Home Group Limited (202203091)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202203091

Home Group Limited

26 April 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 level of compensation offered for the landlord’s acknowledged service failures relating to the repair of the boiler at the property.
  2. The landlord’s complaints handling has also been investigated.

Background and summary of events

  1. The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord at the property, a two-bedroom flat. She has lived at the property since January 2016. At the time of the initial complaint, she has confirmed that she was 6 months pregnant.
  2. This investigation relates to the handling by the landlord of a boiler failure at the property in November 2019. The fault with the boiler was reported over a weekend and there were a number of acknowledged failures in relation to both repairing the boiler and the provision of temporary heating at the property.
  3. The landlord accepted that its handling of the necessary repairs to the boiler had been below the expected standard. The landlord made two consecutive offers of compensation to the resident of £105 and £145. These were rejected by the resident, who provided a list of questions to the landlord that she required answers to in order to satisfactorily resolve her complaint.
  4. The resident was unhappy with the answers to the questions and requested that her complaint be escalated to stage 2 of the landlord’s complaints process. The landlords’ final response to the complaint was sent on 21 June 2022, in which it offered an apology for the delays and service failure in relation to the boiler repair. Further, it apologised for the delay in logging the complaint at Stage 2. The landlord also accepted that it had not considered the resident’s concerns about its call records sufficiently.
  5. The landlord made an offer of £220 in compensation which comprised: £55 for loss of facility, £75 for service failure, £55 for complaint handling failures and £35 for disruption. Following mediation, this was increased to £255 (by adding an additional £35 for time and effort spent pursuing) but the resident remained dissatisfied. She confirmed to the Ombudsman that the level of compensation did not, in her view, reflect the time spent on chasing the repairs and the complaint, and the impact that this had on her while she was pregnant.

Assessment and findings

Level of compensation in relation to the failures in relation to the boiler repair

  1. The tenancy agreement sets out that the landlord is obliged “to keep in good repair and proper working order any installation provided by the Association for space heating…., including central heating installations”. The landlord accepted that it had failed to handle the necessary repairs to the boiler in a timely and effective manner, thus confirming that it had not met its repair obligations in this case.
  2. The resident first reported a fault with the boiler on 19 November 2021 at 2.15pm as she had no heating or hot water at the property. When no one attended to assist, she reported the fault again at 10.50pm that evening. Over the course of the next two days, she made a total of 9 phone calls to chase the engineer who was on duty. The engineer was reluctant to attend the property as he had recently undergone a PCR test for Covid 19 and he was aware that the resident was 6 months pregnant at the time. However, he attempted to assist by asking the resident to send pictures of the boiler via WhatsApp to establish whether the issue could be resolved easily over the phone. Unfortunately, this was not possible.
  3. The resident should have been provided with temporary heating at the property while the issue remained unresolved, given the time of year. However, there were a number of communication failures that meant that this did not happen until 22 November 2021, leaving the resident without heating or hot water for 72 hours. The boiler was finally repaired on 24 November 2021.
  4. The Ombudsman is of the view that it was correct for the landlord to offer the resident compensation for the service failure and delay in both providing the property with temporary heating and in getting an engineer to assess the boiler fault. The engineer failed to explain to the resident why he was reluctant to attend the property following his PCR test and this left her frustrated as she repeatedly chased for an update regarding when she could expect the boiler to be assessed. There did not appear to be any other engineer who was able to attend the property and the miscommunications meant that temporary heaters were not obtained and given to the resident for an unacceptably long period of time. In addition, there was further confusion caused when the resident was told that the engineer had not wished to attend the property as she herself had tested positive for Covid, when this was not the case.
  5. The landlord apologised and accepted that it had failed to provide the repairs service expected in the circumstances. Its offer of a total of £165 compensation in relation to this aspect of the complaint (£75 for service failure, £55 for loss of facility and £35 for disruption) was in line with its compensation policy and demonstrated that it understood the detrimental impact the situation had on the resident. In the Ombudsman’s view the landlord has offered reasonable redress. The compensation offered was in line with the landlord’s own compensation policy and the Housing Ombudsman’s compensation schedule for service failure of this nature.

