Lewes District Council (202406742)

Decision
Case ID	202406742
Decision type	Investigation
Landlord	Lewes District Council
Landlord type	Local Authority / ALMO
Occupancy	Secure Tenancy
Date	6 November 2025

Background

The resident was a secure tenant of the local authority landlord between August 2021 and January 2025. The property is a 1-bedroom flat, on the 2nd floor of a low-rise block. The resident has autism spectrum condition (ASC) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

What the complaint is about

The complaint is about:
1. the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of antisocial behaviour (ASB) from neighbours and its response to counter-allegations against him.
2. How the landlord responded to the resident’s complaint.

Our decision (determination)

We have found that:
1. There was maladministration in the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of antisocial behaviour (ASB) from neighbours.
2. There was no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the complaint.

We have made orders for the landlord to put things right.

Summary of reasons

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of antisocial behaviour (ASB) from neighbours and its response to counter-allegations against him

The landlord has not shown that it followed its ASB policy in responding to the resident’s reports of ASB, and in responding to allegations against the resident. The landlord’s records do not show what steps it took at each stage in response to the resident’s reports. There were also delays in it taking action which caused detriment to the resident. The landlord did not respond in a timely way to the resident’s requests for reasonable adjustments.

The landlord’s complaint handling

The landlord complied with its policy and our Complaint Handling Code in its response to the resident’s complaints.

Putting things right

Where we find service failure, maladministration, or severe maladministration we can make orders for the landlord to put things right. We have the discretion to make recommendations in all other cases within our jurisdiction.

Orders

Landlords must comply with our orders in the manner and timescales we specify. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of compliance with our orders by the due date set.

Order	What the landlord must do	Due date
1	Apology order The landlord must apologise in writing to the resident for the failures identified in this report. The landlord must ensure: The apology is provided by a senior officer. The apology is specific to the failures identified in this decision, meaningful and empathetic. It has due regard to our apologies guidance.	No later than 04 December 2025
2	Compensation The landlord must pay the resident £600 to recognise the distress and inconvenience caused by its management of his ASB case. This must be paid directly to the resident by the due date. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of payment by the due date.	4 December 2025
3	Record Keeping Within 6 weeks, the landlord should undertake a learning lessons review of this case and consider its current ASB working practices. In doing so the landlord should consider the recommendations in our spotlight report on knowledge and information management. The landlord must then produce a report setting out its key learning from this complaint and any recommendations to improve its handling of ASB reports.	18 December 2025

Recommendations

Our recommendations are not binding, and a landlord may decide not to follow them.

Our recommendations
The landlord may wish to consider offering refresher training on equalities issues, particularly its duties and responsibilities towards residents with ‘hidden’ disabilities such as neurodiversity or mental illness.

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

Date	What happened
24 February 2023	The resident raised his complaint on 24 February 2023. He said that: He had been reporting ASB for over a year and his former housing officer had told him to film incidents on his mobile phone. He now has a new housing officer who said that there were no records of his earlier ASB reports. He has also been told that he is intimidating other residents by filming them. He has autism and the ASB he has been experiencing has affected him badly.
28 February 2023	The landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint by email.
6 March 2023	The landlord responded to the resident’s complaint. It said: It had spoken to his housing officer, who had visited the resident on 28 February 2023. The resident had told the housing officer following the visit that he was happy with how they were handling his reports. It apologised for providing conflicting information about filming other residents, and it would clarify its current advice shortly. The resident’s housing officer would be looking at options to improve relations with neighbours in the block, such as mediation. The housing officer had confirmed that they were happy with how he was managing his tenancy, and they did not have any concerns about this.
6 March 2023	The resident received a warning letter from the landlord about complaints from other residents about noise nuisance. It said that the reports included banging or dropping weights on the floor, weights rolling across the floor and this happening in the early hours of the morning. The letter directed him to keep to the terms of his tenancy agreement.
2 May 2023 – 18 May 2023	There were two incidents involving neighbours that the resident had reported to the police and the landlord. The first incident involved an altercation between the resident and his neighbour where the resident reported that his neighbour had assaulted him. The police attended and arrested the neighbour but later released them without charge. In the second incident, the resident reported to the police that a neighbour had shouted at him in the street and called him a homophobic slur. The neighbour then shouted at him implying that the resident was a paedophile. The police investigated the incident but decided to take no further action due to insufficient evidence. They also considered that the resident’s footage of the event that he recorded on his mobile phone, showed that the resident had provoked the alleged perpetrator.
12 July 2023	The landlord issued the resident with a warning letter and an Acceptable Behaviour Contract that stipulated that he must not engage in behaviour such as: filming people without their consent, letting his dog off the lead in the communal area running water late at night resulting in rattling pipes banging on the floor at unreasonable hours at night using illegal drugs reckless driving and age discrimination.
11 November 2023	The resident reported to the police and the landlord that a neighbour had shouted an offensive name at him. The police took no further action as it did not have corroborating witness evidence or otherwise to prove the allegation.
18 January 2024	The landlord attended the resident’s home with the police to discuss the resident’s ongoing issues with ASB in the block.
Between 19 January 2024 and 20 February 2024.	The resident reported noisy pipes to the landlord. The landlord attended on 3 occasions between 19 January 2024 and 20 February 2024 when the pipes were fixed.
31 January 2024	The resident asked the landlord to escalate his complaint to stage 2 as he said the situation was ongoing and he felt that the landlord had given him an Acceptable Behaviour Contract based on “fictitious reports”.
20 February 2024	The landlord issued it stage 2 complaints response. It said: It had arranged an appointment on 20 February 2024 to fix the pipes. It was satisfied that appropriate actions were being taken to manage the ASB. It signposted the resident to its website for information about moving.
Referral to the Ombudsman	The resident referred his complaint to us in May 2024 as he remained dissatisfied with how his ASB case had been handled.

