ForHousing Limited (202405013)
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Decision |
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Case ID |
202405013 |
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Decision type |
Investigation |
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Landlord |
ForHousing Limited |
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Landlord type |
Housing Association |
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Occupancy |
Assured Tenancy |
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Date |
6 November 2025 |
Background
- The resident is a tenant of the landlord, and her tenancy began in August 2020. The property is a 1-bedroom flat on the second floor of a 3-storey building. The landlord notes the resident informed it during the complaints process that her son has asthma and has been diagnosed with autism. It says it has no record of the resident’s son living at the property.
What the complaint is about
- The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of:
- Reports of damp and mould.
- The complaint.
Our decision (determination)
- We have found there was:
- Maladministration in the landlord’s handling of reports of damp and mould.
- Service failure in the landlord’s complaint handling.
We have made orders for the landlord to put things right.
Summary of reasons
Reports of damp and mould
- The landlord failed to address the resident’s reports of repairs within its target timescale or show that it treated her concerns seriously. This was despite it being made aware of her son’s vulnerabilities and the fact that the damp and mould affected her only bedroom for a significant period of time.
Complaint handling
- The landlord responded within its policy timescale at stage 1. However, the resident did not receive a written copy of the response until it was sent by the landlord on the same day as the stage 2 response. The landlord also exceeded its timescale for the stage 2 response.
Putting things right
Where we find service failure, maladministration or severe maladministration we can make orders for the landlord to put things right. We have the discretion to make recommendations in all other cases within our jurisdiction.
Orders
Landlords must comply with our orders in the manner and timescales we specify. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of compliance with our orders by the due date set.
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Order |
What the landlord must do |
Due date |
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1 |
Apology order
The landlord must apologise in writing to the resident for the failures identified in this report. The landlord must ensure:
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No later than 04 December 2025 |
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2 |
Compensation order The landlord must pay the resident £600 made up as follows:
This must be paid directly to the resident by the due date. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of payment by the due date.
The landlord may deduct from the total figure any payments it has already made.
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No later than 04 December 2025 |
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3 |
Compensation order (based on rent) The landlord must pay the resident £1,738.14. This is based on a proportion of rent for the periods from 31 January 2024 to 26 July 2024 and from 17 October 2024 to 17 March 2025 (based on the Regulator’s average rent) for a total of 330 days. This is to recognise the loss of use and/or enjoyment of her bedroom.
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No later than 04 December 2025 |
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4 |
Record keeping order
The landlord must contact the resident to obtain details of her household’s vulnerabilities. It must then ensure these are recorded on its relevant systems.
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No later than 04 December 2025 |
Our investigation
The complaint procedure
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Date |
What happened |
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29 November 2023 |
The landlord carried out a damp survey of the property. This identified dry rot. It noted:
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1 to 11 December 2023 |
The landlord attempted to attend to carry out a gutter clean but was unable to access the property. A mould wash was raised on 11 December 2023 and carried out the next day. |
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4 March 2024 |
The resident contacted the landlord to chase the jobs which had been outstanding since December 2023. She said that although she understood the work had been rescheduled, including to that day, no one had attended. |
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18 March 2024 |
The landlord issued its stage 1 response. It offered £125 compensation for the length of time taken to complete the repairs. It accepted the job had an initial target date of 24 January 2024 which it failed to meet. It confirmed the repairs had now been scheduled for between 2 and 10 April 2024. |
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23 May 2024 |
The resident requested to escalate the complaint. She said she had not received the stage 1 response, although she had been made an offer of compensation of £125 verbally by the landlord. She noted this was later increased by a further £110 which she had yet to receive. The resident said she had attempted unsuccessfully on multiple occasions to contact the landlord’s complaints team. |
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25 July 2024 |
The landlord issued its stage 2 response. It noted the resident’s dissatisfaction to be about the time taken to complete the works, the distress caused to her, and whether it would pay towards decoration costs. It said the work on the guttering was completed on 2 April 2024 and the internal work was due to be completed on 26 July 2024. It added the guttering needed to be inspected which would require further scaffolding. It offered £325 compensation, made up of £100 towards decoration costs and £225 for the delayed repairs and inconvenience. |
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Referral to the Ombudsman |
The resident brought her complaint to us and said:
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2 November 2024 |
The resident contacted the landlord to inform it that while she was waiting for the scaffolding to be erected, the damp and mould in her bedroom had returned and was now on 2 walls. A damp survey was scheduled for 12 November 2024. |
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22 November 2024 |
The landlord’s contactor attended to carry out repointing to the external walls and work to the flat roof. |
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10 February 2025 to 17 March 2025 |
After removing the plaster in the bedroom, the landlord applied thermal boards. It then replastered the walls and painted them as well as installing new skirting. |
What we found and why
The circumstances of this complaint are well known by the parties involved, so it is not necessary to detail everything that’s happened or comment on all the information we’ve reviewed. We’ve only included the key information that forms the basis of our decision of whether the landlord is responsible for maladministration.
