Haringey London Borough Council (202213700)

COMPLAINT 202213700

Haringey London Borough Council

14 July 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 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:
   a. Response to the resident’s reports of leaks and damp in the property.
   b. Complaints handling.
2. The Ombudsman has also considered the landlord’s record keeping.

Background

3. The resident is a leaseholder of a two-bedroom ground floor flat, purchased on 25 July 2016. The landlord is a Local Authority and the freeholder of the building. The resident has confirmed that he occupies the property with his partner and young children. He has also confirmed that the property was let out to tenants for a time during the period of the complaint.
4. Over a period of nearly six years before the resident made his complaint to this Service – from the start of the tenancy until September 2022 – he reported multiple instances of water leaks/ingress into the property from both the upstairs flat (which the landlord also owns) and the flat roof which covers part of the property, as well as damp and mould. During this period, the resident reports that he had to pull out of a sale of the property, and lost tenants due to the condition of the property which had been caused by the leaks.
5. The initial complaint to the landlord on 3 September 2020 focused on ongoing leaks and lack of repair, poor communication from the landlord regarding repairs and costs the resident had incurred as a result of the landlord’s inaction. As part of its Stage One response of 17 September 2020, the landlord arranged for a surveyor to visit the property and promised to follow up once the surveyor’s report was received. This survey took place shortly after this and the resulting surveyor’s report made a number of recommendations in relation to the leak issues that had been reported by the resident. The resident remained dissatisfied with how the landlord responded to this report, with no evidence that the landlord progressed any of the works recommended.
6. A significant period – nearly ten months – elapsed before the resident escalated his complaint to Stage Two in June 2021, as he felt his key concerns had not been addressed – the leaks were ongoing, the communication with the landlord was still poor and expected repairs had not been completed. The landlord responded with its Stage Two response on 18 August 2021. It referred to site visits that had taken place that it considered would have ensured that the works had progressed and therefore resolved the water ingress issues at the property. It advised the resident to make a claim against the landlord’s insurers and offered the resident £245 compensation in acknowledgement of its failure to effectively coordinate repairs or respond to resident’s queries regarding works.
7. The complaint was escalated to the landlord’s appeal panel for review on 13 September 2021. Its response of 9 November 2021 broadly upheld the resident’s complaint; it identified service failures and made several recommendations for the landlord to take including communicating with the resident and ensuring necessary works be completed. This included sending, within 28 days, a letter confirming what works had already been completed at the property together with what works were scheduled to resolve any ongoing issues.
8. The resident brought his complaint to this Service on 29 September 2022. He said that expected work had not been completed, that water leaks and damp issues were still occurring in the property and that the landlord’s offer of compensation was not sufficient to cover the costs he had incurred or the distress and disruption the landlord had caused.

Assessment and findings

Scope of complaint

9. The Ombudsman expects that complaints are raised to landlord within a reasonable period, which is usually within six months of the issues arising.
10. The resident has mentioned in his complaint incidents which go back to the date he purchased the leasehold property in June 2016. However, prior to the initial complaint that was raised to the landlord in September 2020, there is no evidence of any formal complaints to the landlord that exhausted the complaints procedure or that were brought to the attention of the Ombudsman.
11. This investigation report will, therefore, consider events from June 2019 onwards – the Ombudsman deems this to be a reasonable period considering the provisions of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme and the evidence provided to this Service that the events from this date forward are linked. Reference to historical issues before this date are included to give context only.
12. This investigation took place shortly after the Ombudsman completed a systemic investigation into this landlord (published in July 2023). This investigation was completed under paragraph 49 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme and identified several themes amiss within the landlord’s overall service delivery, of which some also pertain to the investigation completed here. As the systemic investigation has made a number of orders and recommendations to this landlord about reviewing its complaint handling approach, repairs service and record keeping this investigation has not made further recommendations around these aspects of service in this report, but expects the landlord to take all relevant learning points from this case into account in its overall reviews of complaint handling and its repairs service.
13. The resident reported to the landlord that he had been forced to pull out of a sale of the property due to the issues under investigation, and that he had also lost paying tenants due to the same issues. The Ombudsman does not doubt his side of events and empathises for any inconvenience and costs he incurred as a result. However, the Ombudsman is unable to establish a causal link between any failures of service identified within this investigation (whether acknowledged by the landlord or not) and the resident’s attempts to sell or rent out the property. If the resident seeks appropriate redress for such financial losses then this would need to be progressed through a court of law, who would be able to consider an award of damages.

