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Home Group Limited (202109994)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202109994

Home Group Limited

18 March 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 is about the level of compensation offered to the resident following acknowledged service failures in carrying out repairs to fix a roof leak. 

Background

  1. The resident is a tenant of the landlord. The resident holds an assured tenancy of a two-bedroom house and has lived there since 2006.
  2. The resident made a complaint on 12 August 2019 regarding water ingress from her roof. The resident complained that this was affecting her bedroom ceiling and affecting her health. The resident said that there has been a recurring problem with her roof leaking since 2016 and there is evidence to show that the resident experienced problems with her roof in 2014 and in 2016/7 as well as when she made her most recent complaint which is the subject of this investigation.
  3. In her complaint, the resident says she reported water ingress on 22 July 2019 but it was not attended to until 7 August 2019. The resident said that following heavy rain on 9 August 2019, water came through her bedroom ceiling again indicating that not only had there been a delay in dealing with the leak urgently, the repair had been unsatisfactory.
  4. The landlord contacted the resident by phone soon after receiving the complaint and arranged roofers to attend to carry out repairs on 23 August 2019. The roofers were unable to carry out repair work on that day due to the lack of scaffolding. The evidence suggests that some work was done in September to ‘rake out and relay the lead’ on the roof but the surveyor overseeing the works had difficulty contacting the resident to arrange a post-work inspection.
  5. The landlord managed to contact the resident by phone on 11 October 2019 and said that a new work order had been raised to ‘seal flue opening to chimney stack and insert air vent in chimney breast’, the resident had been advised by various builders and said she was not satisfied with the work being done and wanted the chimney stack replaced instead.
  6. Repair works were carried out on 21 October 2019. The resident’s ceiling was skimmed and two roof tiles were replaced. The surveyor said that following this work there was no sign of damp or water ingress in the resident’s home.
  7. The landlord then sent a stage one complaint response on 31 October 2019. The response said that the surveyor had seen little evidence of water ingress but that works had been carried out to resolve the issue. The letter said that a post-inspection would take place to ensure success of the works. The letter also apologised for the inconvenience and disruption to the resident. The letter says that the resident confirmed she was happy with the outcome but the resident disputes that she said she was happy with the repairs made and says that she was planning to wait and see if the repairs had been successful after rain.
  8. In February 2020, following advice from a local Citizens Advice Bureau, the resident contacted the landlord and said that she was not satisfied with the works completed and the post-work inspection never took place.
  9. The landlord decided to treat this letter as a new stage one complaint since more than 8 weeks had passed since the response had been sent. Following the letter sent in February, the landlord booked repair work in for 8 March 2020 including replacing roof tiles. However, due to Coronavirus restrictions on non-emergency repairs, this repair work was suspended until June and July when government restrictions eased.
  10. The landlord attended in early July but found that the condition of the roof had worsened and required different scaffolding to allow proper access to the roof. After a period of bad weather, the repair work was completed on 21 July 2020.
  11. On 28 July 2020, the landlord issued a stage one response and offered the resident £250 compensation as well as £40 decoration vouchers. The £250 was broken down as £100 for delays, £75 for disturbance, £75 for service failure/time and trouble. At this point, the resident confirmed there was no further sign of water ingress.
  12. The resident escalated her complaint in August 2020, saying that there had been significant delay in the complaint response, that the original response in October 2019 was factually incorrect, that her bedroom had not been inspected, that roofers attended her home unannounced and without face masks for Covid. The resident said there had been 44 weeks of unresolved ongoing disrepair issues.
  13. The landlord responded to the complaint at stage two on 8 September 2020. The landlord acknowledged the service failures previously identified in the stage one response but added two additional payments of £55 each for the error with incorrect scaffolding which delayed repairs at the beginning of July as well as a similar payment in recognition of the failure to carry out the post-work inspection in October 2019.
  14. In the period following the final stage response by the landlord, the resident expressed concern regarding using the decoration vouchers given the Covid pandemic and the landlord agreed to credit the residents rent account instead. The landlord attempted to clarify any confusion with the compensation payments in a response to a local Councillor dated 2 March 2021. In this response, the landlord said it would offer the resident £55 to compensate for the ‘administrative errors’ and ‘confusion caused’ by the compensation payments.
  15. The resident confirmed in her contact with this service at the end of July 2021 that the outstanding issue of her complaint was the total amount of compensation offered by the landlord following her reports of a leak from her roof.  

Assessment and findings

Scope of Investigation

  1. The resident is not satisfied with the amount of compensation offered partly because she says the issues have been ongoing for several years. It is important to note that this investigation has focussed only on the complaint made in August 2019 and the landlord’s subsequent response to it. Although the history of events has been considered when assessing the level of impact on the resident, the amount of compensation is not a direct reflection of events or possible service failures that occurred in the years before the current complaint under investigation.
  2. By limiting the investigation to events that occurred more recently, the Ombudsman ensures that it considers matters where the landlord has had the opportunity to respond and matters where there is a sufficient amount of reliable evidence to make an accurate determination.

