Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council (202504764)
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Decision |
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Case ID |
202504764 |
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Decision type |
Investigation |
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Landlord |
Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council |
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Landlord type |
Local Authority |
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Occupancy |
Secure Tenancy |
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Date |
28 November 2025 |
Background
- The resident lives in a 2-bedroom mid-terrace property with her daughter. Her daughter has additional needs. The property is owned and managed by the landlord.
What the complaint is about
- The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of repairs.
- We have also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.
Our decision (determination)
- There was severe maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of repairs.
- There was no maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.
We have made orders for the landlord to put things right.
Summary of reasons
- The length of time the landlord took to resolve the repairs was excessive. It failed to comply with its published repair timescales for standard repairs and those associated with damp and mould. It left the resident and her child exposed to mould over an unnecessarily prolonged period.
- The landlord responded appropriately within its policy timescales.
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 16 January 2026 |
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2 |
Compensation order The landlord must pay the resident £1,200 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. |
No later than 16 January 2026 |
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3 |
Record keeping order The landlord must contact the resident by the due date to ensure that its health and vulnerability records accurately reflect her household’s circumstances. |
No later than 16 January 2026 |
Recommendations
Our recommendations are not binding, and a landlord may decide not to follow them.
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Our recommendations |
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The landlord should contact the resident and ask again if she would like to raise a complaint about the issues she experienced with the repairs after it issued its stage 2 response on 23 April 2025. |
Our investigation
The complaint procedure
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Date |
What happened |
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3 August 2020 |
The resident contacted the landlord to report defective pointing on a wall at her property. It responded on 4 August 2020. It said it was unable to raise a job for the pointing as it was only dealing with urgent repairs during the COVID-19 pandemic, but would contact the resident once work resumed. |
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26 April 2021 |
The resident reported that the soil stack was leaking causing waste water to leak onto the property. |
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17 February 2023 |
The resident contacted the landlord again about the soil stack and the defective pointing, which she said was causing damp internally. |
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12 March 2025 |
The resident raised her complaint. She said she had been reporting damp in the property since 2020 when she moved in. She advised the damp was caused by water used to extinguish a house fire prior to her moving in. The resident provided a list of outstanding works, which included:
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31 March 2025 |
The landlord provided its stage 1 response. It confirmed the resident had been reporting damp since she moved into the property. It said it had identified the repairs needed, but a clerical error meant it had not completed the repairs. It sincerely apologised and advised it would arrange the repairs as a priority. It offered £475 compensation. |
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31 March 2025 |
The resident escalated her complaint. She told the landlord she found the compensation offered insufficient for the hardship, distress and inconvenience she had experienced. She said the damp and mould had affected her own and her daughter’s health and their quality of life. She advised she had incurred significant expense managing the issues, including the purchase of a dehumidifier and specialist paint. She informed the landlord that her living room had been unusable at times and that her daughter had to stay away from the home due to the impact on her autism spectrum disorder. She asked the landlord to review her complaint and the compensation it had offered. |
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23 April 2025 |
The landlord issued its stage 2 response. It summarised events between February 2023 and March 2024. The landlord increased its compensation offer by £200 for the delay completing the work, which remained outstanding. It apologised for the ongoing delay. |
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Referral to the Ombudsman |
The resident asked us to assess her complaint. She said she was unhappy with the landlord’s offer of compensation. She advised the repairs were ongoing and the process had affected her own and her child’s mental health. |
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 |
The landlord’s handling of repairs |
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Finding |
Severe maladministration |
What we did not investigate
- In her communication with the landlord and us, the resident said that the situation had a detrimental impact on her own and her child’s mental health. It would be fairer, more reasonable and more effective for the resident 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’ve not investigated this any further under any of the complaint grounds. We can decide if a landlord should pay compensation for distress and inconvenience.
- In her complaint, the resident raised concerns about repairs she had notified the landlord about in 2020 and 2021. Our Scheme says we may not investigate issues that were not raised with the landlord as a complaint within a reasonable time, usually 12 months. We have therefore not assessed the landlord’s handling of repairs dating back to 2020. This investigation focuses on the landlord’s handling of repairs from February 2023, as that is when it raised work orders to conduct the relevant repairs.
- We acknowledge that the resident experienced further issues and concerns with the repairs after the landlord issued its stage 2 response. In accordance with our remit, we have focused on the landlord’s response to the resident’s current complaint, which is reflected in the timeline above. Any new issues raised after the landlord’s final response on 23 April 2025 are beyond the scope of this assessment. This is because, in general, landlords need to be given a fair opportunity to investigate and resolve any issues prior to our involvement.
- If the resident remains dissatisfied with the landlord’s actions, she has the option to make a new complaint. She may then refer any such complaint to us for a separate investigation if she is unhappy with the landlord’s final response.
