Jigsaw Homes Group Limited (202341761)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202341761

Jigsaw Homes Group Limited

29 September 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

The resident’s complaint is about the landlord’s handling of repairs to a communal car gate.

Background

The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord. Her tenancy at the property began in 2017. The property is a 1 bedroom second floor flat in a residential block. The block has a car park which is accessed from the street through an electronic car gate.
On 30 September 2023, the resident emailed the landlord to report that the electronic car gate was not working. She expressed concern that the block’s proximity to large event venues meant that non-residents would use the car park without the gate preventing this. The landlord replied on 4 October 2023. It told the resident its contactor would be attending on 6 October 2023.
The resident phoned the landlord on 16 October 2023. She expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of updates or progress in the gate repair. The landlord called the resident back the following day. During this call she asked it to raise a complaint about the matter.
The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 10 November 2023. It said that:
1. After attending on 6 October 2023, its contractor had sent it a quote to repair the gate.
2. However, it had sent this quote to a member of staff who was on annual leave. This had delayed it in approving the quote until 30 October 2023, it apologised for this.
3. Works had been completed and the gate restored to working order on 3 November 2023.
4. It had reminded staff to ensure their automatic ‘out of office’ emails provided alternative contact details for urgent matters. It had also reminded its contact centre to escalate such matters where staff were on annual leave.
5. It acknowledged her concerns about non-residents using the car park whilst the gate was out of service. However, it had no parking enforcement on the site and was unable to prevent this.
On 25 January 2024, the landlord logged a new repair for the electronic car gate. It recorded that the gate was stuck half open with a “part hanging loose”.
The resident phoned the landlord on 14 February 2024. She said that the car gate was jammed shut and she had been unable to drive to work due to this. She told the landlord she wanted compensation for the loss of earnings and assurances the gate would not fail again. The landlord escalated her complaint to stage 2.
The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 15 February 2024. It said that:
1. On both occasions the gate had broken due to damage, possibly from being struck by a vehicle. This was beyond its control, and it could not guarantee it would not happen again.
2. When the gate did stop working, “the contractor will attend and, if unable to fix, will leave them in the open position so that residents are able to enter and leave”.
3. Its caretaker had been at the block on 13 February 2024 and observed the gate was open.
4. It was “open to speculation” who had later closed the gates. But it was satisfied it was not any of its staff or contractors.
5. It was unable to identify any failings which would require it to compensate the resident as she had requested.
The resident referred her complaint to us on 18 February 2024. She expressed dissatisfaction that the landlord had still not repaired the gate and had declined her request for compensation.
The landlord’s records show that its contractor completed repairs to the gate on 21 February 2024.

