Home Group Limited (202230425)

Back to Top

 

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202230425

Home Group Limited

28 February 2025

 

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 the resident’s reports of problems with her central heating system.
  2. We have also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident has been the assured tenant of the property since 2009. The property is a two-storey house with central heating. It has radiators throughout including one in each bedroom and 5 downstairs. At the time of these events, the resident was off work recovering from an accident.
  2. In mid-November 2022 the resident reported to the landlord that the downstairs radiators were not working. The landlord inspected them on 14 November 2022 and sent operatives on several more occasions over the following months. On one or more occasions, operatives took photographs which the landlord said showed clutter around the radiators.
  3. The resident made a formal complaint on 23 February 2023 that she had been without central heating for 4 months. She also objected to operatives taking photographs in the property without her permission. In the landlord’s stage 1 response of 2 May 2023 it said:
    1. The job was complex as the floors needed to be lifted.
    2. On 2 occasions its operatives had attended and been unable to carry out works because of clutter around the radiators.
    3. It had booked a complete heating system replacement on 1 April 2023. As this would cause considerable disruption, it had offered to put the resident up in a bed and breakfast while the works were done and put all her belongings into storage. However, she had refused this offer as the radiators were now largely working.
    4. It would “repipe” the downstairs radiators soon and would arrange an appointment with her.
  4. The resident escalated her complaint on 9 May 2022, saying that, while the heating now worked, she had had no heating downstairs for months during a very cold period. In the landlord’s stage 2 response of 24 July 2023, it reiterated that its operatives had been unable to complete repairs on several occasions due to clutter. It said it had made reasonable efforts to mend the heating but accepted that the stage 2 response had been late and so offered £75 in recognition of this failure.
  5. In her referral to us the resident said she had had no heating for a lengthy period and the offer of £75 compensation was “appalling”.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The resident has raised concerns that operatives took photographs inside the property to show that the radiators were surrounded by clutter. She says this was an invasion of her privacy and she would like us to order the landlord to destroy them. Concerns around privacy, data protection, and the storing of personal information fall within the remit of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). As a result, these matters are not addressed further in this report and the resident should contact the ICO if she wishes to pursue this further.

Reports of problems with the central heating system

  1. The resident first reported the problems with the central heating in mid-November 2022 and they were not fully resolved until early April 2023, almost 5 months later. This was over the winter months and weather reports show that between November 2022 and March 2023 the temperatures in the area were low, dropping to -10 degrees Celsius in December 2022.
  2. The landlord’s Property Management Policy says it takes a “right first time” approach to repairs. It says there are “pre-defined timescales from the date that they are first reported to us. In most cases our repair categories and timescales for the completion of repairs are set out in our procedures and as part of our contractual agreements”. There are no timescales for heating repairs set out in the resident’s contract and no further details have been provided to this investigation.
  3. We have, therefore, considered normal industry practice for heating repairs. In the winter months, these are usually seen as urgent and should be dealt with, or at least addressed, within 24 hours. Where this is not possible, landlords should offer alternative sources of heating, particularly where there are sick or vulnerable people in the property.
  4. If it was not possible to complete works during a single visit, another should have been arranged without delay until the works were complete. This did not happen and this was a severe failure on the landlord’s part. The records show that appointments were often separated by a month, which was a thoroughly inadequate response to the resident’s concerns.
  5. The records provided by the landlord are incomplete and occasionally contradictory. However, it is clear that the landlord first attended on 14 November 2022 and recognised that it was unable to complete the required repairs. The resident told the landlord in her February 2022 complaint that, on that visit, the operative who attended said it would be a 2-man, full-day job.
  6. It would have been good practice at the earliest point, particularly given its “right first time” policy, for the landlord to arrange for a second visit within days. However, the next 2 appointments were in mid-December 2022, a month later, and on the first of these on 19 December 2022, the operatives did not attend as scheduled. The resident says she waited in and received no notice of a cancelled appointment.
  7. The landlord says that, on the next occasion that operatives attended in January 2023, they were unable to carry out works because of clutter around radiators. However, the resident is clear that no one told her that she would have to clear around the radiators in preparation for repairs appointments. She has confirmed that she would have done this had the request been made. Given that the landlord has provided no evidence that such prior notice was given to the resident, her position on this is accepted by us.
  8. The resident is also clear that she stated from the outset that it was the downstairs radiators which were not working. Nonetheless, the operatives spent much time dealing with upstairs radiators and, on occasion, refused to do so because the resident had not cleared around them. That is not to say that the operatives did not require access to the upstairs rooms but, if they did, the landlord should have informed the resident of this. It did not do so until, at the earliest, 23 February 2023. This was poor communication which caused much of the delay.
  9. In early April 2023 the landlord arranged for a full heating system replacement which would have required the resident to stay in a bed and breakfast and put her belongings in storage for the duration. She was clear in her communications with the landlord from the outset that she had spent several months off work and was still incapacitated.
  10. The landlord offered to pay for the resident and her family to stay in the bed and breakfast, including meals, while the works were carried out. However, during a phone call on 5 April 2023 a landlord employee told her they were not sure if it would pay for her belongings to be put in storage for the same period. The resident applied for quotes from storage companies which were for between £1,300 and £1,500, which she felt she could not afford herself.
  11. On 12 April 2023 the landlord said it would cover the resident’s storage expenses but, by then, the resident said the radiators were working reasonably well and so she refused to be moved. The landlord later carried out another cleansing of the radiator system which improved their performance further. It has since carried out other, unconnected works on the heating system.
  12. At this point, as the resident had refused the landlord’s offer of a new central heating system and said she was more or less happy with the current heating, the landlord was no longer under an obligation to act to repair the system. Nonetheless, over 5 months, its response to her reports of heating problems was extremely poor and amounted to severe maladministration.
  13. The landlord’s compensation policy does not set out figures for awards of compensation for cases such as this so we have referred to our own guidance on remedies. This states that, in cases where a landlord is responsible for severe maladministration, we will generally consider compensation upwards of £600, depending on factors such as the duration of the maladministration and the severity of the impact on the resident.
  14. In this case, the resident was recovering from an accident and was without central heating downstairs or a suitable alternative for 5 months during a cold winter. There were repeat visits, missed appointments, and a failure to communicate effectively regarding the requirements of repairs appointments. Together, the distress and inconvenience this caused had a significant impact on the resident. The situation was then exacerbated by the landlord’s failure to provide temporary alternative heating, acknowledge its failings, apologise for the resident’s experience, or offer any sort of redress.
  15. In light of the above, and in consideration of the indicative compensation levels set out in our remedies guidance, we order the landlord to pay the resident £700 compensation in recognition of the identified failings.

