its staff’s training needs regarding their application of its complaints procedure, and of this Service’s complaint handling code, in order to ensure that these are followed to prevent its complaint handling delays in the resident’s case from occurring again in the future.
34. Moreover, it is noted that the landlord’s complaints procedure is not in line with this Service’s complaint handling code. The latter instead outlines that landlords should acknowledge stage one complaints within five working days, issue stage one complaint responses within ten working days, and issue final stage complaint responses within 20 working days. The landlord has therefore been ordered below to self-assess its complaints procedure against our complaint handling code, and to publish the results, to ensure that the procedure is in line with the code.
35. In summary, while the landlord put some matters right for the resident, the lack of a proportionate amount of compensation to recognise all of its failings in her case was a further failing on its part. The level of compensation that it offered her was disproportionately low when the length of the delays to the nine-month-long car park gate repair resolution and the 114-working-day final stage complaint response are considered. This is particularly because the resolution of the repair remained outstanding until 9 November 2022, which was over six weeks after the resident had received her final stage complaint response on 29 September 2022.
36. In light of the further failings identified above, the landlord has been ordered below to pay another £100 compensation to the resident, in addition to the £175 that it previously offered her, if she has not received this already. This is in recognition of the full length of the delay to resolve the repair to the car park gate, its poor communication with her throughout this time, and its complaint handling failings. This is in line with this Service’s remedies guidance, which suggests further compensation from £100 where there has been a failure in service by the landlord which has adversely affected the resident, and its offer was not proportionate to address her detriment, or to the failings identified by our investigation.

Determination

37. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of repairs to a gate to a communal garage, and the subsequent offer of compensation for this.

Orders and recommendations

38. The landlord is ordered to:
    1. Pay the resident £275 total compensation within four weeks, this is broken down as:
       1. The £175 that it previously offered her, if she has not received this already.
       2. £100 in recognition of her distress, inconvenience, time, and trouble during the delays for it to resolve the repair and respond to her final stage complaint.
    2. Self-assess its complaints procedure against this Service’s complaint handling code at https://www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk/landlords-info/complaint-handling-code/, and publish the results, to ensure that the procedure is in line with the code.
39. It is recommended that the landlord:
    1. Review its staff’s training needs with regard to their handling of prolonged outstanding communal repairs, and of their communication with residents on the status of these. This is in order to seek to ensure that they communicate about these promptly and regularly to prevent its repair and communication delays in the resident’s case from occurring again in the future.
    2. Review its staff’s training needs regarding their application of its complaints procedure, and of this Service’s complaint handling code, in order to ensure that these are followed to prevent its complaint handling delays in the resident’s case from occurring again in the future.
40. The landlord shall contact this Service within four weeks to confirm it has complied the above orders, and whether it will follow the above recommendations.