Tenancy Agreement and Policy Documents

  1. The resident’s tenancy agreement states in clause 2.5 that the landlord is obliged ‘to keep in good repair the structure and exterior of the premises’. In clause 2.8, the timescales for response to repairs are described as 24 hours for emergency repairs, 7 days for urgent repairs, and 28 days for day to day repairs.
  2. The landlord’s property management policy says that “where repairs are or other works have not been completed satisfactorily or within pre-defined timescales, we offer compensation in line with… our complaints policy”
  3. The landlord’s complaints policy says that there is no automatic entitlement to compensation and that discretionary offers of financial compensation are made in line with its own staff guidance. Internal staff guidance has not been provided to this service.

Assessment

  1. The landlord has an obligation under Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 to keep the structure and exterior of the property in repair. This is also clearly identified as above in the resident’s tenancy agreement.
  2. It is not disputed that there have been multiple service failures by the landlord. The landlord has accepted responsibility for the following service failures:
    1. Delay in responding to the initial report of a leak on July 22 2019.
    2. Failure to carry out a post-work inspection in October 2019
    3. Using the incorrect scaffolding when non-emergency repair work resumed in July 2020.
    4. Failing to resolve the leak to a satisfactory level until July 21 2020.
    5. ‘Causing confusion’ and making an ‘administrative error’ in arranging compensation payments particularly with the decoration vouchers.
  3. In recognition of these failures, in its final stage complaints response the landlord awarded total financial compensation of £400 as follows: £100 for delays, £75 for disturbance, £75 for service failure/time and trouble, £55 incorrect scaffolding, £55 failure to carry out post-work inspection. £40 worth of decoration vouchers were also awarded but it was later decided to credit this to the resident’s rent account. A further £55 was offered in recognition of the confusion caused by the vouchers in March 2021 bringing the total amount of compensation offered by the landlord to £455 (although it is noted that the final award was made following a Councillor enquiry and was after completion of the landlord’s internal complaints process)
  4. In addition to the acknowledged failures of the landlord, this investigation has found there was service failure in its communication with the resident. The resident sent many handwritten letters and did not use email. Although the resident did communicate by phone, the landlord struggled to contact the resident by phone and this is what caused the failure to carry out the post-inspection by the surveyor in October 2019.
  5. Similarly, there was a misunderstanding of the resident’s position at the end of October 2019 when the landlord thought the resident was satisfied but the resident was reserving judgement on the success of the works. The landlord could have considered other ways of contacting the resident such as writing or visiting which may have improved or quickened the process. The landlord may be able to learn from this complaint to better adjust its communication in recognition of the customer’s needs.
  6. The landlord has not provided its internal guidance on how discretionary compensation is determined and so this service will take a view in the round as to whether the overall level of redress offered to the resident was proportionate and reasonable taking in to account the impact of the service failures on the resident and keeping in mind Housing Ombudsman guidance on remedies.
  7. Ombudsman guidance states that payments of between £250 and £700 can be made where there has been ‘failure over a considerable period of time to act in accordance with policy’. In this case, the key service failure has been the failure to carry out a reported repair within a reasonable timescale as specified in the resident’s tenancy agreement. The initial report was made on 22 July 2019 and the repairs were not completed until 21 July 2020. This was a delay of almost exactly a year since the initial report by the resident on July 22 2019. This delay is partly mitigated by the Coronavirus pandemic restrictions in March to July 2020 and also by the resident making no contact between October 2019 and February 2020 regarding the work she says she was not satisfied with.
  8. It is acknowledged that there was some unavoidable delay in carrying out repairs due to Coronavirus restrictions but the landlord has accepted that much of the delay was avoidable as evidenced for example by the use of the incorrect scaffolding in July 2020.
  9. In assessing the impact on the resident, the landlord has accepted there was distress and inconvenience and that the resident had to chase up resolution of her repairs. It is recognised that the prolonged period of the repair is likely to have been a significant inconvenience for the resident. Evidence from the landlord’s surveyor suggests that the resident’s bedroom was not very badly affected by the leak. There is no clear evidence that the roof leak represented a serious category one hazard as defined by the housing health and safety rating system or that it required an urgent move of the resident or put her in danger.
  10. Therefore, an amount of compensation between £250-700 would be appropriate. The total amount of compensation offered by the landlord was £455. However, this amount includes compensation after the completion of the complaints process in a Councillor enquiry. It is noted there was also confusion regarding the decoration vouchers.
  11. Although the landlord attempted to put things right with an offer of compensation and the offer of compensation was reasonable, the offer was made piecemeal, and the resident should instead be made one single offer of compensation of £455.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 55b of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has provided reasonable redress for its failure to respond appropriately to the resident’s complaint about a roof leak.

Orders and recommendations

  1. It is recommended that the landlord re-offer the resident a total of £455 compensation minus any compensation already paid in recognition of the acknowledged service failures and delays in carrying out an effective repair to the resident’s roof.