What we found and why

The circumstances of this complaint are well known by the parties involved, so it is not necessary to detail everything that’s happened or comment on all the information we’ve reviewed. We’ve only included the key information that forms the basis of our decision of whether the landlord is responsible for maladministration.

Complaint	The landlord’s handling of the resident’s ASB reports and its response to counter-allegations made against him.
Finding	Maladministration

We understand that during the period of the complaint, the resident reported incidents of noise nuisance, ASB and hate crimes from his neighbours. We understand the neighbours made counter allegations of a similar nature against the resident.
In cases concerning ASB or noise nuisance, it is not our role to decide whether the ASB occurred, but rather, to assess how the landlord responded to the reports of ASB and whether its response followed its policies and procedures.
The landlord’s ASB policy says that ASB can include nuisance or annoyance in relation to residential premises. It says that it will log all reports of ASB, assign a lead officer and investigate the report appropriately. If it decides to take no further action, it will explain why and offer alternative options.
We have not been able to investigate the resident’s ASB complaint prior to January 2023, because the landlord has provided very few records relating to this period. We note that the resident had reported ASB in June 2022, where he made reports of neighbours bullying him and damaging his doorbell camera. There are no records relating to this period, which the landlord had acknowledged in internal correspondence following a change of officer.
Clear record keeping and management is essential where reports of ASB are made, and investigations into allegations are undertaken. This is because such records form evidence which the landlord may review and rely on in its management of the ASB case. Accurate and complete records also help a landlord review its handling of the ASB case through its complaint procedure, and to provide evidence during other processes including Ombudsman investigations and legal proceedings.
The statutory guidance published with the Antisocial Behaviour Crime and Policing Act says that early intervention, especially through informal approaches, can be enough to stop ASB before it escalates. Such interventions can establish clear standards of behaviour and reinforce the message that the landlord will not tolerate ASB. In the absence of records in this case, we cannot investigate whether the landlord took ‘early intervention’ steps and took the opportunity to address the ASB before it escalated.
It is unclear from the records provided when a different housing officer was allocated to the resident. In January and February 2023, the landlord received reports from other residents regarding ASB by the resident. These included allegations that the resident allowed his dog to foul within his property, that he threw a leaflet at another resident, filmed residents in a manner perceived as intimidating, repeatedly banged the front door, and did not properly care for his dog.
Where there are allegations and counter-allegations the landlord must be impartial and show that it had investigated all reports fairly and in line with its policies and procedures and legal obligations. This will involve gathering and reviewing evidence and then taking actions proportionate to its understanding of such evidence.
The landlord took steps following its policy at this time to write to the resident and then visit him at home, which was reasonable.
However, the landlord’s later actions towards the resident were not always consistent and correspondence sometimes contradictory. In its Stage 1 complaint response dated 6 March 2023, it said that the housing officer had no concerns about the resident’s conduct following their visit to the resident’s home in February 2023. However, he also received a warning letter from the same housing officer, dated 6 March 2023, about noise nuisance caused by him dropping weights on the floor. The inconsistencies between the two letters were likely to have caused the resident considerable confusion and distress and were not indicative of a well co-ordinated approach.
Following their visit, the housing officer had said that the resident had a sparsely decorated property, and they did not see any heavy weights in his home that could cause a noise disturbance. However, they then included reports of the resident dropping heavy weights on his floor in the warning letter. It would have been reasonable, instead, for the landlord to have revisited the matter with the resident to explore it further, before deciding whether issuing a warning was justified.

