London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (202319660)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202319660

London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

11 June 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 complaint is about the landlord’s handling of structural repairs to the property.
This Service has also considered the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord. The property is a 2-bedroom house.
The evidence shows that the landlord began to investigate external and internal cracks at the property in 2017. Due to the passage of time, it has been unable to provide documentary evidence of any actions or investigations prior to December 2019.
A structural survey carried out by the landlord in December 2019 found that there were cracks to the front elevation of the property, both internally and externally. It said that the existing timber frame was not sufficient to support the front of the property. The landlord states that these findings were disputed, and a second opinion was sought. Unfortunately, this coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and national lockdown.
In June 2022, the landlord instructed a specialist contractor to draw up a schedule of works. There is no evidence that this happened.
The resident raised a formal complaint on 15 June 2023. She said that she was unhappy with the landlord’s lack of communication. She asked for an update on the outstanding repairs.
Within the landlord’s stage 1 response, issued on 5 July 2023, it said that:
1. It was sorry for the delays and the inconvenience caused. It attributed these delays to an administrative error.
2. It had chased the appointed contractor and expected a response within 2 weeks.
3. The resident was entitled to £150 compensation, in line with its internal policy.
The resident escalated her complaint on 21 July 2023 after she received no further update from the landlord.
On 31 October 2023 a further survey was carried out and the recommendations were accepted by the landlord.
The landlord issued its final complaint response on 6 December 2023. It said that:
1. Given that the matter dated back to 2017, it had limited information on file.
2. The delays were exacerbated by COVID-19.It had been unable to carry out a further survey between March 2020 and April 2022 due to lockdown restrictions.
3. On 9 January 2023, it had discovered “that all previous surveys were incorrect”. Therefore, the whole process had to be restarted.
4. It acknowledged that the resident had chased the matter several times throughout this period, but it had failed to respond to her.
5. In summary, the delays pre and post COVID-19 were unacceptable. It offered the resident £1,300 compensation to reflect these delays, and the inconvenience caused to her.
6. The findings of the most recent survey had been accepted and the associated works were awaiting internal approval. This included injection works to the front and rear of the property.
The resident remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response and escalated her complaint to this Service. She was particularly unhappy that the landlord had failed to provide her with any dates or anticipated timeframe.
The evidence shows that the resident continued to chase the landlord for updates following its final complaint response.
The works were completed in June 2024.

