London Borough of Camden Council (202407729)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202407729

Camden Council

30 April 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 response to the resident’s reports of:
1. Damp and mould in her bedroom.
2. Kitchen waste backing up into her bath.

Background

The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord. The property in question is a 1-bedroom flat.
In late May 2023, the resident reported a damp problem in her bedroom. The landlord carried out internal and external inspections. It identified a cause in the form of rising damp from a leaking outside pipe. In July 2023, the resident reported 2 times that waste was backing into her bath. This was cleared on both occasions. The plumber who attended the second occurrence reported the problem was caused by the fact the kitchen wastepipe in the neighbouring property was connected to the resident’s bathroom wastepipe. They recommended further works to separate the pipework.
On 4 March 2024, the resident complained to the landlord that:
1. The landlord had not addressed the damp problem affecting her bedroom walls.
2. The issue with waste backing up into her bathroom was unresolved.
3. It had therefore not met its legal obligations to keep the property in a good state of repair.
4. Her chronic health conditions, including asthma, were being exacerbated by her living conditions.

To resolve her complaint, the resident asked the landlord to provide an action plan showing how and when the repairs would be completed. She said that alternatively she would be willing to consider being relocated to a different property.

The landlord responded at stage 1 of its process on 18 March 2024. It said:
1. The resident had reported damp in her bedroom on 24 May 2023 and it had not yet repaired the underlying cause from a leaking outside pipe.
2. The blockage causing kitchen waste to back into the resident’s bath was cleared on 14 July 2023 and it had received no further reports of a reoccurrence from her since.

The landlord apologised for the inconvenience the resident had been caused and confirmed a repair for the outside pipe had been booked for the next day.

Subsequently, the landlord completed a dye test to look for the source of the leak. The resident chased a follow-up response to this in late-March and April 2024. A senior plumber also inspected the connected waste pipes and reported that it was not possible to run them separately. Again, the resident chased the landlord for an update on this and it confirmed its position by email on 28 May 2024. She then reported a recurrence of the waste problem a week later.
On 12 June 2024 the resident escalated her complaint to the next stage. She said she was doing so because the previous response was “inadequate”. The resident added that the damp problem had reoccurred after a previous repair in 2019, and that it had still not provided an “effective solution”. She also said she was unhappy with the landlord’s position on the waste pipework because no alternative option had been offered. The resident repeated that the issues were affecting her health. She said she was seeking the landlord to complete the necessary repairs and to keep her updated.
The landlord responded at stage 2 on 4 July 2024. It said there was an unreasonable delay between the cause of the damp being identified in July 2023 and the present. The landlord confirmed that an appointment had been booked for that week for a plumber to inspect for leaks into the resident’s home. It also confirmed the plumber would, on the same day, install a non-return valve in the bath pipe. The landlord offered £340 compensation for the delays and distress caused from its handling of the damp problem.
After the complaints process ended, the landlord completed the agreed repair to the waste pipe in July 2024. The resident later reported around 7 months later that the problem had returned. The landlord also inspected for evidence of the leak from the dye test and did not find any. It then carried out a further inspection in October 2024 and identified that the rendering outside had blown, which required scaffolding. At the time of issuing this report in late-April 2024, the landlord had not completed this work.
The resident referred her complaint to the Ombudsman because she said neither the damp nor the bath waste issues had been resolved. She said that the circumstances had caused her distress. The resident advised that she is seeking effective repairs to be completed and more compensation.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

According to the available records, the resident experienced a damp problem in her bedroom in 2018/19. Similarly, the records show the resident has been experiencing the issue of waste backing into her bath intermittently since 2018. The Ombudsman encourages residents to raise complaints in a timely manner, and as near as possible to when the issues became known. There are also time limits on what we may investigate. This is because the quality and availability of any evidence that may have existed at the time may not be present now. The focus of this investigation, therefore, has been on events that occurred around 12 months prior to the resident making a complaint in March 2024.
We recognise that further works were identified and the landlord has attended to both issues after the complaints process ended in July 2024. We have though limited the scope of this investigation, in-line with our process. This is because, in the interest of fairness, a landlord needs an opportunity to investigate and respond to any concerns about it first. The resident would need to then make a new complaint about any specific repairs or other issues that she remains unhappy about. Our investigation will therefore focus on the repair issues the resident complained about. We will also consider if the landlord completed agreed actions, such as repairs, to put things right in an appropriate time.
The resident said her living conditions caused her health to worsen. The courts or a personal injury insurer are the most effective place to consider whether there is a link between damage to someone’s health and the actions or inactions of the landlord. In personal injury claims, both parties usually appoint independent medical experts to provide insights, which is not something we do. Consideration in this investigation will be given to any distress and inconvenience that any failings on the landlord’s part may have caused.