Assessment and findings

The landlord’s repairs procedure, in place at the time of the resident’s complaint, explains that its “responsive repairs service is delivered on a priority basis and determined by the urgency of a repair that may be required”. It categorises repairs as:
1. ‘Emergency’, “where there is an imminent risk to health and safety”. It says it will attend these within 24 hours. It notes that on occasions this may only be to ‘make a situation safe and secure’. It will then “usually” return to complete the full repair within 15 working days
2. ‘Urgent’, “when a situation is causing a tenant discomfort, inconvenience and nuisance and it is likely to lead to further deterioration if the problem persists”. It says it will attend these within 5 working days.
3. ‘Routine’, which it will complete within 15 working days.
The landlord’s records show that it was first notified the gate was not working by another resident on 12 September 2023. It raised a works order to a contractor the same day. The works order noted that the gate was “open all the time”. We acknowledge the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident by non-residents being able to access the car park. However, as residents were able to enter and exit the car park freely, and there was no risk of “further deterioration” of the gate, it was reasonable for the landlord to treat this as a routine repair.
As part of her complaint, the resident expressed concern that the landlord’s caretaker was not appropriately reporting repairs during their visits to the block. In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord said that there was no evidence of this. This is supported by its records which show the caretaker also reported the broken gate, on 14 September 2023.
On 19 September 2023, the landlord visited the block to reprogramme some fobs for the gate. Whilst there it identified that “the gate had been pulled off its guide rails, this caused the front wheel under the gate to buckle”. It cancelled the existing works order and raised a new one to the contractor to reflect this information. It is unclear why the landlord did this, rather than just contacting the contractor to provide this update for the existing works order.
While the resident had emailed the landlord to report that the gate was broken on 29 September 2023, the landlord did not process the email until 4 October 2023. In the interim, the resident contacted it by phone on 3 October 2023. The landlord appropriately updated her that its contractor would be attending on 6 October 2023. This was within 15 working days of it raising the latest works order.
The landlord’s records show that the contractor sent it a quote to repair the gate on 9 October 2023 (the next working day after its attendance). However, the contractor sent the quote to a member of landlord staff who was on annual leave.
When the resident contacted the landlord to chase the repair on 11 October 2023, the landlord emailed the same staff member seeking an update on approving the quote. This was a missed opportunity for the landlord to identify that the staff member was on leave for an extended period and progress the repair by having someone else approve the quote. Instead, the landlord took until 30 October 2023, when the staff member returned from leave, to approve the quote.
In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord acknowledged and apologised for this delay. It said it had reminded staff to provide alternative contact details on their ‘out of office’ email responses. It also reminded its customer service team to “escalate works awaiting authorisation where the authorising member of staff may be on leave”. This was in keeping with our dispute resolution principle to learn from complaints.
The landlord’s records show that its contractor completed repairs and restored the gate to working order on 3 November 2023. This was 38 working days from the issue first being reported. We acknowledge that repairs requiring a specialist contractor to inspect and quote for works may take longer than average to complete. However,15 working days of this period was due to the unreasonable delay in the landlord approving its contractor’s quote.
Having identified this service failure, which delayed it in repairing the gate, it would have been appropriate for the landlord to have offered the resident redress for this. While all residents of the block would have been inconvenienced by this delay, the resident took additional time and trouble contacting the landlord to chase up the repair on at least 4 occasions, including making a complaint about the matter.
On 25 January 2024, the landlord raised a new works order to its contractor for the gate, which had broken again and was now stuck in a “half open position”. The landlord’s caretaker also reported the issue on 2 February 2024. By this time the gate was “stuck open”. It is unclear whether the landlord’s contractor had attended and opened the gate, as its stage 2 complaint response said was procedure, or whether this had been done by another party.
In its stage 2 complaint response, the landlord said that its caretaker had been on site on 13 February 2024 and the gate was still fully open. It is evident that at some point following this, the gate was closed. The landlord said in its stage 2 response that having made enquiries it was “satisfied” its staff and contractors had not done this. We have seen no evidence to dispute this.
The landlord’s compensation policy says that it will not pay compensation for loss that is “deemed to be the fault of a third party or in situations beyond our control”. Based upon this, it was reasonable for the landlord not to compensate the resident for her lost earnings due to being unable to leave the car park. It could not reasonably have foreseen or prevented an unknown party from closing the gate.
After the resident made it aware the gate was stuck closed, on 14 February 2024, the landlord appropriately raised an emergency repair for its contractor to open it. The landlord’s records indicate the contractor did this the same day, in keeping with its 24 hour emergency repair timescale.
The landlord’s contractor them completed repairs to the gate on 21 February 2024. This was 19 working days after it had first logged the repair. This was outside of its 15 working day target for routine repairs. However, as with the previous repair, the contractor needed to inspect and quote for the work. Therefore, we do not consider this slight delay unreasonable. We note that since this complaint, the landlord has also revised its publicised timescale for routine repairs (now called ‘essential repairs’) to 25 working days.
In summary, the landlord acknowledged that it failed to progress the repair to the car gate in October 2023 due to not mitigating for a staff member’s absence. However, it did not offer the resident any redress for the time and trouble she incurred chasing the repair up because of this. Due to this we make a finding of service failure and order the landlord to pay the resident £50 compensation.
The landlord’s position that it had not closed the gate in February 2024 and so could not compensate the resident for earnings lost because of this, was reasonable. Once the landlord became aware of this situation, its contractor opened the gate the same day. It then completed repairs in a reasonable timeframe.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of repairs to the communal car gate.

Orders and recommendations

Within 4 weeks of the date of this determination, we order the landlord to pay the resident £50 compensation for the service failure in its handling of repairs to the communal car gate.
The landlord should provide evidence of its compliance with this order to us.