Lambeth Council (202115695)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202115695

Lambeth Council

8 February 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 landlord’s response to the resident’s reports about repairs to the garden wall at the property.

Background

2. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord at the property, a one-bedroom house. The house has a rear garden where the garden wall connects with the neighbour’s wall.
3. The landlord informed the resident of a scheduled appointment for 1 July 2021 when its contractor, contractor A, would attend the property and repair the garden wall. Contractor A failed to attend to the property on the agreed date and time; subsequently, the resident complained to the landlord. The resident initiated stage one of the complaints procedure and no response was given save for an acknowledgement which was issued 14 days later. The resident then escalated the complaint to the complaint escalation team because the resident felt her complaint was not being taken seriously.
4. The landlord’s stage one complaint response acknowledged that contractor A did not attend on the agreed date and time. A £50 compensation payment was offered to the resident for the missed appointment. The landlord also explained that the issue had arisen following a change in the contractor responsible for the work. A different contractor (contractor B) would now see the works through to completion.
5. The landlord, in conjunction with contractor B, continued in their attempts to resolve the issue. However, the resident reported dissatisfaction about the communication and level of customer service she was experiencing. She reported that she was unaware of whether the works were being progressed and said that she was not getting answers to her enquiries on the issue.
6. At the final stage of the complaint process, the landlord issued an apology for the ongoing delay and the resident’s overall experience. It also increased its offer of compensation to £170, broken down as: £50 for the failures identified at stage one, plus £120 for further delays totalling £170. Therefore, the landlord’s final offer of compensation amounted to £170.
7. The complaint was brought to the Housing Ombudsman after the final stage of the complaints process. The resident said that the compensation offered should be increased given the length of the delays and requested that the landlord carry out the repairs. The resident also said that there was a health and safety risk associated with the wall in its current state as it was at risk of collapse.

Assessment and findings

8. The resident’s occupancy agreement does not confirm tenant/landlord responsibilities in relation to garden walls. The landlord’s online tenancy handbook does however confirm that external structures will be repaired and will be left in place if they are considered ‘safe’. It is not disputed that, in this instance, the landlord accepted a responsibility to repair the garden wall as its correspondence with the resident throughout clearly confirms it having done so.
9. In the circumstances, the landlord’s decision to accept responsibility for the garden wall repair presents as both reasonable and appropriate. The available procedural information indicates that such issues will be repaired by the landlord and, in addition, the resident had concerns from a health and safety perspective. Resolving this issue would then ensure that the landlord was acting in accordance with its repair/maintenance responsibilities whilst also ensuring that there was no risk to the household from the wall.
10. It is not clear is when the issue was first reported to the landlord. The resident’s correspondence refers to having reported the issue years prior to the complaint under investigation here. However, the first record available in the evidence in this respect is an internal landlord email of 10 August 2021, which refers to the job to repair the wall (renewing damaged brickwork) having been raised on 21 May 2021. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, this date is therefore considered the effective start date for the landlord’s repair responsibility. Having established this start date, it is evident that the landlord was then unable to complete the works within a reasonable timeframe, as required by law.
11. Resolving a communal garden issue such as this would not usually come with the same urgency as significant repair issues within the home. In the circumstances, given the health and safety concerns, a timeframe in accordance with the landlord’s ‘planned repairs’ timescales (90 working days) would be considered reasonable. This would have given the landlord until the end of September 2021 to resolve the issue, however, this did not happen in this instance.
12. Following on from the missed appointment on 1 July 2021, the landlord’s stage one response of 9 August 2021 acknowledged the missed appointment and ongoing delay and offered £50 in compensation. At this stage, this was a reasonable remedy as the time to resolve the issue was not unreasonable.  However, there then followed a period of frustration on the resident’s part as she was not kept updated with progress on the case; she also reported to this Service that she did not receive the compensation offered at stage one.
13. It is clear that the landlord experienced unforeseen difficulties in resolving the issue. A structural engineer was required to attend the site and further delay appears to have ensued due to permission being required from a neighbour to proceed with the repairs. Clearly communicating this information to the resident would have helped provide transparency and managed her expectations; however, there is little evidence that it did so.
14. At the final stage of the landlord’s complaints process (9 February 2022), the landlord offered a further apology for the resident’s overall experience and increased its offer of compensation to £170, with the additional £120 relating to the further delays experienced up until that point. The resident remained dissatisfied however and asked this Service to formally investigate. As a resolution, the resident requested that the repairs be completed and that additional compensation be awarded.
15. Taken in isolation, the £170 offered in compensation for the delay in resolving the garden wall repair up until the date of the final response presents as a reasonable and proportionate amount. The issue was outside the main property and it is not known to what extent, if any, the issue prevented the resident from using the outdoor space. In addition, the landlord’s compensation policy allows for £20 being paid for missed appointments, so the remaining amount (£150), would be specifically for the delay between the end of September 2021 and 9 February 2022; this represents a reasonable sum for a minimal impact issue such as this.
16. However, in recognition of the further delay that occurred following the completion of the complaints process; together with the communication issues highlighted here, a further amount of compensation is considered appropriate. The evidence available confirms that, at the end of June 2022 the issue remained unresolved and as such, a further £150 in compensation has been ordered below, to reflect these additional failures.
17. It is not clear whether the garden wall remains an issue and the landlord is therefore also ordered to confirm the date that the garden walls completed, or else to ensure that the resident is provided with a timescale for these works to take place. Depending on the outcome of this order, the landlord is also recommended to consider awarding further compensation to the resident to reflect any further delay, at a rate of £30 per month from The beginning of July 2022 onwards.

Determination

18. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was service failure with respect to the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports about the garden wall.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

19. The landlord to pay the resident £320 in compensation for the service failures identified. This amount to include the £170 offered during the complaints process, if this has not already been paid.
20. The landlord to confirm the date that the garden wall works were completed, or else confirm in writing to the resident the expected timescale for these works to complete, if this has not yet happened.
21. The landlord to evidence compliance with these orders to this Service within 28 days of this report.

Recommendation

22. The landlord to consider paying additional compensation to the resident at a rate of £30 per month for each additional month from July 2022 onwards that the garden wall repair remained incomplete.