Cornwall Housing Limited (202200208)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202200208

Cornwall Housing Limited

12 September 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

  1. The complaint concerns:
    1. The level of compensation offered by the landlord due to its handling of repairs following a burst water main at the resident’s home, and the disruption caused by follow on remedial works.
    2. The landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord and lives in a ground floor flat. The resident has vulnerabilities which are known to the landlord.
  2. On 23 November 2021 the landlord raised the following repair job; “tenant reporting a constant stream of water bubbling out of the ground in the front garden…” On 6 December 2021 a job was raised to “dry flat following flood damage from faulty water mains.”
  3. The resident contacted the landlord on 10 December 2021 and made a complaint regarding the matter. He was unhappy as he said that the landlord delayed in attending to repair the leak, as he said he first reported signs of this in October that year, but that it was not attended to and repaired until 1 December 2021. He also said that the landlord delayed in attending his reports of water ingress into his property following this, which had begun to show signs of damage to various areas within his home. The resident described the impact that the ongoing situation was having on him, and to resolve the complaint, he asked the landlord to pay compensation for the inconvenience, distress and detriment caused.
  4. A survey of the full damage to the property was undertaken on 14 December 2021. The surveyor’s report detailed various repairs and decoration works that were required to make the damage from water saturation good in the kitchen, lounge, hall, walk-in cupboard, and to the exterior of the property.
  5. The landlord issued its stage one response on 4 February 2022. It clarified that the pipe leak “wasn’t attended to until the 1st December 2021” and that “by then it had done significant damage to the property.”  It said that regarding the damage, “unfortunately, there was a delay in [the resident] reporting this and [the contractor] attending.” It explained due to the damage caused, it surveyed the property, and that the required works were being dealt with as an insurance claim (this is understood to be the landlord’s own liability insurer). It offered the resident £300 compensation for delay, distress and inconvenience. It advised the resident because it had upheld his complaint, this was its final response and advised the resident how he could contact this Service if he remained dissatisfied.
  6. Following correspondence with the resident and this Service, the landlord reviewed the resident’s complaint and issued a stage two response on 19 July 2022. It decided that it should have given more consideration to the impact caused by its delay to repair the pipe, particularly as this occurred during the winter/Christmas period and due to the inconvenience of the drying equipment and the living conditions the resident would have endured until the issues were resolved. It said it would liaise with its repairs team to ensure that its panel’s recommendation of alternative accommodation is fully considered when dealing with such instances in future. The landlord revised its total offer of compensation to £636.
  7. The resident remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response. He said although he was happier with the revised compensation amount, he was unsure if it was reasonable and expressed concerns regarding the landlord’s complaint handling.

Assessment and findings

Policies

  1. The resident’s tenancy agreement states that the landlord is responsible for keeping “the structure and exterior of [the] property (including drains, gutters and external pipes) in good repair and proper working order”. This also includes water pipes within the boundary of the property. These responsibilities reflect the landlord’s legal obligations under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
  2. The landlord’s online repairs guidance states it will aim to complete emergency repairs immediately or within 24 hours. It does not give a specific timeframe for routine repairs. However, the usual standard amongst social landlords is around 28 days.
  3. The landlord has a compensation policy which outlines levels of compensation it may pay in the event of failings in service, depending on the level of impact on the resident. It sets out “likely maximum value[s]’ that it awards, ranging from £50 to £250 for instances where the landlord identifies partial responsibility, and amounts of £100 to £500 for instances where the landlord accepts full responsibility. For loss of room use for more than two days, the landlord will calculate an amount by multiplying fifty percent of a resident’s net weekly rent by the number of qualifying days.
  4. The landlord’s complaints policy states that if it is not able to agree a resolution to a tenant’s complaint at stage one, then its tenant can request a review at the second stage. At the second stage its “tenant panel” which “is made up of specially trained tenants… will review [the] complaint and the investigation carried out by [the landlord]”. Its policy highlights that if the tenant remains dissatisfied after this stage, then the tenant will be able to contact the Ombudsman.