Furthermore, the landlord’s notes shows that there was no separate evidence to support some of the allegations that other neighbours had made against him, including an allegation that he had thrown a leaflet at a resident, however it had included these allegations with the landlord’s Acceptable Behaviour Contract (ABC) of July 2023.

The landlord’s policy said that it does not consider normal household noise to be ASB, and it includes examples of day-to-day noise as washing machines and toilets flushing. Nevertheless, it included with the resident’s ABC that one of the behaviours complained of was “running water at night causing noise from pipes” which would not have constituted ASB under its policy. This was a repair issue, and there has been no evidence provided to show that it investigated the noisy pipes issue further at this stage. It would have been reasonable for the landlord to have raised works at this time for this to be inspected by its repairs team. However, it did not do this until 6 months later, when the resident reported this again in January 2024, which was unsatisfactory.
In its case notes the landlord had speculated that the resident could be being victimised by neighbours. This was supported by another neighbour who had raised separate concerns with the landlord. The landlord’s evidence at this time, shows that it had recorded an incident where a neighbour became confrontational towards the resident unprovoked, and “took a swipe” at him. There were also two incidents in May 2023 reported by the resident involving an altercation with a neighbour and a reported hate crime where the resident was called a homophobic slur by another neighbour.
The police are the lead agency in taking action for hate crimes. They have greater powers than the landlord to investigate these and then to decide whether to pursue a prosecution. There is evidence that the police investigated these incidents and liaised with the landlord and decided to take no further action following enquiries. The landlord’s actions, however, are not dependent on the findings of the police. While it is right that the landlord worked in partnership with the police, it also needs to follow its own policies and procedures in responding to reported hate crimes.
The landlord’s ASB policy says that it treats hate crimes, particularly towards vulnerable people, as a high-risk ASB case. It says that it prioritises these cases and they are managed with urgency. There is no evidence that the landlord acted in line with its policy opening an ASB case following the alleged hate crime, or that it closed the case following its investigation and informed the resident of the outcome.
In its correspondence with this Service the landlord has said “our investigations did not reveal at any time any breaches of tenancy (in respect of ASB towards the resident) for which any formal actions against them could be justified or warranted.” While the landlord may have been entitled to reach this conclusion, it has not provided evidence that it acted following its policy in investigating the ASB, deciding whether there was evidence to take any formal or informal actions and notifying the resident of the outcome.
This was a theme identified throughout this investigation. While the landlord has shared a high volume of documents with this Service, it has not provided evidence showing when it opened and closed its ASB case. The landlord has not provided records to show that it had completed risk assessments given the resident’s vulnerabilities or that action plans had been prepared, informed by risk assessments, detailing the clear steps for both the landlord and resident to take. The statutory guidance says that where there are vulnerabilities, risk assessments should be the starting point of a case-management approach to dealing with anti-social complaints. The absence of any assessments means that the landlord cannot show that its ASB processes were utilised effectively.
Effective record keeping can help to manage the resident’s expectations by providing timescales for actions and closing cases when either insufficient evidence has been provided, or where there is a period when there have been no further ASB reports. The statutory guidance emphasises that “clear and transparent processes” should help a complainant to understand how their reports will be investigated and the progress of any action. In the resident’s case, the landlord’s case management processes were not transparent neither did they manage his expectations about the handling of his case.

There were also incomplete records of its response to the issues raised by the resident. For example, both the resident and his neighbour had reported noise from the other’s property, which suggested a noise transference rather than deliberate noise nuisance issue. The landlord recorded that the resident had no carpets in February 2023 which would have provided some measure of sound insulation in the property. It said that it would make a referral to a charity to assist the resident to purchase floor coverings, but there is no record of whether this was done or what the outcome was. Neither have we seen evidence that the landlord had discussed the issue with the neighbour to try to reach a resolution.

