Hyde Housing Association Limited (202121397)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202121397

Hyde Housing Association Limited

17 March 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 resident complains about:
    1. the landlord’s handling of a telephone call on 24 June 2021
    2. the landlord’s handling of the associated complaint.

Background and summary of events

  1. The resident is an assured tenant of a property owned and managed by the landlord which is a housing association.
  2. The resident informed this Service that a number of elderly and disabled residents have given their authority for him to act on their behalf, and therefore, regularly contacts the landlord as a representative.
  3. On 24 June 2021, the resident called the landlord on behalf of another resident. The resident says that this call was not managed appropriately in relation to acting as a representative for a third party.
  4. The resident complained to the landlord about this (no copy of the complaint has been provided so the details are unclear), and on 29 June 2021 requested the stage one complaint reference. The resident also requested that the landlord consider previous complaints he had made about similar issues since 2020. The resident chased a response on 6 July 2021.
  5. The landlord responded on 6 and 7 July 2021, to say it had dealt with the complaint under it’s informal process (the Ombudsman has not been provided with details of what the informal response was). The landlord confirmed this further in a phone call on 13 July 2021.
  6. Following a number of emails between the resident and the landlord, a stage one acknowledgment was sent to the resident on 24 August 2021. The landlord provided it’s stage one response on 25 August 2021 setting out the reasons why it was unable to uphold the resident’s complaint.
  7. The complaint was escalated to stage two, and a final response was sent to the resident on 18 November 2021. The landlord said:
    1. It acknowledged that there had been service failure in relation to the complaint handling, as it had not followed it’s own process.
    2. Although calls were not recorded, the landlord was satisfied with the agent’s performance based on regular quality checks that had been carried out.
  1. The resident contacted this Service on 17 December 2021 and confirmed they were unhappy with the way the landlord had investigated their complaint, as the landlord failed to investigate the historical issues fully. In order to resolve the complaint, the resident is seeking an increased amount of compensation.

Assessment and findings

Scope

  1. Paragraph 42(o) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme states:

“The Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion: (o) concern matters which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, do not cause significant adverse affect to the complainant”

  1. The resident confirmed to this Service that following their phone call to the landlord on 24 June 2021, they were able to call back and speak with another advisor, in a representative capacity, and deal with the issue. As such, this Service does not consider that the phone call on 24 June 2021, caused a significant adverse affect to the resident in respect of his occupation of his property. Therefore, we will not investigate the handling of the call itself. This is in line with paragraph 42(o) of the Scheme. As such, this investigation focuses on the landlord’s handling of the related formal complaint.

