London Borough of Barnet (202302757)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202302757

London Borough of Barnet

17 March 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:
1. Response to the resident’s concerns about external repair work to her property.
2. Handling of the associated complaint.

Background

The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord which is a local authority. It is aware that the resident has a disability, but its records do not specify what this is. The resident lives in the property with her son. She has told us that they both have autism and her son is home schooled.
The landlord wrote to the resident to inform her of upcoming planned external work to her property. The letter was dated 3 November 2022, however the resident told us she did not receive this until January 2023 when work had already started. The work was external cleaning, external redecoration, and replacement of external doors.
On 22 December 2022 the resident emailed the landlord to raise her concerns about it doing external painting during the winter. She said that the paint fumes had entered her property, which she was unable to ventilate because of the weather. The resident said the fumes were affecting her and her son who had autism.
The landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint on 6 January 2023 and met with her on 12 January 2023. The resident asked the landlord to halt the work on 13 January 2023. She then escalated her complaint on 16 January 2023, raising the following issues:
1. She felt the works were being done at an unsuitable time of year and was unhappy she had not been given any option to defer the work.
2. The resident said the quality of work was poor, partly because it was being done in bad weather. She was unhappy that the replacement doors were not waterproof and were being damaged by the rain.
3. She said that the landlord’s staff and contractors had not acknowledged or considered the vulnerabilities in her household. She felt they were dismissive of the effects of the work on her and her son’s autism.
4. The resident was unhappy with the workers’ behaviour, who she said had:
  1. played inappropriate music,
  2. not taken care to prevent mess and damage to her property,
  3. asked for her telephone number,
  4. told her not to call the landlord directly,
  5. turned up unannounced,
  6. acted intimidatingly.
The landlord issued its stage 1 complaint response to the resident on 20 January 2023 which partially upheld her complaint. It said, “whilst not ideal”, it was possible to complete external work satisfactorily during the winter. However, it apologised for:
1. The poor quality of the workmanship and for the resident feeling pressured to allow the work to start.
2. The inconvenience of paint fumes entering her property.
3. Workers behaving inconsiderately and not giving adequate notice of appointments.
4. Workers inappropriately asking for the resident’s telephone number and playing music while working.
The landlord said it would raise the issues with its contractor and would inspect the quality of the work.
The resident tried again to escalate her complaint to the final stage on 24 February 2023. There was no evidence of the landlord responding to this. On 3 October 2023, after the resident sought intervention from the Ombudsman, the landlord acknowledged her complaint escalation.
The landlord issued its final stage complaint response to the resident on 6 November 2023. It said it did not have enough information to investigate the complaint. The landlord acknowledged the resident’s statement that she had asked it to halt the external works but said its contractor had no record of this. It offered to inspect the resident’s property and asked for further information about her complaint escalation to investigate further.
The resident responded to the landlord on 28 November 2023 to dispute its response. She said she was unhappy with the behaviour of the staff and workers and that the work remained incomplete after a year. There is no record of the landlord responding to this.
The landlord carried out an inspection of the resident’s property on 4 April 2024 which found multiple defects with the door replacements. The landlord confirmed to us on 28 January 2025 that the replacement doors were completed by a different contractor. It did not confirm when this work was completed.

Assessment and findings

The landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns about external repair work to her property

