Haringey London Borough Council (202303218)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202303218

Haringey London Borough Council

13 March 2024


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 repairs to the ceiling.
  2. The Ombudsman has also considered the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident is a secure tenant of the property, a ground floor flat. The landlord is a local authority, which owns and manages the property. The flat above the resident belongs to a leaseholder.
  2. The resident reported a problem with a leak affecting her ceiling on 30 September 2022. The notes on the landlord’s repair log said:
    1. The ceiling “might collapse due to a leak from upstairs”.
    2. The landlord attended on 3 October 2022 and made the ceiling safe.
    3. A follow up ceiling repair was required.
    4. An inspection of the flat above was required to identify the source of the leak.
  3. The resident raised an online complaint to the landlord on 7 October 2022. She said:
    1. There had been a leak for over 2 weeks which had caused a hole in her ceiling.
    2. She had an appointment arranged with the landlord between 12pm and 4pm on 7 October 2022 but the landlord had contacted her at 3.20pm that day to cancel. She had lost half a day’s wages waiting at home for this appointment.
    3. The only way she could get time off work was unpaid, so it was very inconvenient for the appointment to have been cancelled.
  4. The landlord sent its stage 1 response by email on 24 October 2022. It said:
    1. It had to cancel the job on 7 October 2022 due to the operative being held up on the previous job and not having time to attend. However, it acknowledged the inconvenience caused and apologised for this.
    2. Its plumber had stopped the leak from the flat above on 7 October 2022.
    3. It had attended to the ceiling on 10 October 2022 and had booked a follow up job for 7 November 2022.
    4. It was upholding the resident’s complaint. She could request an escalation to stage 2 of the complaints procedure if she was dissatisfied with the response.
  5. The resident emailed the landlord on 18 November 2022, stating:
    1. The landlord had arranged an appointment for 7 November 2022, which was not convenient for her. It confirmed this by email. Upon contacting the landlord, it told her that the appointment was for 14 December 2022 rather than 7 November 2022.
    2. She contacted the landlord again on 18 November 2022 and it told her the appointment had been rescheduled for 23 March 2023.
    3. She was not happy to wait over 5 months for the landlord to repair her ceiling and she needed the landlord to resolve it as soon as possible.
    4. She had not been contacted by telephone as promised by the landlord to discuss the appointment.
  6. The resident submitted a stage 2 escalation request online on 12 March 2023. She said:
    1. She had been told different things about the repair, including whether the landlord would repair the whole ceiling or just part of it.
    2. The landlord had told her it would call her on 3 March 2023 or 6 March 2023 about the repair, but it had not done this.
    3. The landlord did not send her any text messages about appointments. Instead, she had to call it to get this information. Some of the arranged appointments were not convenient because Friday is her only day off work.
  7. The landlord sent its stage 2 response on 12 April 2023, in which it said:
    1. It had booked several appointments in March 2023 and cancelled these. It could not provide an explanation for the cancellations.
    2. It had arranged for the ceiling works to be completed on 25 April 2023.
    3. The delays were due to “internal coordination and administrative reasons”. It agreed it should have kept her updated and given a clear understanding of how it was managing the repair.
    4. It was reviewing its internal processes for communication with residents, and its audit trail for repairs, to make improvements.
    5. It awarded the resident £358, comprising £158 for the delay between 7 November 2022 and 25 April 2023, and £200 for her time and trouble.
    6. She had the right to approach this Service with the complaint if she remained dissatisfied.
  8. The resident contacted the landlord on 25 April 2023 stating nobody had arrived for the scheduled appointment. She said she had taken a day off work unpaid for this and had received no cancellation text or call from the landlord.
  9. The landlord attended on 26 May 2023 and completed the replastering of the ceiling. It attended again on 9 June 2023 and painted the ceiling.
  10. The resident duly made her complaint to this Service on 2 August 2023.