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Complaint |
Damp and mould |
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Finding |
Maladministration |
What we did not investigate
- The resident told us the situation had a detrimental impact on her own and her son’s health and wellbeing. It would be fairer, more reasonable and more effective for her to make a personal injury claim for any injury caused. The courts are best placed to deal with this type of dispute, as they will have the benefit of independent medical advice to decide on the cause of any injury and how long it will last. We have therefore not investigated this further. However, we can decide if a landlord should pay compensation for distress and inconvenience.
What we did investigate
- The resident informed us that she initially reported the issue to the landlord in November 2023. While the landlord has not provided evidence of the initial report she made, it did carry out a damp survey at the end of November 2023. This would support that the resident raised the issue of the damp and mould in the bedroom at that time.
- Our applicable spotlight report sets out that a landlord should take a zero-tolerance approach to damp and mould, and that its responses must be prompt and reflect the urgency of the issue. We expect landlords to communicate effectively between teams and departments, and to ensure one team or individual has overall responsibility for making sure that it resolves complaints and reports relating to damp and mould. This includes follow-up or aftercare.
- The landlord’s repairs policy sets out that it will carry out damp repairs within 40 working days.
- The landlord’s compensation guidance sets out that, in the event that there is a loss of use of a bedroom, compensation will be 20% of the daily rent after the initial 48 hours.
- The landlord carried out a damp survey in November 2023 which identified dry rot. It identified work needed to both the internal and external structure of the building, and noted that the internal repairs should not be carried out until the external issue had been resolved. This was appropriate, as a previous repair to the resident’s wall which involved mould paint had failed as the external works had not been carried out at that time.
- While the landlord’s records show that it carried out a mould wash to the bedroom in early December 2023, the external works were not carried out until April 2024, 4 months later. The landlord’s records show that it attended on 1 December 2023 to clean and flush the gutter, but was unable to gain access at the time. Its contractor did not attend again until 26 January 2024 for this matter, when it noted that fixed scaffolding would be required. The landlord has provided no explanation for the delay between 1 December 2023 and 26 January 2024, nor why its contractors only realised that scaffolding was required on 26 January 2024, when the damp survey in November 2023 had noted that it would be needed. This was a failing which delayed the repairs.
- The landlord has provided no evidence that it followed up on the repairs after the appointment on 26 January 2024, until after the resident had made her complaint on 4 March 2024. This was a missed opportunity by it, especially as it was aware that scaffolding was required to carry out the external work before the internal work could begin. It was also aware that the issue affected the resident’s only bedroom, which affected her ability to use this.
- The landlord confirmed that, following the external work being carried out at the beginning of April 2024, it began to carry out the internal repairs to the bedroom. These involved hacking back the existing plaster to the brickwork. However, the contractor identified in doing this that the brickwork was still wet, which affected the landlord’s ability to replaster the wall and finish the internal repairs. The resident has told us that the landlord informed her it would send out dehumidifiers to help speed up the drying process. However, it did not do this. While we have not seen any documentary evidence that the landlord committed to offering the resident dehumidifiers, this approach is in keeping with accepted good practice.
- Although the landlord continued to complete the internal repairs, which were eventually finished on 26 July 2024, it was aware that a further inspection was required for the external work. This was to determine whether the work carried out externally had resolved the penetrating damp or whether this issue remained outstanding. However, due to the delay taken by the landlord in arranging this inspection, the scaffolding its contractors had originally erected had been taken down, and so it needed to make arrangements for this to be erected again. This was a failing by the landlord. It should have clearly communicated to its contractor that an inspection was required when the original external works were carried out and that the scaffolding should not be dismantled until this had taken place. Not doing this ultimately led to it having to revisit the internal repairs which it carried out in a short period of time, as the mould returned, causing the resident further distress and inconvenience.
