Hounslow Council (202120798)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202120798

Hounslow Council

1 April 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 landlord’s decision to issue a Notice of Seeking Possession Order (NOSP) following its contact with the resident to arrange a gas inspection.

Background

2. The resident is a tenant of the landlord. The landlord employed its contractor to carry out the annual gas safety inspection in the resident’s property. For the purposes of this investigation, as the contractor was working on the landlord’s behalf and therefore represented it, both the landlord and contractor will be referred to as the landlord in this report.
3. The landlord wrote to the resident on 22 June 2020 to inform him that it had sent him two previous letters providing appointments for the annual gas safety check but it had been granted access to the property to complete this. As a result, it cautioned that legal action may be taken if he did not make contact with it within 48 hours to arrange access to the property. On 15 July 2020, the landlord sent a text message to the resident to ask him to make an appointment for the annual gas safety check.
4. On 28 July 2020, the resident sought confirmation from the landlord that he had contacted it. It confirmed that it had left a voicemail with him on 15 July 2020 and spoken to him at 16.59 pm that day, when he advised that he was currently shielding due to the covid19 pandemic. The landlord confirmed that it had made no appointments for him in light of this information and advised him that the non-compliance date for the gas safety check was 5 August 2020. It cautioned that appointment letters may still be sent to him due to these being automatically generated.
5. The resident made a complaint to the landlord that he had been the victim of discrimination and highlighted that his receipt of a NOSP dated 15 July 2020 was an example of this. It responded to him at stage one of its complaints procedure on 24 August 2020 to explain that the NOSP was automatically generated due to a lack of response its earlier letters and there was no evidence that he had been singled out in receiving this.
6. The landlord responded to the resident’s continued dissatisfaction with feeling discriminated against in its final response to him on 18 September 2020, when it relayed that it had written to him on three occasions, and three appointments on 8 and 22 June, and 7 July 2020 had not been kept. It relayed that it had also attempted to contact him by telephone on 7 and 15 July 2020 without success. The landlord noted that the resident had contacted it on 15 July 2020 but said that, by this point, due to the previous lack of response, the NOSP had already been sent. It apologised for any distress this had caused but explained this was due to not receiving a response from him since 8 June 2020.
7. The resident contacted the Ombudsman on 15 September 2021 to express his continued dissatisfaction with the landlord’s response to him complaint. He contended that the NOSP had been sent to him maliciously on 15 July 2020 as he had previously made a complaint about the staff member who sent the NOSP. He was unhappy that the NOSP was sent despite him responding to the text message from the landlord that same day. The resident stated that he had been available on one of the appointments the landlord provided but no operative had attended.

Assessment and findings

8. The landlord’s “access for annual gas safety inspections” procedure confirms that its contractor is responsible for contacting residents in writing to provide appointments for annual gas inspections and leaving a card when access cannot be gained for these appointments. It is also to attempt contact by telephone when access cannot be gained when letters and cards have been unsuccessful in gaining access.
9. This procedure provides that when two previous written requests for access have been unsuccessful, a third letter to be sent to the resident advising that legal action may be taken to gain access if this is not provided within 48 hours. At this stage, the landlord is to continue attempting to make contact by telephone. If it is unsuccessful in making contact by telephone, it may serve a Notice of Seeking Possession.
10. In his contact with the Ombudsman, the resident has disputed that the landlord attended one of the appointments it provided him. As there is no evidence that this was raised in his original complaint, this will not be considered in this assessment. This is because the landlord must be given the opportunity to consider a complaint through its internal complaints procedure before it may be investigated by this Service. If the resident wishes to pursue this aspect of the complaint further, he can raise a further complaint to the landlord through its internal complaints process. If the resident remains dissatisfied once he has received the landlord’s response to his further complaint, he can refer the matter to the Ombudsman at that stage.
11. The landlord has a legal duty, in accordance with the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, to carry out annual safety inspections and servicing of the gas installations in its tenanted properties. It therefore has a responsibility to ensure that it makes every reasonable effort to gain access to a property to carry these out.
12. As stated in the “access for annual gas safety inspection” procedure above, the landlord may make the resident aware of possible legal action if it had been unsuccessful on two previous occasions to gain access to carry out the gas safety check. It did this on 22 June 2020, providing 48 hours for him to make contact; there was no evidence that he did so. It is not disputed that the resident’s first contact with the landlord was on 15 July 2020, after at least four attempts to contact him and 23 days after the landlord cautioned that it may take legal action. Therefore, the landlord gave him reasonable opportunity to contact it about the gas safety check before issuing an NOSP.
13. It is noted that the resident’s contact with the landlord on 15 July 2020 was at the end of the working day; this means that its explanation that the NOSP was sent before his call was received was reasonable. It there acted in accordance with the landlord’s “access for annual gas safety inspection” procedure above, acknowledged that the NOSP may have caused distress but gave a reasonable explanation for this being sent.
14. The landlord also acted reasonably once it was made aware that the resident was shielding, by putting further action on hold until August 2020. As part of his complaint to the Ombudsman, the resident has said that the landlord was aware he was shielding prior to this as it was sending him care packages as part of its programme of support to people who were shielding. The Ombudsman acknowledges that as a local authority, the landlord would have been responsible for assisting residents in the local area who were shielding and the local authority would have records of residents who were shielding. However, the local authority was not acting in its capacity as a social landlord by providing this support and this would have been provided by a different department within the local authority’s organisation. Whilst it would have been helpful for the landlord to have cross-referenced details of residents who were shielding with its tenancy records the nature of the pandemic meant that such systems were not in place and therefore it was reasonable for the landlord to request that residents contact it if they could not provide access for a gas safety inspection. This was in line with the practice followed by other local authority landlords at the time.
15.  The landlord managed the resident’s expectations by explaining to him that automatically generated letters may still be sent, although any action had been put on hold. The resident has suggested that the NOSP letter could not have been automatically generated because the information it included would have to have been input manually. The Ombudsman notes the resident’s comments but we have not seen sufficient evidence to show the letter could not have been automatically generated and it is common practice amongst landlords to automatically generate NOSP letters. Therefore, we cannot say the landlord has given incorrect information in this regard. The resident has also said to the Ombudsman that it was illegal for NOSP letters to be issued at the time due to the government ban on evictions. Based on information from the government’s website providing guidance to landlords and tenants regarding evictions during the corona-virus pandemic, it appears that court proceedings for evictions were put on hold but eviction notices could still be issued. The notice would be then put on hold until court proceedings resumed. The guidance does not suggest that NOSPs were banned.
16. The landlord also acted reasonably by confirming that the NOSP letter would not be kept on the resident’s file because he had responded to confirm why he had not agreed access for the gas check to be carried out. Therefore, this is no evidence of a failure by the landlord in its handling of the matter.

Determination

17. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in its decision to issue a Notice of Seeking Possession Order following its contact with the resident to arrange a gas inspection.