What we did investigate
- On 17 February 2023, the resident contacted the landlord regarding the defective soil stack. She also raised the defective brickwork, which was causing damp and mould internally. The landlord raised a job to inspect both the brickwork and soil stack the same day. In its stage 2 response, it stated it had visited on 28 February 2023. We have not seen any evidence of this inspection.
- The landlord carried out a mould wash in the bedroom on 8 March 2023 and checked the loft insulation on 3 May 2023. While appropriate neither were relevant to the damp in the living room or the issues with the soil stack.
- Nonetheless, it took no further action in relation to either repair. This was a failure to comply with its repairs policy, which required planned or major repairs to be completed within 40 working days.
- Further, not addressing the repairs when notified was a failure of the landlord to adhere to its responsibilities under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which requires it to keep in repair the structure and exterior of the property.
- The landlord introduced a damp and mould policy in April 2023. It stated that it would visit within 3 days of a report of damp and mould to conduct a mould wash. This would be followed by a surveyor’s visit and the completion of planned works within 40 working days.
- The resident contacted the landlord again about both issues on 10 January 2024. She told it that she was having to manage the mould with a dehumidifier as well as washing the walls with an anti–mould solution. The landlord raised a job for an inspection on 12 January 2024. However, the inspection did not take place until 14 March 2024, more than 2 months later. This timeframe was excessive and failed to comply with the landlord’s repairs and damp and mould policies.
- While there is a record to show the inspection did happen, the records do not indicate what the findings of the inspection were, which is an indication of poor record keeping.
- The records indicate that the landlord did not rase a job for a mould wash until 27 February 2024. This exceeded the required timeframe in the damp and mould policy by 31 days. The mould wash was subsequently cancelled, but the records do not explain why, which is a further indication of poor record keeping.
- The landlord raised an order for an asbestos inspection on 15 March 2024. The inspection took place on 3 April 2024. The timeframes involved here were reasonable.
- After this, there was a period of 11 months where the landlord took no further action until the resident raised her complaint on 12 March 2025. This further excessive delay was inappropriate. The resident reports that the mould was causing her significant distress and inconvenience, and that it had required her daughter to stay away from home as a result. Further, she was having to expend time, trouble and expense conducting mould washes and running a dehumidifier.
- In its stage 1 response on 31 March 2025, the landlord advised that the repairs would be arranged as a priority. Regardless, when it issued its stage 2 response on 23 April 2025, the work was still outstanding. However, we understand that the work began shortly after, around 6 May 2025, but it is unclear when they were completed.
- Our spotlight report on damp and mould outlines that “landlords should recognise that issues can have an ongoing detrimental impact on the health and well-being of the resident and should therefore be responded to in a timely manner”. It continues that “landlords should consider appropriate timescales for their responses to reflect the urgency of the case and set these out clearly to manage residents’ expectations”. In this case, the resident was left exposed to damp and mould in her property for 2 years and 3 months because of the landlord’s failure to conduct necessary remedial works within a reasonable timescale.
- Further, the landlord did not take any interim steps to resolve the damp and mould in the resident’s living room. These were significant failings which showed a lack of regard for the household’s health concerns and the impact of damp and mould.
- For the reasons given we have made a finding of severe maladministration.
- Through its complaint responses the landlord offered £675 compensation, broken down as follows:
- £100 for anti-mould paint.
- £175 for time and trouble.
- £200 for distress and inconvenience.
- £200 for delay.
- We do not consider the payments for time and trouble or distress and inconvenience to be sufficient due to the extensive time period involved. We have therefore increased these to £300 and £600 respectively. Our overall award is in line with our remedies guidance for circumstances where there has been serious failure by the landlord, which had a significant impact on the resident, and the landlord made some attempt to put things right but the offer was not proportionate to the failings we identified.
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Complaint |
The handling of the complaint |
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Finding |
No maladministration |
- The landlord operates a 2–stage complaints procedure. The timeframes in its procedure mirror those in our Complaint Handling Code (‘the Code’). The Code says stage 1 responses must be sent within 10 working days, and stage 2 responses within 20 working days. The landlord’s responses were sent within these timeframes. Its complaint handling was appropriate in the circumstances.
Learning
Knowledge and information management (record keeping)
- Generally, the landlord’s record keeping was good. However, there was no detailed record of the surveyor’s inspection. For important inspections we would expect the records to contain detail on what the surveyor inspected and what they found. Such detail would include damp readings, mould observations, humidity levels, defects and so on. This information is important for the landlord to retain to understand the significance of any issue. It also provides a benchmark that it can refer back to later if required.
Communication
- The landlord’s communication with the resident throughout the handling of the substantive issues was overall lacking and mainly reactive.