Clarion Housing Association Limited (202419596)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202419596

Clarion Housing Association Limited

16 July 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 the resident’s reports of a leak in her garden.
  2. We have also looked at the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Background

  1. The resident has an assured tenancy with the landlord, a housing association.
  2. The resident first reported a leak in her back garden to the landlord on 7 May 2024. She told it there was sewage coming up through a hole she had dug herself as part of private works she was completing in the garden.
  3. The landlord’s drainage contractor attended that evening but was unable to complete repairs to resolve the leak. It confirmed the leak was not sewage but water, likely from the mains pipe.
  4. The landlord’s surveyor and its contractor completed a joint visit to the resident’s property on 10 May 2024. The contractor carried out dye testing and recommended that it return to carry out excavation works to investigate the source of the underground leak.
  5. The resident made a complaint to the landlord on 13 May 2024. She told the landlord there had been a lack of action on its part in resolving the leak and that she had been emptying buckets of water on a regular basis to stop the garden flooding. She also told it the leak was having a physical and mental impact on her.
  6. The contractor dropped off sandbags to the resident’s property and placed them around the leak on 15 May 2024.
  7. The contractor returned to the property on 17 May 2024. It traced the leak to a privately owned property nearby and told the landlord it would liaise with the owner of the private property directly. It also made a hole in the rainwater pipe in the resident’s garden to allow the water from the leak to drain away.
  8. The contractor completed investigatory works in the garden of the private property on 4 June 2024. However, it found the leak was coming from another neighbouring property, one which was owned and managed by the landlord.
  9. The contractor completed works to the second property and resolved the leak on 11 June 2024. Whilst completing this work, it found a second leak under the neighbour’s conservatory. The contractor asked them to clear the area so that it could take up the floor to complete repairs to resolve the second leak.
  10. The landlord issued the resident with its stage 1 response to her complaint on 19 June 2024. It said:
    1. It had failed to resolve matters regarding the leak in the resident’s garden within the timescales it holds itself to.
    2. It was sorry for the delays in responding to her complaint.
    3. The rubble in her garden was not the result of drainage works but of her own private works and it would not remove it.
    4. It was unable to identify any service failure.
  11. The resident requested the landlord escalate her complaint to stage 2 of its process on 21 June 2024. She said there were inaccuracies in the landlord’s stage 1 response, the leak was still ongoing, and it had failed to call her back when she asked it to.
  12. The contractor returned to the neighbour’s property on 28 June 2024 to complete works under the conservatory, but they were unable to grant access for the works and rebooked the appointment for 18 July 2024.
  13. The contractor completed works to resolve the second leak at the neighbour’s property on 18 July 2024. It noted there was a small amount of water ingress, but it believed this was from a nearby stream.
  14. The contractor returned to the resident’s property on 25 July 2024 and caried out a ‘closed-circuit television survey’ (CCTV). It confirmed that there were no structural defects within the drainage system and no follow-on works required.
  15. The landlord issued the resident with its stage 2 response to her complaint on 13 August 2024. It said:
    1. It was satisfied there had been acceptable progression of the drainage works and that delays were due to its contractor needing to organise access to multiple properties in order to trace the leak.
    2. The leak was resolved but its contractor had advised there may be water ingress underground from a nearby stream.
    3. Its contractor had made attempts to visit the resident’s property to back fill any remaining areas of the garden, but the resident had refused access.
    4. It had identified a failure in the time taken for it to respond to the resident’s complaint and offered her £50 compensation for this.
    5. It had not identified any instances where it failed to return the resident’s calls but did accept there might have been delays in its communication with her. It offered the resident £100 compensation for these failures.
  16. The resident responded to the landlord on 13 August 2024 to say there was still a leak and that the local water company had attended and confirmed this. She said she would not allow the landlord’s contractor access to make good the holes it made in her garden whilst the leak was still ongoing.