The landlord had a duty to act in accordance with the Equality Act 2010. This obligates it to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that its services are accessible to people who have disabilities. The landlord’s vulnerable tenants policy says “Staff are expected to take every opportunity to update our systems with information about tenants’ circumstances through their day-to-day service delivery.” It goes on to say, “Staff are expected… to be alert of the tenant’s and/or household’s needs, including communication and access, and to tailor our services to those needs.”
It is outside of the Ombudsman’s remit to determine whether the landlord breached the Act as this is a matter better suited to consideration by a court. However, we consider whether the landlord showed it had considered its responsibilities under the Act. In line with its vulnerable tenants policy, the landlord would be expected to accurately record the nature of the disabilities in a resident’s household and identify how best to meet the resident’s needs.
There were failures by the landlord in its handling of the external repair work at the resident’s property. The landlord has acknowledged some failures, which is positive. Where there are acknowledged failures by a landlord, it is the Ombudsman’s role to assess whether the landlord did enough to put things right for the resident.
1. The landlord failed to consider the vulnerabilities in the household, leading to distress for the resident and her son.
2. The landlord acknowledged that its workers had behaved in an inappropriate manner. This compounded the distress and inconvenience to the resident.
3. It did not make sure the work was done to a satisfactory standard.
4. It did not work with the resident to make sure the work was completed, leaving her with external doors that were unfinished and not draught proofed.
In this case, the landlord failed to act in line with its vulnerable tenants policy and by recording the household’s vulnerabilities accurately. This was evidenced by its response to our request for information, which showed that it had recorded ‘other disability’ present in the household without any specifics. The resident has provided evidence to show that the landlord failed to do so despite her informing the landlord on at least 6 occasions between 2018 and 2022 that the household had mental health vulnerabilities and ADHD. The landlord should have recorded the specific vulnerabilities in the household and worked with the resident to agree suitable adjustments to minimise any disadvantage she faced due to disability.
The landlord’s lack of regard for the resident’s vulnerabilities contributed to her receiving a poor service during the external works. It was positive that it acknowledged that its workers behaved inappropriately during the work. However, the landlord did not consider that the resident and her son may have been more acutely affected by this behaviour because of their vulnerabilities, despite her highlighting these during the stage 1 complaint investigation. It also did not consider that the household may be more acutely affected by the noise, smells and disturbance that accompany repair work.
The resident reported that both the landlord’s staff and the contractor’s workers behaved in a way which she found intimidating. In the absence of objective third party evidence, it is not possible for the Ombudsman to determine if the staff members behaved intimidatingly. However, the landlord would be expected to carry out is own investigation, which may include interviewing the staff members involved. The lack of an investigation may have given the resident the impression that the landlord was not taking her concerns seriously.
When the resident halted the planned works, it was unreasonable that the landlord then signed the work off as complete without an inspection on 31 January 2023. It was still obliged, in accordance with the tenancy agreement, to repair and maintain the exterior and structure of the property. By signing the work off prematurely, it failed to meet its repair and maintenance obligation, leaving the resident with unsuitable doors, which were not weatherproof, until the work was then inspected and completed. As the landlord has not confirmed when the work was completed, this may have been a period of up to 2 years between January 2023 and January 2025, when it told us the doors were replaced.
It was unreasonable that the landlord did not attempt to work with the resident to complete the repairs. The resident had clarified that she was unhappy with:
1. The standard of work by the contractor.
2. The time of year at which the work was being done which prevented her from opening her windows to ventilate out paint fumes.
3. The behaviour of the contractor’s workers.
It would have been reasonable for the landlord to work with the resident to overcome these issues by discussing alternatives such as using a different contractor if possible or ensuring that the operatives were supervised by a member of the landlord’s staff while at the property. This may have helped rebuild the landlord-tenant relationship. However, there was no evidence of this, despite the resident re-raising the issues a short time after the work had stopped. It was unreasonable that the landlord did not revisit the external work until it investigated the final stage complaint, approximately 10 months later.
Considering the passage of time, it was reasonable for the landlord to propose to inspect the property again in its final stage complaint response as the situation may have changed over time. However, it did not do this until 12 April 2024, approximately 5 months after its final response. It is unclear why this took so long and this was an unexplained and unreasonable delay.
Although the landlord accepted it had made errors it did not offer any compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused. The landlord should have offered compensation based on the significant impact its errors had on the resident over a prolonged period of time.
Overall, the landlord’s handling of the external repair work amounts to maladministration. To recognise the distress and inconvenience experienced by the resident over a significant period as a result of the landlord’s failures, it should pay her compensation of £600. This is in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance, which is available to view on our website. This sets out that awards of compensation between £100 and £600 are appropriate when failures by the landlord had an adverse effect on the resident but which may not have had a permanent effect on them. In this case, the work to the doors was ultimately completed so there was not a permanent impact.
As there was no evidence of the landlord doing so, unless it has done so already, we order the landlord to carry out a post-inspection of the external works to verify whether the doors and exterior redecoration were completed satisfactorily.

The landlord’s handling of the associated complaint.