Policies and Procedures

14. The landlord’s repair obligations are outlined in Section 5.2 (a) and 5.2 (b) of the lease. It states that the landlord will “maintain repair…the structure of the Building… the roofs foundations external and internal walls (but not the interior surfaces…) …window frames…chimney stacks gutters and rainwater and soil pipes… the sewers drains channels watercourses”.
15. This Service was not provided with a copy of the landlord’s repairs policy and can find no evidence of differing repair timeframes between tenants and leaseholders, so will rely on the landlord’s repairs handbook (accessed on their website) which indicates that emergency repairs (including major water leaks) will be attended within 24 hours of a report being made and agreed appointments or planned repairs will be attended within 28 days.
16. The complaints policy outlines that the landlord has a two-stage complaints process, with initial Stage One complaints receiving a response within 10 days and an escalation to a Stage Two complaint receiving a response within 20 days. Stage One complaints must be raised within 12 months of the incident occurring, and Stage Two complaints must be raised within 6 months of the Stage One response. The landlord will accept complaints made outside these timescales in exceptional circumstances. In its Stage Two complaint response, the landlord also signposts residents to a potential third stage of a review by a tenant’s Complaints Appeal Panel.
17. The landlord maintains a Discretionary Compensation Procedure on which it has relied in these circumstances, which refers to ‘good will gestures’ for service failure or poor service on its part. The policy outlines that compensation may be appropriate when “the complainant was adversely affected by” the landlord’s delay in taking action or has “sustained loss or suffering” as a result of service failure.

