London Borough of Ealing (202210408)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202210408

London Borough of Ealing

25 January 2024


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 handling of the resident’s reports of anti-social behaviour (ASB).
  2. The Ombudsman has also considered the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident lives in a two-bedroom ground floor flat and holds a secure tenancy with the landlord, which began on 25 June 1990. The landlord’s records do not indicate that the resident has any vulnerabilities.
  2. The resident has raised three formal concerns about ASB from a leaseholder who had a property within the block in March 2017, June 2018 and November 2019 respectively. These reports related primarily to noise issues such as screaming, raised voices, loud television or music, maintenance and DIY, vacuuming and loud walking or tapping.
  3. The resident asserts that the neighbour installed a wooden floor and a heating system, which both increased the noise. The resident also stated that these alterations to the property were not authorised. The resident stated that this noise caused him and her family distress and harassment over a protracted period of time.
  4. These concerns were investigated by the landlord’s staff and closed in each case. The latest concern was raised in October 2019, investigated and closed in January 2021.
  5. The resident raised a formal complaint on 2 February 2021 and followed this up on 9 April 2021 and 17 August 2021, as he had received no response. The landlord escalated the complaint to stage 2 of its complaint process on 17 August 2021.
  6. The landlord issued its stage 2 complaint response on 11 November 2021 and it did not uphold the complaint on the grounds that the leaseholder was entitled to make the alterations and that the ASB and noise previously reported had been investigated correctly and closed, without it reaching the threshold for further action. The landlord did commit to undertaking some specific actions, such as an inspection of the leaseholder’s property.
  7. The resident escalated her complaint to stage 3 of the landlord complaint process on 8 December 2021 stating that the property inspection had not taken place, nor had the landlord taken any further action against the neighbour to prevent the behaviour or reverse the property alterations made during the time it was occurring. The landlord issued its stage 3 complaint response on 11 February 2022 in which it apologised for the delays in its complaint handling process and offered £250 compensation in respect of this. The landlord also committed to undertaking the inspection of the leaseholder’s property. The landlord did not uphold the ASB, noise or property alteration elements of the complaint.
  8. The resident remained dissatisfied and escalated her complaint to the Ombudsman on 17 August 2022, seeking completion of an inspection and any actions identified, additional compensation and changes to lease agreements provided by the landlord to leaseholders.

Jurisdiction

  1. When a complaint is brought to the Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
  2. Paragraph 42 (c) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme says that the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, were not brought to the landlord’s attention as a formal complaint within a reasonable period of time, which would usually be within 6 months of the matters arising. 
  3. In this case, the resident stated that she first raised the ASB issues in March 2019, however this was not escalated as a formal complaint for almost another year. Since 2021, when the landlord closed the ASB case, there has been no evidence presented which shows that further reports of ASB have been made.
  4. Due to the extended timescales between the incidents being reported, the complaints handling process and a further 6 month period before the matter was escalated to the Ombudsman, both parties have previously been advised that this Service will not consider any anti-social behaviour that took place prior to 2021.
  5. Since no reports of ASB have been made within this period, it has not been possible for our Service to consider the landlord’s handling of ASB in this case and this determination will only consider the landlord’s complaint handling.

Assessment and findings

Complaint handling

  1. The landlord operates a three-stage corporate complaints policy, in which it commits to issuing responses within the following timescales:
    1. Stage 1 – The resident will receive a response from a Head of Service within 10 working days.
    2. Stage 2 – The resident will receive a response from Director within 20 working days. 
    3. Stage 3 – The resident will receive a response from the Chief Executive within 20 working days.
  2. The purpose of any complaints process is to highlight any service failures, plan to avoid a recurrence and learn appropriately as an organisation. Individually, the process should also address the resident’s concerns, provide appropriate redress, where appropriate and explain what will be done to improve services moving forward.
  3. There is evidence of the resident submitting complaints in February 2021, April 2021 and August 2021. The landlord only acknowledged the third complaint made by the resident. It did not provide a response or acknowledgement to the previous two complaints. In its acknowledgement on 17 August 2021, the landlord progressed the complaint to stage 2. It is unclear why the landlord did not undertake a stage 1 investigation, either when the complaints were initially received, or as an initial response to the complaint raised in August 2021. In automatically escalating the complaint, this deprived the resident of one further level of examination of her complaint and one further option of escalation. If there was a good reason for escalating the complaint in this way, the landlord did not make this clear to the resident in the evidence seen by this Service as it only stated it was doing this due to the “seriousness of the situation”, but makes no mention of its own due process.
  4. The subsequent stage 2 and stage 3 complaint responses were both delayed. In total, the responses were 189 working days over the landlord’s policy timescales at stage 1 and 24 working days over timescale at stage 2. This represents an unreasonable and unexplained delay of over 200 working days, during which time the resident pursued the matter and was delayed in escalating her complaint to the Ombudsman.
  5. The landlord apologised for the delays in providing complaint responses and offered the resident £250 compensation for this in its stage 3 response. The landlord also committed to specific action within its stage 2 response, such as undertaking an inspection of the neighbouring property, which was not completed by the time its stage 3 response was issued.
  6. Given that the landlord has not completed substantive action it committed to do, to resolve the substantive complaint, this has caused the resident additional distress and inconvenience and, at the time of this investigation, the issue remains outstanding. This is unreasonable and the landlord must now take steps to undertake this inspection and abate any potential nuisances that are within its legal right to do.
  7. On escalating her complaint to this Service, the resident also sought changes to the leaseholder agreements to prevent alterations of a similar type being permitted. It is not within the authority of the Ombudsman to compel a landlord to alter legally-binding leases as this would require a court order in most cases. The landlord is recommended, however, to consider the clauses within its leases when new contracts are made, to ensure that they give due regard to alterations within the property and any nuisances that these may cause neighbours.
  8. Taking these factors together, the landlord has shown little by way of learning from its complaint process as it continued to delay responses and failed to complete promised actions. Whilst it did apologise and offer compensation, this was not sufficient remedy in this case and this amounts to maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 42 (c) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the complaint about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of ASB is outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there has been maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. Within 28 days of the date of this determination, the landlord must:
    1. Pay the resident £250 compensation for the delays within its complaint handling processes and the distress and inconvenience that this caused the resident. This is in additional to the £250 compensation previously offered in the landlord’s complaint responses, which must also be paid, if it has not done so already.
    2. Undertake all actions that it committed to within its stage 2 complaint response and provide the Resident and this Service with a report outlining the findings.
  2. If the inspection of the property identifies any defects, behaviours or structural alterations which are, or are likely to, cause a nuisance, the landlord must use its best endeavours to take action to abate these nuisances where it is legally entitled to do so. It is expected that these works will be completed within 12 weeks of the date of this determination.
  3. The landlord must provide evidence to this Service of compliance with these orders, within the timescales stated above.

Recommendations

  1. The landlord should:
    1. Review the clauses in new lease agreements to ensure that they allow sufficient scope for the landlord to monitor alterations and take steps to abate any nuisances caused by leaseholders or others resident in the leasehold property.