The landlord’s handling of repairs and compensation offered

  1. It was unclear from the evidence when the resident first reported the issue. No contemporaneous evidence has been provided that shows that the resident reported a drainage issue in October. The landlord has also not explained how it categorised the repairs although it did not dispute the resident’s account that he said he was told the burst water main would be attended to as an emergency. Regarding the resident’s report of water ingress, its records also noted “it should have been attended to when reported and repairs at the least attended with a wet vac”.
  2. Nonetheless, overall, it is not disputed that the landlord delayed in rectifying the leak and in attending the subsequent water ingress. It appropriately upheld the resident’s complaint and in doing so accepted full responsibility for the situation. It was appropriate for the landlord to recognise its failure in service. Overall, the landlord appropriately committed to rectifying the damage, as it agreed to deal with the proposed works as part of an insurance claim, and therefore took appropriate steps to carry out the necessary repairs.
  3. On this note it is relevant to note that the Ombudsman’s remit does not extend to consideration of an insurance claim relating to a complaint. The Ombudsman does not have the authority to assess negligence or liability in the same way that an insurance process or court might. Instead, an Ombudsman will look at issues such as repairs in the light of legal obligations and relevant policies and procedures, to determine if any service failure has taken place.
  4. The landlord has not provided comprehensive records of when the individual remedial works, following the leak repair, were undertaken and completed, but the resident has said all works were completed by 15 March 2022. This corresponded with a job in the repair records that stated the job to “dry flat following flood damage from faulty water mains” was completed in March 2022, and a job that stated “insurance works” was completed on 1 April 2022. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the resident’s account is accurate.
  5. It is reasonable to assess that some remedial works may have taken some time to begin, due to the landlord having to ensure that water ingress had subsided any that damp issues in the property had firstly been addressed. During this period, the resident would have likely experienced significant inconvenience and, due to living with damp and mould, a period of time when he was unable to use the kitchen, the disruption of ongoing remedial and decoration works and the noise from drying equipment. Therefore, any distress and inconvenience he would have experienced is understandable, and it was appropriate that the landlord apologised for this and awarded compensation accordingly. The resident’s main dispute was his belief that the £300 compensation initially offered by landlord did not sufficiently remedy its delay to respond to the issue, and the months of inconvenience and disruption caused by remedial works to rectify the damage.
  6. In reviewing the resident’s complaint, the landlord acknowledged that when it initially awarded compensation, it had not fully considered the resident’s living conditions during the period of repairs and the impact this had on him. This was appropriate given its knowledge of the resident’s health conditions. It was also particularly appropriate given that when the landlord’s contractor attended the resident’s home to begin the drying out process on 7 December 2021, it issued him a warning regarding an area that contained potential hazards due to the presence of asbestos containing materials (ACMs), mould growth on the walls and the risk of slippage. A warning sign advised the resident to either keep out of this area (which is understood to be the kitchen) or to follow safety advice. It is reasonable to assess that this impacted the resident’s ability to use the kitchen in a practical manner, and therefore the landlord should have considered if a decant was appropriate in the circumstances at the time.
  7. It is notable that the surveyor’s inspection on the 14 December noted that “there is no reason for a decant and the resident should be able to live at the property while works are completed”. As such, landlords are generally entitled to rely upon the opinions of its qualified staff and contractors. Nonetheless, in its final response, it recognised that an offer of alternative accommodation may have been appropriate in this case, and explained it would discuss this with relevant staff in cases in the future which demonstrated its committment to learning from its mistakes and to improve its services going forward. This demonstrates why an independent second stage review is vital to effective complaint handling, as it allows for a broader prospective to be considered, and more consideration has been given to this later in the investigation.
  8. The £636 compensation the landlord eventually offered appears to be broadly in line with its compensation guidance. The amount is also in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance, which recommends that remedies in the range of £250 – £700 may be awarded where there has been considerable service failure, but there may be no permanent impact on the resident which includes failure over a considerable period of time to act in accordance with policy, for example to address repairs and make adequate adjustments.
  9. The Ombudsman agrees the revised offer of compensation is proportionate to overall impact the situation had on the resident and has therefore provided reasonable redress for the landlord’s handling of repairs. However, to reach this point of resolution, the landlord exceeded what would be considered a reasonable timeframe in the circumstances, and it has not recognised its complaint handling failures which have been addressed below.

Complaint handling

  1. Although the landlord appropriately acknowledged that there were delays in its contractor attending the resident’s home, it did not explain the reasons for this, which would have been appropriate in this case. Nor did the landlord demonstrate that it communicated any reasons for the delays to the resident at the time, and thus has not acknowledged in its complaint responses that its communication was poor in this respect.
  2. The Ombudsman complaint handling code sets out that “if all or part of a resident’s complaint is not resolved to the resident’s satisfaction at stage one it must be progressed to stage two of the landlord’s procedure, unless an exclusion ground now applied.”  Considering this, it was unreasonable that the landlord told the resident that its initial complaint response was its final response, because it had upheld his complaint.  Nothing in its complaint policy mentions any criteria for why it will not consider a resident’s complaint at stage two of its process. Therefore, the landlord did not act in line with its policy. A landlord should not assume that it has resolved a complaint because it has upheld the complaint and offered compensation, as the resident needs to be given at that stage, a fair opportunity to respond to the outcome. The review process allows the landlord to reconsider its decision and, in this case, if the landlord had correctly signposted the resident to its stage two process in the first instance, doing so may have led to a fairer compensation award at a much earlier opportunity.
  3. The landlord has not provided a satisfactory explanation for why it took more than five months to review the resident’s complaint. It did advise the resident, that it had written to him in February 2022, asking for consent to share his information with its tenants’ panel (following the resident saying he would ask this Service to review the complaint as per it stage one referral), but it had not received a response to this email. However, the corresponding email specially stated that it would “escalate [the] complaint to [its] tenant appeal panel a per [its] complaints policy”. There was no specific reference in the main body of the email, clarifying that it contained attachments that needed to be filled in and returned before the landlord could continue with this course of action. When this is considered alongside its previous response, which had already referred the resident to this Service, these contradictions would likely have understandably confused the resident and caused a delay in getting the complaint resolved.
  4. Considering the above, there was notable service failure by the landlord in respect of its complaints handling. To remedy this, compensation has been ordered that is in line with instances of service failure resulting in some impact on the complaint, including failure by the landlord to meet service standards for actions and responses but where the failure had no significant impact. Although the landlord’s delay in reviewing the complaint had no apparent impact on the completion of repairs in this case, it undoubtedly would have caused the resident loss of confidence time and trouble in pursuing his complaint.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 55 (b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has made an offer of redress prior to investigation in respect of its handling of repairs and the level of compensation offered, which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves the complaint satisfactorily.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in respect of its complaints handling.

Orders

  1. Within four weeks of the date of this report, the landlord should write to the resident, with a copy provided to this Service, and apologise for the service failures identified in respect of its complaint handling.
  2. Pay the resident £100 compensation for the time and trouble caused by its poor complaint handling. This is in addition to the £636 it already offered, which it should now pay if it has not already done so. The landlord to ensure that evidence of this payment is provided to this Service.

Recommendations

  1. It is recommended that the landlord reviews its staff’s training needs in relation to their application of its complaints policy to ensure residents are given opportunity to have their complaint reviewed at an earlier stage.