Landlord response to leaks/damp reports

18. The first report of a water leak on 27 June 2019 resulted from poor quality plumbing in the bathroom of the tenanted flat upstairs, which the landlord is also the owner of. This same issue is recorded as the cause of several of the reported leaks across this complaint, with maintenance records outlining repeated landlord instructions to operatives to repair the bath/shower plumbing of the upstairs flat. The landlord responded appropriately to the initial report of a wet patch on the kitchen ceiling completing a site visit within one week, however it was not identified that a plumber was required and arranged until 19 August 2019, six weeks after the resident made his initial report. There is no evidence of the landlord having updated the resident during this period of delay, as would have been reasonable in order to provide reassurance that the matter was in hand.
19. Following the initial June 2019 leak, the operative who attended on 3 July 2019 made a note to “rebook an appointment for a surveyor”. The maintenance record notes a different operative arranged to inspect the resident’s property on 18 October 2019 and later attempted to gain access to the flat upstairs on 25 November 2019 to check for possible leaks, but the landlord has not provided any evidence that this was a surveyor, that inspections were completed or that findings had been reported and shared with the resident.
20. Arranging the surveyor inspection as recommended by its operative would have given the landlord the opportunity to prevent the further instances of leaks that occurred following the initial reports from the resident in June 2019. The landlord has been unable to demonstrate that it followed through on this aspect of the case, indicating concerns with both its overall repairs service and its record keeping.
21. Leaks from the bathroom of the flat upstairs and related guttering were identified as the cause of leaks in the maintenance record again in August 2019, June 2020, June 2021 and July 2021. The landlord’s knowledge management systems ought to have been sufficiently robust that these patterns were identified as indicative of a wider issue. As the freeholder of the resident’s property and the owner of the upstairs flat, the landlord had an obligation to repair and maintain both properties in good order.
22. The recommendation to arrange for a surveyor to visit the property was not properly undertaken until 18 September 2020 (after the resident had made his initial complaint), in which time the resident had made a further six reports of leaks and water ingress into the property from multiple sources – two in August 2019, one in October 2019, one in November 2019, one in January 2020 and one in June 2020. The surveyor’s report made several recommendations for work to be completed in the property, focused on increased damp-proofing, improved ventilation and inspection of the flat roof above the kitchen. The resident had a reasonable expectation that the landlord would communicate with him directly regarding the surveyor’s findings and discuss an appropriate plan of works to be completed as this was promised in the complaint response – but this was not done. The landlord has provided no evidence of communication internally or with the resident which addresses these recommendations, and no evidence of related work being completed. This is a significant service failure which indicates a lack of action or intention to resolve the issues on the landlord’s part.
23. By the date of the resident’s complaint to this Service on 29 September 2022, the recommendations made by the surveyor who visited the property on 18 September 2020 had still not been undertaken by the landlord, in which time the resident had made a further six reports of leaks and water ingress into the property – one in November 2020, one in May 2021, two in June 2021 and two in July 2021. The landlord had missed multiple opportunities to act on the surveyor’s recommendations, to identify the repeated nature of the resident’s reports or to take action to address the issues of water ingress and damp across several years.
24. The resident reported that leaks from the washing machine of the flat upstairs occurred in both July 2016 and August 2019. He stated that a plumber attended on 16 August 2019 and identified the cause of the leak as the washing machine. The landlord has not provided any evidence of these incidents being reported or records of the operative attending site. This is hearsay evidence so this Service will not make any specific findings on these incidents, but we note that while the landlord appears to have responded appropriately to the reports on each occasion, the administrative error in not recording communications or work undertaken could have meant that it was unable to identify repeated patterns of water ingress and respond appropriately or to consider these incidents when reviewing the resident’s complaint.
25. The landlord’s maintenance records show that a site visit on 13 November 2019 identified a problem with the flat roof which was causing water penetration into the property. The landlord has not provided any further evidence of work on this incident report so this investigation references the resident’s own notes on the issue– he stated that a site visit by a roofer took place on 13 January 2020 and work was completed on 25 January 2020. While this suggests an appropriate response on the landlord’s part as it had attended to the issue within a reasonable timeframe, the landlord’s failure to accurately record repair appointments and outcomes is noted as a further service failure. The flat roof was identified as the cause of a further leak reported on 25 April 2021, and was repaired again on 20 May 2021 – this is within the agreed timescale outlined in the repair policy.
26.  After a visit to install scaffolding in January 2020 to resolve the above roofing issue, it was reported that the guttering of the property had been damaged by the scaffolding and was leaking. The maintenance record shows that a site visit four days later found the waste pipe had been snapped, that it was temporarily repaired with duct tape and that a follow-up appointment with a plumber was required for a permanent solution. While it responded appropriately to the initial report and made a temporary repair, the landlord has not provided any evidence of this follow-up work being done, and the guttering was identified as the cause of a further leak by the resident in November 2020. The landlord has not provided any evidence of this being reported or work being done in response to this, indicative of further record keeping issues on the landlord’s part.
27. On 6 June 2020, the landlord’s maintenance request records state that the resident contacted them regarding an uncontainable leak from the flat above. There is a minor discrepancy in dates, as the resident reported that on 7 June 2020, he made multiple emergency calls to the landlord as the leak had caused the kitchen ceiling to collapse. The resident stated that the landlord made repeated promises that workers were on the way to the property, but no one attended. The landlord has no record of these contacts or attempted appointments but does note a site visit on 8 June 2020 to make safe, and that a plumber had made a visit to the upstairs flat.
28. A year later, the resident received a report from his tenant of a damp patch on the kitchen ceiling, which he stated was reported to the landlord on 1 June 2021. The resident noted that between 10 June 2021 and 17 June 2021 he made repeat attempts to contact the landlord, and site visits by an emergency plumber failed. Again, the landlord has not provided any evidence of this communication or of emergency maintenance requests. On 16 June 2021, the resident again reported a water leak from the upstairs flat. The landlord’s repair team visited the property but were unable to access the upstairs flat so left a calling card. The resident reported an uncontainable water leak from the upstairs flat on 22 June 2021, to which the landlord responded by arranging an electrician and a plumber to make the property safe.