Assessment and findings

The landlord’s handling of repairs to the ceiling

  1. Page 6 of the landlord’s repair handbook (“making an appointment”) says “once we’ve got all the information, we will agree a date and time that’s convenient for you”. However, the resident repeatedly said that the landlord had arranged appointments without consulting her. The resident also told the landlord on 12 March 2023 that only Fridays were convenient. Despite this, the landlord arranged an appointment for 25 April 2023, a Tuesday.
  2. Pages 9 to 11 of the repairs handbook confirm that the landlord has 4 categories for repairs:
    1. Out of hours repairs, which refer to jobs so urgent they cannot wait until the next working day.
    2. Emergency repairs, which it attends within 24 hours.
    3. Agreed appointment repairs, which it attends within 28 days.
    4. Planned repairs, which are inspected within 28 days and completed when possible.
  3. The landlord attended the resident’s first report about the repair on the next working day, which was 3 calendar days after the report. We have seen no evidence that the landlord triaged this repair to determine if an out of hours appointment was appropriate. Considering the landlord had said the resident’s ceiling “might collapse” when it logged the repair, it would have been reasonable to consider this.
  4. The landlord cancelled the appointment on 7 October 2022 at 3.20pm, which was near the end of the appointment window (12pm to 4pm) scheduled for the same day. The landlord also failed to keep the appointment on 25 April 2023 and it did not inform the resident of this cancellation. The landlord’s internal emails show the appointment failed on 25 April 2023 because the assigned operative had changed trades and was no longer completing plastering works. It failed to assign another plasterer to the job or contact the resident to reschedule.
  5. The resident has said she lost half a day’s wages on 7 October 2022 and a day’s wages on 25 April 2023 waiting for the appointments that the landlord did not keep. We have not seen evidence from the resident to show the monetary amounts she lost, but the Ombudsman appreciates the resident would have needed to take time off work for the appointments and the failure of the landlord to keep these would have caused inconvenience and lost work opportunities.
  6. In its case file to this Service, the landlord said it recognised the need to make “substantial improvements” in the way it communicated with residents about repairs. The Ombudsman welcomes this and will require the landlord to report the improvements it made as a result of the learning from this case.
  7. For the long delay experienced by the resident, the 2 appointments not kept, and the failure to consult the resident on convenient appointment slots, the Ombudsman finds maladministration in the landlord’s handling of repairs to the resident’s ceiling.

Complaint handling

  1. Under section 5 of the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code), landlords are required to respond to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days of the complaint being logged. They must respond to stage 2 complaints within 20 working days of the request to escalate the complaint. Landlords can add 10 working days to each of these stages, as long as they contact the resident with an explanation of the delay and a new date for a response. The landlord confirms in its “customer feedback policy” that it complies with these timescales.
  2. In this case, the landlord took 11 working days to issue its stage 1 response and 21 working days to issue its stage 2 response. It was therefore 1 day outside the required timescales for both responses.
  3. The landlord’s definition of a complaint in its customer feedback policy is “an expression of dissatisfaction about [our] service (whether that service is provided directly by [us] or by a contractor or partner) that requires a response”.
  4. The resident’s email on 18 November 2022 fit this definition of a complaint, but the landlord did not provide any response to this. The landlord should have asked the resident if she wanted to escalate her complaint to stage 2 in response to this email. Its failure to do this delayed the progress of the complaint, which in turn may have delayed the ceiling repair.
  5. Section 6.2 of the Code says that any remedy offered by the landlord must reflect the extent of any service failures and the level of any detriment caused to the resident as a result of these. Despite the resident telling the landlord in her initial complaint that she had lost wages waiting for the appointment it did not keep, the landlord did not address this or offer any compensation in its stage 1 response. This was a failure under 6.2 of the Code.
  6. For the minor delays in issuing responses at both complaint stages, the failure to respond to the resident’s email of 18 November 2022, and the failure to address the resident’s lost wages in its stage 1 response, the Ombudsman finds service failure in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of repairs to the resident’s ceiling.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders

  1. It is ordered that, within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord sends the resident an apology written by a senior member of staff.
  2. It is ordered that, within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord provides the resident with £200 compensation. This is in addition to the payment of £358 previously provided by the landlord and comprises:
    1. £150 for the repair delays, including any potential lost wages for the resident.
    2. £50 for the complaint handling failures identified.
  3. It is ordered that, within 8 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord provides this Service with details of any changes it has made to its internal processes and procedures for communicating with residents about repairs, based on its learning from this case.