There were delays in the landlord actioning the resident’s requests. The Noise App is a tool the landlord uses to allow residents to record and send noise nuisance evidence to the landlord from their phones. The landlord did provide the resident with the Noise App, but this was only in November 2023, and it did not provide him with diary sheets with which to record incidents of ASB until June 2024.
Prior to a meeting with the landlord arranged for January 2024, the resident had expressed a clear wish to move. The landlord has said that it would support the resident’s application for a management transfer, which was positive. However, it was not until April 2024 that the landlord informed the resident that it could not do this until he completed a housing application, which would have delayed the prospect of the resident moving.
It was after the resident had asked to escalate his complaint, that the landlord began to communicate regularly with him about his case. His case was also passed to another team, who were better placed to deal with tenancy enforcement. After this time, the landlord did take appropriate steps to contact statutory and health services as well as making a safeguarding referral where it was concerned that the resident’s mental health was deteriorating. It also confirmed that parties had been offered mediation, but that this had been declined.
The ASB case review, formerly known as the community trigger, is a multi-agency case review where various agencies can hold an independent review to see what, if anything else, could be done to resolve an ASB case. It would have been right for the landlord to have informed the resident about the ASB review process, particularly as he had expressed his dissatisfaction with how it had handled his case. In not doing so, it did not follow its policy.
The landlord has a responsibility to make changes to ensure that its services are accessible to disabled people. This is known as ‘reasonable adjustments.’ A landlord can implement reasonable adjustments by making changes to the ways it communicates or its procedures, to accommodate the needs of disabled persons. The reasonable adjustment duty is ‘anticipatory,’ meaning landlords cannot wait until a disabled resident needs to use their service. They must consider in advance what disabled residents may need to access their services and put measures in place.
The resident had provided the landlord with a letter about his ASC and ADHD diagnosis in February 2023. This should have triggered the landlord to explore with him what it could do to improve accessibility to its services, and the changes should have been recorded clearly so that this information was available to all services including the call centre, the complaints team, the housing team and the repairs service.
The landlord has said that it had put reasonable adjustments in place by offering the resident a remote video calling meeting, rather than an in-person meeting on one occasion following the resident’s request. It said that it had also completed an Equality Impact Assessment in October 2024 before considering enforcement measures. Both these steps were positive and in line with its ASB policy.
However, there were instances where the landlord did not implement reasonable adjustments. The resident had asked that the landlord let him know in advance of appointments because he struggled with unannounced visits for reasons related to his disability. In correspondence with this Service, the landlord has said that it had included an alert on its systems that “Tenant has advised he has autism and ADHD – he needs time to process new information and needs notice before visits. No cold calling” However, the resident had reported that there were several unannounced visits from the landlord, and the records show that this happened in both July 2023 and February 2024. This was unsatisfactory and the resident has described in correspondence with the landlord how distressing this was for him.
This Service does acknowledge the challenges the landlord had to meet in managing the resident’s reports. Between January 2024 and May 2024, the landlord received more than 200 emails from the resident. Many of these emails were complaints and service requests. It can be difficult for landlords to manage cases where there has been excessive communication from a resident. On 15 May 2024, the landlord informed the resident by letter that contact would be restricted under the Unreasonable Customer Behaviour Policy and it put stipulations about contact arrangements in place.
Notwithstanding this, as outlined above, there were failings in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of ASB and actions it had taken in response to neighbours’ reports of ASB from the resident. The resident is vulnerable and had described to the landlord in correspondence how he had been affected by the ongoing issues he had reported.
For this reason, we find there was maladministration and order the landlord to pay the resident compensation of £600. This is within the range of financial redress in our remedies guidance for a failing that has had a significant adverse impact on the resident and takes into consideration his disability and mental health needs which would have aggravated the impact on him.

Complaint	The handling of the complaint
Finding	No maladministration

At both stages the landlord issued its response within the timescales outlined in its complaints policy which complied with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
The complaint response addressed the points raised in the resident’s complaint and informed the resident that his complaint had not been upheld.
The landlord spoke with the resident to discuss his complaint. When the resident expressed dissatisfaction with the stage 2 complaint response, the landlord agreed to undertake a further review, but this was not progressed when the resident did not provide details of which aspects he sought to review.
For this reason, we make a finding of no maladministration regarding the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Learning

Landlords should be proactive in considering their responsibilities towards disabled persons in the Equality Act and ensuring that they continue to review their services to ensure that they are alert to removing barriers to access for disabled persons.

Knowledge information management (record keeping)

Landlords should consider the recommendations in our Spotlight Report on Knowledge and Information Management and implement them in their working practices.

Communication

Landlords should consider ways in which they can improve communication with residents. Where a resident has an unreasonable level of contact with the landlord, it should consider whether there are informal measures that can be put in place to manage contact, before invoking more formal procedures that could impact on the resident’s access to services.
Landlords should look at ways to improve their internal communications, to ensure that information shared is up-to-date and information about any reasonable adjustments is flagged up to all teams who may have contact with disabled residents.