Assessment and findings

Structural repairs

In accordance with the tenancy agreement and the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the landlord is obligated to repair and maintain the internal and external structure of the building. Therefore, it was necessary for it to investigate any such concerns and to take appropriate action to resolve any issues it identified.
The need for repairs to address the cracks in the property and the underlying cause of these was identified by the landlord in late 2017. There is no evidence of any progress being made towards this until the landlord completed a structural survey in December 2019. This was an unreasonable amount of time.
In addition to the unreasonable delay, there is no evidence that the landlord took any prompt action in the weeks and months following the survey. It is acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the repair functions of landlords between March 2020 and April 2022. However, there is no evidence that the landlord provided the resident with any updates during this period. The resident chased the landlord on a number of occasions between these dates and it failed to respond. This lack of communication was very frustrating for the resident. It would have been appropriate for the landlord to have provided her with an update on its position. This would have given the resident reassurance that the issue was not being ignored, and it would also have helped to manage expectations.
This lack of effective communication continued post pandemic and led to the resident making her complaint on 15 June 2023. The initial response provided by the landlord was poor and lacked clarity. While it apologised for the delays, it failed to acknowledge the impact that they had upon the resident. In addition, it did not provide her with any relevant updates. This was a missed opportunity to put things right and led to further inconvenience for the resident. The landlord was evidently aware that the issue had been ongoing since 2017, so it would have been appropriate for it to have progressed matters with more urgency.
The landlord’s final complaint response in December 2023acknowledged its poor communication and the fact that the resident had spent considerable time and effort chasing for an update that was not forthcoming. However, the evidence shows that this pattern of poor communication continued post complaint. The resident was initially given a works start date of February 2024 but this failed to materialise. She was left to continuously chase the landlord for updates and information until the repair was completed in June 2024, and her intense frustration and disappointment were understandable. This demonstrates that the landlord did not learn from its mistakes.
Within the same complaint response, the landlord also acknowledged that the delays pre and post pandemic were unacceptable. However, its admission that on 9 January 2023 it established that all prior surveys were “incorrect” is concerning. It would have been appropriate for it to have provided the resident with a more detailed explanation of what this meant.
The landlord informed the resident that a new schedule of works was awaiting approval, but it failed to provide her with any anticipated timeframe. It would have been appropriate for it to outline its intentions as to how it would progress the repairs and ensure their completion in a timely manner. Its complaint responses provided an ideal opportunity for it to do this. Failure to manage expectations can be detrimental to the landlord/tenant relationship as it can potentially convey to the resident a feeling of being forgotten about. By giving clear target dates and details on how things would be progressed, the landlord could potentially manage the resident’s concerns and put her mind at ease. There is no evidence that it did this, which is a further failure in the landlord’s handling of the issue. The continued delays in the months after the final complaint response indicate that it did not learn sufficient lessons and similar failings had a continued impact on the resident.
In summary, taking into account unavoidable delays caused by the pandemic, it took the landlord over 4 years to resolve the substantive issue. This was an unreasonable length of time. Throughout this period the landlord failed to demonstrate any efforts to progress matters in a timely manner, or to keep the resident appropriately informed.
The Ombudsman’s role is to consider whether the redress offered by the landlord in respect of its acknowledged failings in handling the resident’s complaint put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this, we take into account whether the landlord’s offer of redress was in line with our Dispute Resolution Principles: be fair, put things right, and learn from outcomes.
In this case, the compensation amount of £1,300 offered by the landlord was in line with its compensation policy for “severe maladministration”. However, the landlord failed to resolve the substantive issue of the resident’s complaint until several months after it had issued its final response. For this reason a finding of reasonable redress cannot be made.
The Ombudsman has therefore found maladministration in the landlord’s handling of structural repairs to the property. Had the landlord not have acknowledged some failings and awarded substantial compensation, this would have been a severe maladministration finding.
It is the Ombudsman’s opinion that an additional amount of £400 compensation would provide adequate redress for the failures identified. This is in line with our Service’s remedies guidance (published on our website) as well as the landlord’s own compensation policy.

Complaint handling

At the time the resident complained, the landlord had a 2-stage complaint policy. The landlord had 10 working days to respond to complaints at stage 1 and 30 working days to respond to complaints at stage 2.
The resident made her initial complaint on 15 June 2023, and the landlord responded on 5 July 2023. Although this was not a substantial delay, it still exceeded the timeframe set out in the landlord’s policy by 4 working days. There is no evidence that this was acknowledged within the landlord’s response.
The resident escalated her complaint on 21 July 2023. However, she did not receive a final response until 6 December 2023. This was a substantial delay of 69 working days (nearly 7 weeks). This Service intervened in October 2023 but the landlord failed to issue its response by the deadline set. There is evidence that the landlord informed the resident of a possible delay, but this was not until the beginning of November 2023. By this stage the 30 working days had already elapsed and the resident had chased the landlord on a number of occasions.
In addition, the landlord did not acknowledge this delay within its final complaint response. Nor did it attempt to put things right by offering compensation to the resident or demonstrating any learning. This was a further failure.
Therefore, based on the resident’s time, trouble, and inconvenience, we find maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling. We order it to pay her £150 compensation. This is in line with our remedies guidance and the landlord’s compensation policy.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of structural repairs to the resident’s property.
In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handing.

Orders

Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord is ordered to:
1. Write to the resident to apologise for the failures identified in this report.
2. Pay the resident £1,850 compensation for the failures identified in this report (any compensation already paid can be deducted from this total). This is broken down as follows:
  1. £1,300 already offered by the landlord within its final complaint response.
  2. £400 for continued failures after the landlord’s final complaint response.
  3. £150 for the complaint handling failures.
Within 8 weeks the landlord must complete a review of this case to determine what went wrong with its handling of the resident’s complaint and the related issues (to include establishing clear responsibilities and ownership for future complaint handling, and property issues). The landlord should:
1. Provide this Service with a copy of its review findings.
2. Use the review as a learning resource to ensure that the issues encountered by the resident do not happen again.