Complaint handling

  1. The landlord is required to adhere to the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code which specifies that stage 1 complaints should be dealt with within 10 days, unless additional time is agreed. Stage 2 complaints should be dealt with within 20 working days, unless additional time is agreed.
  2. The stage 1 complaint was made on 13 December 2021 and swiftly acknowledged by the landlord on 15 December 2021. The landlord quickly accepted the failure in relation to the boiler repair and made an initial offer of compensation of £105 (£35 for service failure, £35 for loss of facility and £35 for disruption). This was immediately rejected by the resident.
  3. The landlord next increased the compensation offer to £145 (£55 for service failure, £55 for loss of facility and £35 for disruption). The resident considered this but ultimately rejected the offer on 7 January 2022 as she considered that it did not reflect the impact upon her of the loss of heating and hot water for a 72-hour period. She posed a list of questions to the landlord which she required answers to in order to resolve the complaint. These questions focussed on the time taken to complete an emergency repair, the lack of alternative heating, the confusion over whether the resident had tested positive for Covid 19 and the poor communication from the contractor regarding the timeline for the repair.
  4. The landlord made reasonable efforts to obtain the answers to the questions posed by the resident. It asked the contractor to respond on all the points raised and, after chasing on a number of occasions, received a response from the contractor on 14 February 2022.
  5. The contractor’s response was forwarded to the resident but she remained dissatisfied with the answers provided. She stated that she had never been told at the time that the engineer was awaiting a PCR test result and she wanted the recorded calls from the time to be reviewed. She queried why only one engineer was working across the weekend as she believed this to be illegal in that it exceeded the 48-hour working week. In addition, she remained unhappy about the use of WhatsApp to communicate with her and queried why the repair was passed to the Out of Hours team so swiftly, given that she reported the initial fault within office hours. She stated that the temporary heaters should have been provided much more promptly. She complained that there had been a significant delay of three months in responding to the questions.
  6. Due to her ongoing dissatisfaction for the explanations given about the service failure in relation to the boiler, and her unhappiness about the level of compensation offered, the resident requested an escalation to stage 2 on 1 March 2022.
  7. The stage 2 complaint was not logged until 7 June 2022, which was 66 days after the escalation request was made. The landlord explained that it had experienced staffing shortages which had caused delays in logging complaints. Once the complaint was logged it was dealt within the expected timeframes and a final response was issued and increased offer of compensation made on 21 June 2022. This included £55 for complaint handling failures. Following mediation, this was increased by another £35 to reflect the time spent and efforts made by the resident to pursue the complaint.
  8. The stage 1 complaint was handled appropriately. A response was given in 4 days after the complaint and included a compensation offer. There is therefore no requirement for compensation in relation to the handling of this stage. The landlord also took appropriate steps to try to answer the list of questions posed by the resident and was proactive in chasing the contractor for a response. The contractor took some time to respond satisfactorily and it is clear that its record keeping in relation to complaint was not as detailed as might have been hoped. This made it difficult for the landlord to satisfy the resident that the repair had been handled appropriately.
  9. There was a clear service failure however in the landlord’s delay in logging the stage 2 complaint. The resident had, by this point, asked for assistance from the Ombudsman to pursue the complaint and the landlord received two letters from the Ombudsman asking that it respond to the complaint in a timely manner. The landlord explained that this delay was due to staffing shortages in its complaint handling team.
  10. The Ombudsman is of the view that the landlord has offered reasonable redress for the delay in logging the complaint at stage 2. The landlord offered a full apology and accepted that it had not progressed the complaint within the expected timeframe. The resident was offered a total of £90 in respect of both the complaint handling failures and the amount of time she had spent chasing the stage 2 complaint. The compensation offered was in line with the landlord’s own compensation policy and the Housing Ombudsman’s compensation schedule for service failure of this nature.

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53 b of the Housing Ombudsman scheme, the landlord has provided reasonable redress for its services failures in the handling of the repair to the boiler.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 53 b of the Housing Ombudsman scheme, the landlord has provided reasonable redress for its service failures in the handling of the complaint.