29. The resident notes that on 06 July 2021 the kitchen ceiling in the property collapsed, with an emergency plumber stating the ceiling was not stable and that the source of the leak was old plumbing in the bathroom of the upstairs flat which they were not able to repair. The landlord’s record has a slight date discrepancy, with this reported on 07 July 2021. The maintenance record states that multiple jobs were completed on 08 July 2021, including an electrician to make electrics safe and a temporary repair made to the bath in the upstairs flat with future work arranged for 16 July 2021. There was no mention by either party of the success of this appointment, but a work record does note significant work in the bathroom of the upstairs flat was completed on 28 August 2021.
30. The landlord was given multiple opportunities to take steps to resolve the plumbing issues in the upstairs flat. Commencing with the June 2020 reports, then a year later when the issue clearly reoccurred. Its failure to effect a resolution to this issue no doubt resulted in the ceiling collapse in July 2021. It is not known whether the works to the upstairs bathroom completed in August 2021 have resolved the plumbing issues that caused the water penetration (including the ceiling collapse), however, the lack of further reports from that point suggests as much. In any case, the landlord’s failure to act promptly or effectively on this issue highlights a serious concern about its repair actions on this case.
31. The resident had identified several attempts to contact the landlord regarding damp and black mould in the property, reportedly in August 2016, October 2018, June 2019, July 2019 and October 2019. The landlord has not provided any record of these calls or emails, nor any record of its response. This Service considers this as further evidence of the landlord’s poor record keeping and service failures but will not make specific recommendations on this due to lack of evidence. The Ombudsman has made a number of recommendations and further guidance regarding the handling of damp and mould in its October 2021 Spotlight report, which the landlord should consider in its response to future complaints of this nature.
32. The landlord acknowledged that that it had not fully identified the source of all the leaks into the resident’s property and had not created a coordinated plan to resolve these same issues. The landlord advised the resident that he was responsible for remedial works within the flat and it was recommended that the resident make a claim to the landlord’s insurers for costs incurred. The Ombudsman is not satisfied that this response demonstrated the landlord accounting for its overall responsibility on the case, an issue highlighted as a particular concern about the landlord’s approach to leaseholder cases in the recent systemic investigation completed by the Ombudsman.
33. Generally speaking a landlord is responsible for resolving issues to the exterior of a property in leaseholder cases, with the leaseholder responsible for issues within the property. This appears to be the case in this instance given the wording of the lease. Where water penetration or damp are reported, the landlord’s guidance suggests it will inspect and identify the cause of the issue and, accordingly, who has responsibility for resolving said issues. In this case, the landlord’s response was ineffective, it did not offer clarity about who was responsible and left it to the resident to pursue an insurance claim through its insurer, rather than take the works on so that a full resolution could be achieved. Improving the way in which the landlord responds to leaseholder repairs and complaints is a key component of the Ombudsman’s systemic investigation and will not be repeated here, it is notable however that these same issues have appeared in a case investigated shortly after the publication of the systemic report.
34. In relation to the failures identified the Ombudsman’s role is to consider whether the redress offered by the landlord put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this the Ombudsman takes into account whether the landlord’s offer of redress was in line with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles: Be Fair, Put Things Right and Learn from Outcomes as well as our own guidance on remedies. In all the circumstances of the case, it is the Ombudsman’s view that the landlord’s offer of compensation did not offer a remedy to the resident that reflected the extent of its failures nor the impact of these failures over the protracted period of these failures.
35. The landlord offered a total of £245 in compensation for its acknowledged failures in relation to the damp/leaks at the property. This was calculated as £5 per week for a period of 45 weeks from 29 September 2020 to 16 August 2021, on which date it believed the remedial work on the roof would be completed. The landlord has not provided any reason for the use of 29 September 2020 as the start date for this calculation and has relied solely on the lower limit of the “time and trouble” category of its Discretionary Compensation policy which per the guidance is only to be used “in the absence of specific guidance/award” and has a suggested award of £5-£10 per week.
36. It is not clear why a weekly payment at the lower end of the discretionary scale of the landlord’s compensation matrix was used, given the extent of the detriment reported by the resident. It is also not clear why the landlord used the time period detailed to limit its award of compensation as the resident had been reporting these issues from some time prior to 29 September 2020. In the circumstances, given that the property experienced numerous water penetration issues over a protracted period, including the collapsing of a ceiling and given that the landlord repeatedly failed to take the opportunity to respond effectively to these reports, an overall finding of severe maladministration has been identified here, with an order of compensation made that is consistent with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance for such cases.
37. It is also noted that the resident reports that the leaks and water ingress issues have continued past the date that the landlord identified as the resolution date for compensation to be calculated to (16 August 2021), and that its Tenant Complaint Panel recommended that the landlord undertake work necessary to resolve all outstanding issues at the property. As part of its submission to this Service in response to the resident’s complaint, we would expect to see evidence of internal communications and work records showing that the landlord had undertaken the recommendations of the Tenant Complaint Panel.
38. Therefore, in addition to the above compensation order, the landlord is ordered to carry out a further inspection of the property within six weeks of this investigation report and, within two further weeks of that inspection date, to provide written confirmation to the resident that the property is free from any ongoing water penetration issues or damp related concerns. In the event that the property inspection highlights a need for required works to address any outstanding issues, the landlord’s written update to also include details of whether it is responsible for these works and if so, the reasonable timeframe within which these works will be completed.