The landlord’s handling of the complaint

  1. It is this Service’s role to assess the landlord’s response to the concerns raised by the resident and determine whether it acted based on the information available to it at the time.
  2. When investigating a complaint, the Ombudsman applies its dispute resolution principles. These are high level good practice guidance developed from the Ombudsman’s experience of resolving disputes, for use by everyone involved in the complaints process. There are only three principles driving effective dispute resolution:
    1. Be fair – treat people fairly and follow fair processes;
    2. put things right, and;
    3. learn from outcomes.
  3. The landlord’s complaints policy, effective August 2019, said that when a customer first contacts it with an expression of dissatisfaction, it will always try to put things right within 48 hours to quickly resolve the issue. The landlord refers to this informal complaint process as a ‘service recovery attempt’ and it says that these actions sit with its operational teams and that this does not form part of its formal complaint process.
  4. The landlord’s complaint policy shows it operated a two-stage formal complaint procedure at the time of the complaint. It shows the landlord aimed to respond to stage one complaints within twenty working days and that, if a complainant remained unhappy, the landlord would review the case to determine if the case warranted investigation at stage two of its process. At stage two a senior management review of the stage one response would be undertaken within 20 working days.
  5. The policy sets out that it may decline to investigate a complaint about a specific incident or service failure that occurred over 6 months prior to the complaint being made.
  6. The landlord’s compensation policy and procedure shows that compensation payments may be paid at the discretion of managers and may be offered where it has failed to deliver a service to the advertised standard, and in recognition of the time and trouble taken by the customer to make their complaint. The compensation tariff shows that payments for delay fall into three categories:
    1. Low impact up to £100.
    2. Medium impact up to £250
    3. Major impact up to £500.
  7. The resident complained in June 2021, and the landlord responded informally in early July 2021, although the exact date is unknown. This Service requested further information from the landlord in order to ascertain specific dates, but this has not been received, which indicates an issue with record keeping. While it would have been in line with complaint policy to provide an informal response in the first instance, this Service would expect all contact to be recorded on the landlord’s system, to ensure there is an audit trail for any future issues that are raised. Without this information, this Service is unable to fully ascertain what happened when the resident first raised an expression of dissatisfaction.
  8. Information provided to this Service shows that the resident wished to log a stage one complaint on 7 July 2021. The landlord’s policy states that once a stage one complaint has been received, it would respond within 20 working days. The resident chased a response from the landlord four times between June and August 2021, as he had not received a formal complaint acknowledgement. This was a failing, as the landlord did not ‘follow fair processes’ here. Information provided to this Service shows that whilst there were some emails between the resident and the landlord, there was also an error with the complaint being logged on the landlord’s internal system.
  9. A stage one response was sent via email on 25 August 2021, 37 working days after the original request. This Service accepts that a landlord may experience delays responding to a resident’s complaint within the set time frames, but in such cases it should communicate with the resident and provide them with a new timescale. There is no evidence the landlord did so here, with the resident having to chase a response from the landlord. The landlord did not follow fair processes here.
  10. It is noted that when the resident chased a stage one response on 27 September 2021 the landlord replied that a response was sent on 25 August, attaching a copy of the email. This Service has seen a copy of the original email and is satisfied that the stage one response was sent on 25 August 2021.
  11. It is not clear when or how the complaint was then escalated by the resident (indicating issues with record keeping), but a stage two response was provided by the landlord on 18 November 2021. The landlord explained that there were two differing accounts of what had been said during the call, but that as calls were not recorded neither account could be substantiated. It said that it undertook quality checks of calls, and there was no evidence from these of a performance issue. In absence of any way to objectively verify exactly what was said during the call, this was a reasonable and proportionate response from the landlord to the concern raised, and shows that the landlord took steps to look into and address the resident’s complaint.
  12. The landlord also said it could not comment on previous incidents dating back to 2020, which was in line with its complaint policy .
  13. The landlord recognised that there had been a delay at the start of the internal complaint process, which it said had been due to high workload, and so it was appropriate that to ‘put things right’ it offered an apology for the delay, along with an offer of £125 compensation.
  14. The resident contacted the landlord on 1 December 2021 and rejected the offer, and requested the landlord increase this to £500. The landlord declined to do so, and information shows that the resident accepted £125 compensation on 17 December 2021.
  15. The landlord’s compensation policy relating to delays awards payments of £100 – £250 in recognition of distress and inconvenience that had a medium impact. In line with this Service’s remedy guidance, awards of £50 – £100 are appropriate in cases where there has been a failure of short duration that did not impact the overall outcome for the resident. Therefore, the £125 was in line with these amounts.
  16. In summary, it is clear that the landlord did not handle the resident’s request for a stage one complaint in line with its own complaint policy. This amounted to service failure in the circumstances. In recognition of the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident, the landlord offered a total of £125 compensation, which in the Ombudsman’s opinion, amounted to reasonable redress in the circumstances.

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 42(o) of the Scheme, the Ombudsman will not investigate the complaint about the telephone call on 24 June 2021. This is because there is no evidence of significant adverse affect to the resident in the way the call was handled.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 53(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, and in the Ombudsman’s opinion, there was reasonable redress offered by the landlord for its service failure in respect of its handling of the complaint about a telephone call on 24 June 2021.

Recommendations

  1. This Service would recommend that the landlord reviews its record keeping procedure to ensure all contacts to and from resident’s are logged accurately on its relevant in-house system.