- After the resident contacted the landlord about the mould having returned in October 2024, it carried out a further damp survey. This was reasonable to address the returning mould. The damp survey carried out on 12 November 2024 concluded that the mould should be treated after the external leak had been resolved and that ongoing works were being carried out externally. The landlord’s notes from the time show that its contractor had rescheduled appointments as the scaffolding was not in place, and on one occasion its contractors had arrived at the wrong property. These logistical errors further delayed the external works being carried out. This was a failing by the landlord in its communication to its contractor.
- The landlord’s notes show that, having completed the external work including removing moss and repointing, it took off the plaster in the bedroom and installed thermal boards before replastering. This was appropriate, and the landlord’s notes show that it used dehumidifiers to ensure that the walls were fully dry before it completed the repairs.
- Due to the failures highlighted above and the excessive timeframes involved which meant the issue was not fully resolved until 16 months after the initial damp inspection, we have found maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the reports of damp and mould. The positive action taken at times by the landlord, and its acceptance of failings and offer of compensation, have prevented a finding of severe maladministration.
- In its stage 2 complaint responses the landlord offered the resident £225 compensation for the delays to repairs and inconvenience as well as £100 towards decoration costs. Given the timeframes involved, and as the landlord’s failure to take account of the vulnerabilities of the resident’s son and the errors highlighted above resulting in it having to reattend and redo the works, we consider its offer was not proportionate to its failings. We have made an additional award of £175 compensation for distress and inconvenience.
- The additional amount of compensation we have ordered is in line with our remedies guidance. The guidance recommends awards of this level where there has been a failure by the landlord which adversely affected the resident.
- In addition, due to the loss of amenity, we have made an order for the landlord to repay a proportion of the resident’s rent for the period that she was unable to use her bedroom due to the damp and mould. This is in line with the landlord’s compensation guidance which the landlord failed to apply. This is based on a weekly rent of £174.16 for 2023/2024 and £187.28 for 2024/2025 for a total of 353 days. This represents the period from 31 January 2024 (which was 40 working days after allowance for the period surrounding Christmas from the date of the damp survey) to 17 March 2025 when the repairs to the bedroom were eventually completed. From this we have deducted 58 days. This represents the time between the original repairs to the bedroom being completed (on 26 July 2024) up to the time the resident contacted us again on 17 October 2024 to make us aware that the mould had returned.
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Complaint |
The handling of the complaint |
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Finding |
Service failure |
- Our Complaint Handling Code sets out that landlords must have a 2-stage complaints process. It also requires landlords to acknowledge a complaint or escalation request within 5 working days. Landlords must issue a stage 1 response within 10 working days of acknowledging the complaint. They must also issue a stage 2 response within 20 working days of an escalation acknowledgement. The landlord’s applicable complaints policy reflects these expectations.
- The landlord acknowledged the complaint and sent out its stage 1 response by post in keeping with the timescales in its policy. The resident informed us and the landlord that although she spoke to the landlord at the time and was aware of its intended response, she did not receive the stage 1 response at the time, and instead only received it on the same day as the stage 2 response in late July 2024. This was a missed opportunity by the landlord. It was communicating with the resident via email both before and after the stage 1 response, so it was not clear why it posted the stage 1 response and did not email it. It also delayed sending the resident a copy of the response when she initially informed it that she had not received it in May 2024.
- The landlord acknowledged the resident’s escalation request on 30 May 2024, in keeping with the timescales in its policy. It then issued its stage 2 response on 25 July 2024, 40 working days after its acknowledgement. While the stage 2 response was timed to provide the resident with an update on the current status of the repairs which were being completed at the time, the landlord had not informed the resident that its response would be delayed until it contacted her on 11 July 2025.
- As there were delays by the landlord both in addressing the resident’s concerns that she did not receive the stage 1 response and in issuing the stage 2 response, we have made a finding of service failure. We have ordered the landlord to pay compensation to put things right for her. The compensation has been calculated in accordance with our remedies guidance.
Learning
Knowledge and information management (record keeping)
- The landlord should ensure that it accurately records details of any vulnerabilities for its residents, including all occupants of their household, and that these are regularly updated throughout the complaint process where necessary and appropriate.
- The landlord should ensure that notes of all telephone conversations with residents are made. This includes detailed notes of any offers of compensation or other commitments to which it has agreed.
- The landlord should ensure that its contractors are provided with accurate information about residents, including their contact details and address.
Communication
- There were issues with the landlord’s communication throughout the complaint. These included it failing to tell the resident when it would be attending to carry out the external repairs which required scaffolding, and initially failing to explain the delay in issuing its stage 2 complaint response.