Damp in bedroom

The landlord has a contractual obligation under the tenancy agreement to carry out repairs to the resident’s property within a reasonable timeframe. The landlord’s damp procedure at the time defined 24 hours as a reasonable timescale to attend to high-risk problems. These were cases where an immediate threat is posed to the tenant or property. All other reports were classed as “urgent” and would be responded to within 10 working-days. According to the repair logs, the landlord allocated the resident’s initial report of a damp problem on 24 May 2023 as urgent. The landlord inspected the problem 9 working-days later, which was within the appropriate timescale.
The report from the inspection stated that:
1. There was damp and “mild mould” on the bedroom walls and ceiling.
2. There was no evidence of an active external or internal leak.
3. There was no extractor fan in the kitchen and the bathroom fan was possibly not working and suggested that these were installed/replaced.
It is unclear from the report if a possible cause of the damp problem had been identified. As noted in our spotlight report on damp and mould, diagnosing the cause of the problem can take time and multiple visits. It was not therefore an indication of a failing that the landlord had not diagnosed the cause at its first inspection. However, we would expect in such cases that the landlord would progress any further inspections or repairs in-line with its repair timescales. This did not happen in this case. The landlord only arranged a further inspection on 6 July 2023 after the resident chased it for an outcome. This was clearly inappropriate and not in-line with its 10 working-day timescale that it allocated to investigations into damp and mould.
The second investigation recorded that the problem was possibly from a leaking outside pipe and was causing the plaster to crack and flake. It also noted that the resident had asthma. There is no evidence, that we have seen, that the landlord considered the resident’s health and any potential risk to it any further. This was not in-line with its damp procedure at the time which said it would triage cases based on the risk to someone’s health. While this is a failing, we have seen no evidence that the landlord or the resident believed that the damp was severe enough to potentially pose a risk.
According to the stage 1 response, the landlord also attended on 19 September 2023 and found the problem may be due to an ill-fitted airbrick. It also said a bricklayer attended in December 2023 who reported that the damp could be caused by a fault with the downpipe between the resident’s balcony and the flat above. There were no records of these 2 appointments in the logs shared with us. However, we have seen no reason from the resident not to accept the landlord’s account.
Because of the lack of records, we do not know what priority the landlord allocated to the follow-up appointments. It would not have been unreasonable though for it to complete these under the non-emergency repairs timescale cited in the repairs policy. This timescale was 35 working-days. The landlord exceeded this by around 10 and 65 working-days respectively, with no apparent reason recorded in the records or given in either of its complaint responses. It is also not clear, due to the lack of records, if the landlord did complete any repairs. Either way it is a failing that the landlord cannot evidence that it completed its repairs and investigations within a reasonable timeframe.
When the resident complained in March 2024, she said that the damp was still unresolved. This was around 9 months on from her first report. The landlord appropriately acknowledged failings in its handling of the damp issue. In its stage 1 response it indicated that some of the delay was due to the neighbour whose property it required access to being away. However, rightly the landlord acknowledged in its stage 2 response that it was responsible for much of the delay.
According to the landlord’s complaints policy, one of the 6-steps to addressing a complaint was to “do what we said we’d do”. It is also a requirement of the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) to ensure all actions agreed to put right a complaint are completed. The landlord also appropriately arranged for further investigations into the cause of the damp. This included a dye test to trace the cause of the leak. Again, there was no record of this in the repair logs provided but we have seen the resident referred to this happening in emails to the landlord sent in mid-March 2024. It also attended an appointment confirmed in its final response, which was the delayed follow-up to the dye test investigation.
We recommended in our spotlight report that landlords carry out smaller works, such as mould washes, to improve a resident’s environment whilst larger repairs are being arranged. The landlord advised in its stage 1 response that it did not carry out a mould treatment after the internal inspection in July 2023 because it needed to address the cause of the leak first. This may have been a reasonable position in 2023, when the problem was reported to be “mild”. However, it would have been appropriate for the landlord to reassess the internal damage and to consider if there were any interim measures it could take to improve the living conditions. There is no evidence that it did so. This is despite the resident reporting several times, including in her complaint correspondence, that the situation had worsened and was impacting her health. The Code requires that all aspects of a complaint are addressed. It is a failing that the landlord has not addressed the resident’s specific concerns about this. The landlord is therefore ordered to provide a position on this, as well as any other outstanding repairs.
The last inspection recorded on the log was on 16 October 2024. This states the damp was found to be from defective rendering. Clearly diagnosing the cause has been complex and required different specialisms. However, the resident advised that she has not heard anything further from the landlord. Unless the landlord can demonstrate that it has already, it is ordered to provide the resident with an action plan for the outstanding repairs and investigations.
While the landlord took some appropriate actions to resolve the resident’s complaint, these were not adequate to put right the impact of its failings. These failings include not:
1. Meeting or demonstrating it had met its repair obligations investigations or repairs within appropriate timescales.
2. Showing if and how it considered the resident’s asthma.
3. Communicating well and regularly with the resident.
4. Responding to the resident’s reports that the internal damp had worsened.
The landlord awarded £100 for the distress and £240 for the delay. Its compensation policy provides that sums for distress will usually be in the region of £100 to £300, but it may award more where the issues is “severe and prolonged”. It also states that it may pay £20 for each month of a delay. At the time of the final response, it had been over a year since the resident reported a damp problem. The amount the landlord offered for the delay was broadly in-line with its approach. The amount it awarded for the distress was though at the lower end and not, in our view, proportionate. There have also been further failings identified in this investigation that the landlord did not find. We have ordered the landlord to give more compensation based on its compensation policy and the Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies.
In November 2024, the Ombudsman published a special report about the landlord. This highlighted themes we identified through our investigations. These included unreasonably delayed investigations into reports of damp and mould and poor communication about repairs with residents. We also found repeated failings in the landlord’s investigation of and responses to complaints. We made several recommendations in our special report for the landlord to improve in these areas. Because of this we have not made any orders around learning. However, we encourage the landlord to take learning from the findings in this investigation and consider these in any ongoing work it is doing to improve its service.