Complaint handling

  1. The resident said, in her stage 1 complaint of 28 February 2023, that she had already made several complaints. She said she complained formally on 12 and 19 December 2022 and made various other efforts to contact the landlord without response. However, no evidence of this contact has been provided by either party. Nonetheless, it is clear that, at the latest, the resident complained formally on 23 February 2023.
  2. The resident received a complaint response on 2 May 2023, 46 working days later. The landlord had not acknowledged the complaint prior to providing its response. The landlord’s complaints policy in place at the time provided no timescales for complaint responses. We have, therefore, applied the guidance for landlords set out in our Complaint Handling Code (the Code) which was first published in 2021. This required landlords to assess themselves against it and comply with it.
  3. The timescales in the Code in place in early 2023 said that landlords should provide stage 1 responses within 10 working days, or, if there is good reason, inform the resident and give a clear timeframe for a response which should not be more than 10 working days later. The landlord did not inform the resident of a delay and, in any event, took too long to respond. This was poor practice. It did not acknowledge this in its stage 1 response or offer any form of redress. Given the length of the delay, at the very least, an apology would have been appropriate.
  4. The Code said that, on receipt of a request to escalate a complaint to stage 2, landlords should send the complainant a breakdown of their understanding of the complaint and the outcomes they were seeking. The landlord did not do this. The stage 2 response should be provided within 20 working days of the complaint being escalated. In this case, the resident escalated her complaint on 9 May 2023 and the landlord provided its stage 2 response on 20 July 2023, 51 working days later. Again, this was an inadequate complaint response.
  5. The landlord offered the resident £75 for the delay in the stage 2 response but did so without apologising for the delay which was, again, poor customer service.
  6. Overall, the landlord’s complaint handling was slow and it failed to acknowledge this appropriately. The combined failures were sufficient to justify a finding of maladministration but for the fact that the landlord offered £75 which was sufficient to recognise the delay at stage 2. For that reason, given the landlord’s recognition of this failure, we have reduced the finding to one of service failure.  We have ordered it to pay £200 compensation for the additional failures (inclusive of the £75 already offered). If it has already paid the resident this sum, it should subtract this from the total.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was:
    1. Severe maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of problems with her central heating system.
    2. Service failure in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders and recommendations

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this decision, the landlord is ordered to provide evidence that it has:
    1. Written to the resident and apologised for the failures identified in this decision.
    2. Paid the resident £900 compensation into a bank account of her choice (inclusive of the £75 already offered) broken down as follows:
      1. £700 for its handling of her reports of problems with the heating system.
      2. £200 (inclusive of the £75 already offered) for its complaint handling.
  2. Within 8 weeks of the date of this decision, the landlord is ordered to provide evidence that it has completed a full review of this case, paying particular attention to why it failed to respond appropriately. It should set out what steps it plans to take to ensure this level of service failure does not occur again. It must set these out in a report and send them to us.