Complaints handling

39.  The landlord responded to the resident’s initial complaint of 3 September 2020 on 17 September 2020, failing to comply with the expected timeframe of ten days outlined in its own complaints policy. Despite the delay, the landlord’s response to the complaint was appropriate – apologising for the issues the resident raised, agreeing to arrange for a surveyor to visit the property and promising a follow-up communication to discuss next steps once the surveyor report was completed. It should be noted that the landlord failed to address the independent damp report which the resident provided as part of their complaint, which had been conducted in August 2020 as part of the failed sale of the property, though it did conduct its own damp survey as part of the September 2020 surveyor appointment.
40.  The landlord has provided no evidence that this promise of future communication was adhered to, and the maintenance records do not show any specific actions being taken which relate to the surveyor’s recommendations. This failure to follow up on agreed actions is a significant service failure on the part of the landlord in relation to its complaints handling.
41.  The resident wrote to the landlord to escalate his complaint on 30 June 2021, ten months after the initial complaint. This is outside the usual 6-month escalation period outlined in the landlord’s complaints policy so the landlord would have been within its rights to reject this escalation, but as it chose to respond this Service will consider that the landlord was relying on the ‘exceptional circumstances’ term of its policy in accepting this complaint. This was a reasonable exercise of discretion on the landlord’s part as the issues were serious and ongoing.
42.  The landlord provided a response to the Stage Two complaint 50 days later on 18 August 2021, significantly outside the expected response timeframe of twenty days outlined in the complaints policy.
43. The response also fails to recognise that the resident had experienced a significant detriment on 6 July 2021 (before the Stage Two complaint response was issued) with the second collapse of the kitchen ceiling caused by leaks from the flat above which may have been prevented by earlier intervention. It would have been appropriate for the landlord to include this in its consideration of the complaint given the subject matter.
44.  The landlord acted appropriately in advising the resident of the next escalation stage, a referral to this Service, but also made the resident aware of a potential further step – a Tenant Complaint Panel. The resident was not obliged to take this option, but he chose to do so on 22 September 2021. The communication made explicit that this Tenant Complaint Panel is recognised by the landlord, so this Service will consider that this Stage Three of the complaint was authorised by the landlord and that the outcomes may be binding on it. This was an appropriate action on its part.
45.  The Stage Three response received on 9 November 2021 concluded that the body was unable to make awards of financial compensation but did recommend that the landlord undertake outstanding repairs and conduct quality checks on the work. The Tenant Complaint Panel also recommended that a letter be sent to the resident within 28 days of the decision explaining how the surveyor’s recommendations had been carried out. The landlord has not provided any evidence that these actions or communications were undertaken within the outlined timeframe, again a significant service failure.
46. At all three stages of the complaint process the landlord failed to respond to the resident’s complaint that the inaction or delays in resolving the water ingress problems had caused, namely the resident having to withdraw from a sale of the property and later in his tenants ending the tenancy early due to the condition of the property – the landlord should have acknowledged this in its responses.
47. In all the circumstances of the case, a finding of maladministration has been identified, with an order of compensation identified to reflect the impact of the landlord’s poor complaints handling on the resident.

Record Keeping

48. The landlord’s record keeping was highlighted as a particular concern in the systemic investigation completed recently. As with other aspects of this case, it is noted that these same knowledge management issues have been highlighted as particular concerns here. The investigation of the case has proved troublesome owing to the lack of available records, with the resident’s interpretation of events having to be relied upon at points in the absence of any notable records having been retained by the landlord.
49. It is clear that the landlord’s poor record keeping had a significant impact on its overall handling of the case. The landlord failed to demonstrate that it was keeping in contact with the resident or had a grasp on what was going on at the property. It is of significant concern that no records about roof repairs were made available, despite the resident having confirmed the approximate dates that these took place.
50. Had the landlord retained accurate and contemporaneous records throughout, it is possible that the resident’s experience might have been very different. This investigation will not repeat orders/recommendations made within other investigation reports as it is clear that the landlord has now been made fully aware of the importance of this issue. It has been considered appropriate to make a further maladministration finding here however so as to highlight how poor the landlord’s record keeping has been in this instance. To reflect the impact of these failures on the resident, a further amount of compensation has also been ordered below.

Determination

51.  In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was severe maladministration by the landlord in respect of its handling of the resident’s reports of leaks and water ingress into the property.
52. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in respect of the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.
53. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in respect of the landlord’s record keeping.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

54.  It is ordered that the landlord pay the resident a total of £2100 compensation minus any compensation already paid within four weeks, comprising:
    1. £1500 in relation to the failures identified with its response to the damp/leaks issues.
    2. £300 in relation to the failures identified with its complaints handling.
    3. £300 in relation to the failures identified with its record keeping.
55. Any amounts of compensation already paid on this case to be deducted from the above compensation award. The landlord to evidence compliance with this order to this Service within four weeks of this report.
56. The landlord to carry out a further inspection of the property within six weeks of this investigation report and, within two further weeks of that inspection date, to provide written confirmation to the resident that the property is free from any ongoing water penetration issues or damp related concerns. In the event that the property inspection highlights a need for required works to address any outstanding issues, the landlord’s written update to also include details of whether it is responsible for these works and if so, the reasonable timeframe within which these works will be completed.