Waste in bath

As mentioned earlier, landlords are expected to complete repairs within a reasonable time. Repairs should also be effective and long-lasting (i.e. not temporary). Where a resident experiences the same problem, particularly within a brief period, we would expect a landlord to explore new and different solutions than those previously tried.
In the complaint, the resident said the problem with food waste backing up into her bath was unresolved and posed a risk to her health. In its initial response, the landlord said a plumber successfully cleared a blockage on 14 July 2023, reported 8 days prior, from the two-inch long shared waste pipe. The landlord reflected that the plumber had recommended it consider separating the pipework as a permanent solution. The landlord though identified no failings in its handling of this aspect because there had been no further reports of a recurrence.
The repair and contact logs seen support the landlord’s account that it had successfully cleared the blockage at the last attendance. There is also no evidence, that we have seen, that the resident had reported the waste problem since her last report. It was also not evident from her complaint that she was experiencing the problem at the time she complained. It appears she was looking for a more permanent solution to prevent any potential recurrence of the problem. While it is understandable that the resident was seeking a more permanent solution, her request would be considered an improvement rather than a repair issue. The landlord’s decision at stage 1 was reasonable, based on the information available at the time.
After the initial response, the resident reported to the repairs team that her bath wastepipe needed to be connected directly to the stack pipe. Again, it is not apparent that she was experiencing a problem with waste backing up at that time. As explained, in this situation, even considering the history, the landlord was not obligated to carry out any works.
The landlord did though appoint a senior plumber to inspect the pipework on 24 April 2024. They reported that they believed there was not enough room to run a waste pipe separately from the resident’s bath. They also stated that the pipework in all flats in the block was configured in the same way. The landlord evidently did then explore the resident’s request to separate the pipework.
While it took some reasonable action, the records indicate that the landlord’s communication with the resident around its finding and decision on the pipework was poor. It took the resident contacting the landlord for an update on 25 May 2024 for it to confirm its position on her request. This was inappropriate and likely contributed to the overall distress caused by the situation.
On 5 June 2024, the resident reported that the problem had reoccurred overnight and asked what option was available for it to be resolved. The landlord should then have attended to the report within its repair timescale. It did complete a repair on 8 July 2024. This was within the 35 working-day timescale allocated for the repair. However, the records also show that there was a delay in raising the repair, which it did on 27 June 2024. This was after the resident had made contact several times to enquire about a repair. It therefore possibly could have attended sooner had it raised an instruction when the resident reported the recurrence. Its communication with the resident was also poor and caused avoidable distress and inconvenience.
The stage 2 response did not give a clear decision on this aspect of the complaint. It did not also provide a response to the resident’s request for it to consider a different solution than those attempted previously. Rather, it simply confirmed its intention to install a non-return valve under the bath. Based on the repair logs, this is something that was already in situ. While installing or renewing the non-return valve may have provided an appropriate solution, the landlord failed to provide sufficient explanations to address the resident’s concerns. This is not in-line with the requirements of section 6.7 of the Code, which states that landlords should “provide clear reasons for any decisions, referencing the relevant policy, law and good practice where appropriate.”
The resident advised that the problem has recurred since the landlord’s repair. This is supported by records the landlord shared, which although incomplete, suggest this happened in March and April 2025. We do not know if and how the landlord responded to these reports. However, we would expect to see that it demonstrates it has considered if and how it can provide a more long-lasting solution.
In view of the fact the landlord did not clearly identify failings in its handling of this aspect, where we have, we have made a finding of maladministration.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme), there was maladministration in the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of:
1. Damp and mould in her bedroom.
2. Kitchen waste backing up into her bath.

Orders

Within 4 weeks of this report the landlord is to provide evidence to the Ombudsman that it has completed the following actions:
1. Apologise to the resident for the additional failings identified in this report.
2. Pay the resident £700 compensation, made up of:
  1. £500 for the failings relating to damp and mould in the bathroom.
  2. £200 for the failings relating to the waste in the bath.

If the landlord has already paid the compensation of £340 offered during the complaints processes, this may be deducted, leaving £360 to pay.

Provide an action plan to resident for the outstanding external and internal repairs relating to the damp problem, unless it can evidence it has done so already.
Confirm to the resident and us what action it took in response to her most recent reports of the waste problem and why it considers this will provide an effective and long-lasting solution. It should also explain what action it will take should the problem reoccur.

Recommendation

The landlord should consider carrying out any interim repairs, such as applying mould treatment, where appropriate.