Events after the landlord’s final response

  1. The landlord contacted the resident on 18 February 2025 to offer a further £50 compensation in recognition of its failure to respond to the resident’s complaint at stage 1 of its process within its published timescales.
  2. The landlord issued the resident’s Member of Parliament (MP) with a response regarding the leak on 20 September 2024. It said that a local water company had identified a further leak at another neighbour’s property in September 2024, and it was waiting on them to investigate the matter further.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. We are aware there has been a further leak which was identified in September 2024 as coming from a different neighbouring property to the ones referenced in this investigation. Whilst we understand this is causing the resident distress, it is outside the scope of our investigation to look at a separate leak because the landlord needs to have the opportunity to respond to this through its complaints process before the Ombudsman becomes formally involved. This investigation will cover the period of time from the resident’s first report of the leak in her garden in May 2024, to the landlord’s final complaint response in August 2024 and any actions it committed to as part of its final response. The resident may be able to make another complaint to the landlord should she be dissatisfied with its handling of the further leak identified in September 2024.
  2. The resident has told us that her granddaughter fell over and hurt herself in the garden as a result of the uneven ground caused by the works carried out by the landlord’s contractor. She has also told us that the leak has had a physical and mental impact on her. The Ombudsman can consider the distress and inconvenience any failings by the landlord may have caused, but we cannot determine effect of the landlord’s action or inaction on the health of the resident and her family. Any such claim would be more appropriately progressed through liability insurance or as a civil action through the courts. If the resident wishes to pursue a personal injury claim, she can seek independent legal advice.

The landlord’s policies and procedures

  1. The landlord’s responsive repairs and maintenance policy states it will attend emergency repairs within 24 hours and non-emergency repairs within 28 days.
  2. The landlord’s complaints policy states it will log complaints within 5 working days of receipt and operates a 2 stage complaints procedure. The timeframes in its procedure mirror that of our Complaint Handling Code (the Code), which sets out our Service’s expectations of a landlord’s complaint handling practices. The Code states stage 1 complaint responses must be sent within 10 working days, and stage 2 complaint responses sent within 20 working days.

The landlord’s handling of the leak in the garden

  1. The landlord’s contractor attended to the resident’s report of the leak within 24 hours. It acted appropriately and in accordance with its published timescales for emergency repairs.
  2. We understand the resident emptied buckets of water from the leak in efforts to prevent it impacting the rest of her garden. However, we have not seen any evidence that the leak would have caused danger to the resident or structural damage to the property and so we have concluded the landlord took timely action by placing sandbags around the area 6 working days after the leak was first reported. The landlord also diverted the leak into the rainwater pipe 2 days after this which further demonstrates its attempts to reduce the impact of the leak to the resident and her use of the garden during this time.
  3. The resident has told us the landlord’s handling of the leak caused tension between her and the neighbour of the private property as they had to pay the contractor to carry out works themselves. However, the landlord was not responsible for the drainage contractor’s handling of the leak at this point as this was a private property and not owned or managed by the landlord. The neighbour was responsible for fixing any leaks coming from their property. As such, it was not responsible for any tension or breakdown in relationship between the resident and her neighbour regarding the leak.
  4. The landlord was also entitled to rely on the recommendations of its drainage contractor once it was made aware that the leak was coming from another neighbour, whose property the landlord owns and manages itself. The landlord acted appropriately by authorising this further work in its continued attempts to identify the source of the leak.
  5. There were delays in completing repairs in the garden of the second property due to a second leak, access issues and the need for the resident to be given time to clear their conservatory. However, these were all beyond the control of the landlord and therefore not a failure on its part.
  6. We understand that it can sometimes take time to find and resolve underground leaks, and repairs in different locations may need to be attempted before the issue is fully resolved. This does not necessarily mean there was negligence by the landlord. Considering the investigatory works needed to a private property and access issues that were beyond its control, overall, the landlord acted appropriately and within a reasonable timeframe to resolve the leak.
  7. The resident raised concerns regarding the safety of her garden as the excavation holes have not been filled by the landlord. The landlord’s contractor contacted the resident once the works were complete to make good the garden and asked her to engage with it to arrange a suitable appointment. We understand the resident remained concerned that the leak was ongoing at the time and so did not allow access for the works to make good the garden. However, we understand this further leak to be from a neighbouring property, and we recommend the landlord contacts the resident again to arrange a suitable time for it to return and make good the excavation holes, so long as no further works are required in the garden.
  8. The resident told the landlord that its contractor left waste at her property from the works it carried out and she spent over £200 to hire a skip to remove it. The landlord has said the waste was from the resident’s own private works and not its responsibility to remove. We cannot determine whether the waste was from the resident’s private works of the contractor’s excavation as we do not have sufficient evidence to make a fair determination on the matter. However, we can look at whether the landlord investigated the resident’s concerns appropriately.
  9. In this case, the landlord sent the contractor pictures of the bags of rubble and asked it whether the bags were from its work at the property. The landlord also reviewed the pictures itself and together with the findings of its contractor, concluded that it was not responsible for removing the waste. The Ombudsman finds the landlord took appropriate steps to investigate the resident’s concerns regarding the waste left in the garden and there has been no failure in how it has handled this issue.
  10. The landlord acknowledged there had been some delays in its communication with the resident and offered her £100 compensation to reflect the distress caused by this failure. When the landlord has made an offer, it is the Ombudsman’s role to assess whether the offer is fair and reasonable. Our approach to compensation is set out in our remedies guidance published on our website. The amount offered by the landlord in this case is in line with what the Ombudsman might consider ‘service failure’ which includes instances of distress and inconvenience caused to the resident but where its failures did not significantly impact the resident.
  11. The resident did request a call back from a manager in May 2024 and contacted the landlord a number of times to chase this. However, the offer of £100 compensation made by the landlord adequately reflects the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident by its failures in communication whilst it was attempting to resolve the leak. As a result, the Ombudsman finds the landlord has made an offer prior to our involvement, which was reasonable and proportionate to resolve the complaint regarding its handlings of the leak.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint

  1. The landlord told the resident in its stage 1 response to her complaint that it had failed to resolve the leak in the garden within the timescales which it holds itself to. However, it went on to say that it was unable to identify any failures in service and did not uphold the resident’s complaint. Although the landlord could have provided a clearer and more consistent response at stage 1 of its process, this did not have an overall impact on the resident as the landlord later clarified its position in its stage 2 response to the resident’s complaint.
  2. There were delays by the landlord in its response to the complaint at both stages and it offered the resident £100 compensation for these failures along with an apology. Whilst we have found the offer adequately reflects the inconvenience and distress caused to the resident by the delays in its handling of the complaint, part of this sum was offered after the landlord had exhausted its own complaints policy and following this service’s involvement.
  3. The Ombudsman’s investigation is focused on the landlord’s handling of the complaint within its complaints process and any offers of redress made during it. Therefore, we find that there was service failure from the landlord in its handling of the resident’s complaint as it did not offer reasonable redress during the complaints process, it only offered this after its final response and following this service’s involvement. As the landlord has already apologised to the resident for its handling of her complaint, it should pay the resident the £100 compensation already offered in August 2024 if it has not already done so.

Determination

  1. In accordance with 53.b of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has made an offer of redress prior to investigation, which in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves the complaint about the landlords handling of the resident’s reports of a leak in her garden.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of this report, the landlord is ordered to pay the resident £100 for the distress and inconvenience caused by its handling of the resident’s complaint if it has not already done so.
  2. The landlord should provide this service with evidence to confirm it has complied with the order above within 4 weeks of the date of this decision.

Recommendations

  1. We recommend the landlord:
    1. Pay the resident £100 compensation already offered in August 2024 for its handling of the resident’s reports of a leak in the garden, if it has not already done so. The Ombudsman’s finding of reasonable redress is based on the understanding that this compensation will be paid.
    2. Contacts the resident to arrange a suitable appointment to make good any areas in the garden impacted by works relating to the leak, so long as it is satisfied that no further excavation is needed.