The landlord’s complaints and compliments policy sets out a 2-stage complaints procedure. Ats stage 1 of this procedure, it should respond to the complaint within 10 working days. At the final stage of the procedure it should respond within 20 working days. These timeframes mirror those set out in the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) which all landlords who are members of the Scheme must adhere to. The Code sets out the Ombudsman’s expectations of landlords’ complaint handling practices.
The version of the Code in force at the time of the complaint stated that “If residents raise additional complaints during the investigation, these should be incorporated into the stage one response as long as they are relevant and the stage one response has not been issued.”
The resident raised her stage 1 complaint on 22 December 2022 about the landlord’s handling of the planned work. In the meantime, the resident emailed the landlord on 16 January 2023 to escalate her complaint to the final stage and adding further concerns. The landlord appropriately responded to the additional issues in its stage 1 complaint response on 20 January 2023.
However, in the resident’s email on 16 January 2023, she said she was unhappy with the attitude of a member of staff who visited her on 12 January 2023. This was the member of staff who was investigating the stage 1 complaint. As they were the subject of part of the resident’s complaint, it was inappropriate for this staff member to go on to respond to the complaint. This was a failure by the landlord to investigate the complaint appropriately.
Further, the landlord’s stage 1 complaint response was ambiguous on the status of the resident’s complaint. It said, “This now concludes Stage 1 of our internal complaints process.” The next paragraph then said, “Stage 2 marks the end of our internal process, and we have now completed our consideration of your complaint.” This was contradictory and did not comply with the Code. The Code says that complaint responses should always be clear at what stage of the complaints procedure a landlord is responding at and what the next steps are if the resident wants to escalate the complaint. This may have caused uncertainty for the resident as the landlord was unclear on what her options were for escalating her complaint.
The resident provided evidence to us that showed that she forwarded her email of 16 January 2023 to the landlord on 24 February 2023 to escalate her complaint. There was no evidence of the landlord responding to this. The landlord is expected, in accordance with the Code, to respond to all complaint requests. If it decides not to accept a complaint, it should explain why to the resident. If the nature of the complaint is unclear, the landlord should contact the resident to clarify the complaint. The landlord did neither, which was a failure to handle the complaint in line with the Code.
After intervention from the Ombudsman, the landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint escalation on 3 October 2023. It said it would provide its final response by 31 October 2023. On 30 October 2023, the landlord spoke to the resident on the telephone and, the next day, it sent her a holding response saying that the details of her complaint were still unclear. It invited her to provide further information and said it would issue its final response on 6 November 2023.It was unreasonable that the landlord waited almost a month to clarify the complaint.
The landlord’s final response said it had found no evidence of the resident asking for the external work to stop. However, internal documents it provided to us showed that it was aware from at least 31 October 2023 that “external redecorations were done to this property in early January 2023 but stopped following complaints from the tenant.” This indicates that the landlord did not conduct a thorough investigation of the complaint.
This poor handling of the complaint investigation led to the landlord being unable to address the entirety of the complaint in its final response. This prolonged the resident’s distress as her concerns were not resolved and led to further time and trouble for her in pursuing an outcome to the complaint.
The landlord’s final response asked for the resident to provide details of her complaint escalation so it could consider reopening the complaint. She detailed her dissatisfactions to the landlord on 28 November 2023 and it was unreasonable that it did not respond.
The landlord’s handling of the complaint amounts to maladministration. To recognise the distress and inconvenience experienced by the resident as a result, it must pay her compensation of £200. This is in accordance with our remedies guidance, mentioned above.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in its:
1. Response to the resident’s concerns about external repair work to her property.
2. Handling of the associated complaint.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord must provide evidence to the Ombudsman that it has complied with the following orders:
1. Pay the resident £800 compensation. This is made up to £600 for its failures in the handling of external repairs and £200 for its handling of the complaint.
2. Write to the resident to apologise for the failings identified in this report. This must come from a senior member of staff at director level or above and comply with the guidance for apologies in our remedies guidance, which is published on our website.
3. Carry out a post-inspection of the external doors and exterior redecoration and maintenance to assess whether the work was done satisfactorily. If further work is required, it must write to the resident to confirm what needs to be done and the timeframes for completion.
4. Contact the resident to gain information about her household’s vulnerabilities and what adjustments she may require in future. It must then update its records appropriately.

Recommendations

The landlord should:
1. Carry out refresher training with its staff to ensure that they are mindful of residents’ vulnerabilities and that it complies with its duties under the Equality Act 2010 and its vulnerable tenants policy.
2. As part of its post-inspection of the doors, the landlord should assess whether the newly installed external doors meet regulatory requirements and confirm the outcome of this to the resident. The resident told us that she believes the newly installed doors are not compliant with regulations. This was not considered in this investigation as this was not part of the original complaint. However, the landlord should investigate this, in the interest of rebuilding the landlord-tenant relationship.
3. If the landlord identifies any follow-on work is necessary as part of its post-inspection of the doors, it should complete this work within its published repair timeframes.