London Borough of Islington (202423374)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202423374

Islington Council

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

1. The complaint is about the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of a damaged garden wall.

Background

2. The resident has been the secure tenant of the landlord since 2018. She is represented in making her complaint by her husband. In this report, we refer to contact from both the resident and her husband as coming from ‘the resident’.
3. The property is a flat in a converted house. It has a garden surrounded by a Victorian brick wall (the wall). This wall adjoins the boundaries of 3 other properties and cannot be reached directly from any road.
4. The landlord received reports that the wall required repair no later than 2018, but was unable to act on them due to the wishes of the previous resident. In early 2018, it commissioned a survey of the wall. When the resident moved in in late 2018, she asked the landlord to repair the wall as she said it was dangerous. The landlord arranged for a scaffold support for the wall.
5. The landlord commissioned a survey and received a preliminary report in May 2019. This confirmed the wall was in poor structural condition and recommended further investigation. The resident pressed the landlord for action to repair the wall and remove the scaffolding occasionally between 2019 and 2021. She said she could not get into the garden easily because of the scaffolding.
6. The resident says the landlord’s response to her emails was poor and she would often send emails and wait months for a response. This is borne out by the email trail which shows large gaps in communication. She also says the landlord and its contractors missed many appointments. There is evidence to support this claim in the documents we have reviewed.
7. In April 2023 the wall collapsed. In August 2023, the landlord informed the resident it had obtained a quote to repair the wall but, due to the cost, it would need to obtain another. There was another lengthy gap in communication.
8. The resident complained formally to the landlord in October 2023. She said the complaint was for failures stretching back over 6 years. In the landlord’s stage 1 response of 2 November 2023 it upheld the complaint because of the 7 month delay between April 2023 (when it first raised the quote for the wall repair) and November 2023. It offered £341.62 compensation (£50 for inconvenience and £41.66 for each month of delay).
9. The resident immediately escalated the complaint, saying the delays had been ongoing for 6 years, not 7 months. She said the landlord had repeatedly missed appointments and communicated poorly. In the landlord’s stage 2 response of 30 November 2023 it again upheld the complaint and awarded £592 compensation (£342 awarded at stage 1 and a further £250 for poor communication, inconvenience and distress caused by missed appointments).
10. In the resident’s referral to us in September 2024 she reiterated that the problem had been ongoing for 6 years and the landlord had communicated poorly. She wanted the landlord to complete the repair as soon as possible and to compensate her for the delay in doing so.

Assessment and findings

11. The resident first raised her concerns about the wall as soon as she moved in in 2018, and the evidence demonstrates she was in reasonably regular contact with the landlord about the issue thereafter. While she did not raise a formal complaint until October 2023, we are satisfied the landlord was consistently put on notice of the issue in the preceding years. We have therefore exercised our discretion to consider the full timeframe within this investigation.
12. The landlord’s repairs policy says it is responsible for the repair of boundary walls. It has set out response times for carrying out repairs in its Housing Repairs Guide. This says planned works should be completed within 60 working days. It says this category is “for high value repair jobs which are often complicated to complete. Examples include works linked to a legal case or works requiring leaseholder consultation”. We are satisfied that this is the appropriate category for the repairs in this case.
13. The resident first raised concerns about the wall in September 2018. She said she was pregnant and would like the works done before she gave birth in October 2018. On 12 September 2018, the landlord raised a referral for the work, describing the wall as high risk and saying the works should be done within 7 days.
14. The evidence shows that this would never have been feasible as the job was complex. The wall was, at least in places, a retaining wall supporting a great weight of earth. Ground level varied considerably over the length of the wall and surveyors have recommended removing tons of soil.
15. The job was also complex legally. The demolition and rebuilding of boundary walls is covered by the Party Wall Act 1996. This requires those intending to demolish and/or rebuild a boundary wall to formally notify other landowners whose land borders on the boundary before works begin and acquire consents from them or seek authorisation from a court. The nature of the site also meant the landlord had to prepare a detailed plan to get materials into the garden and gather quotes for a job scheduled to take at least 3 months.
16. There was also no direct access from the road. It was clear the works would cost many thousands of pounds so several quotes had to be received and evaluated. The permissions to carry out works alone would be certain to take several months.
17. While we would not expect a landlord to carry out works according to an artificially tight schedule, we would expect it to progress them with some urgency. In this case, the landlord made little progress on the job over the next 5 years. It should have made regular, discernible progress towards completion and it did not do so.
18. It took 8 months from the first report for a survey to be completed. That survey then recommended a further survey involving the digging of pits along the wall’s length. The landlord was clearly aware of the danger posed by the wall as it erected scaffolding to support it in October 2018, and had identified it as high risk. These delays were, therefore, completely unacceptable. They were contrary to its policy and knowingly put the resident and her family at risk. They were also only able to access the garden through a 10-inch gap between the scaffolding and the wall, making use of the garden problematic.
19. The resident told the landlord the scaffolding was preventing the family from accessing the garden in April 2019. By then, the scaffolding had been supporting the wall for over 6 months. The scaffolding is still present in June 2025, 6 years later.
20. The landlord received a survey report in May 2019 which set out the complexities of the job and what would be needed to complete it. These included issuing notices under the Party Wall Act, which would require research into adjoining properties’ ownership. It therefore had to appoint a consultant to carry out this work, but did not do so until September 2019, 5 months later. This consultant remained in place until October 2024, when they were replaced. There is little evidence of the consultant making any significant progress during the intervening 5 year period.
21. The resident wrote occasionally to the landlord asking for updates, but progress was limited. The landlord arranged for the exploratory pits to be dug along the wall’s length in June 2020 and these showed it was subsiding (as already known). The notes show landlord staff asking for a plan, but there does not appear to have been one at that time. No further action is recorded until a year later in June 2021.
22. Further emails from 2022 show the surveyor was working up designs for works. They highlighted the difficulties in completing the repairs, but these had been known since at least 2019. The delays were such that, in April 2023, the wall collapsed in its middle section. Still, the progress was slow. The landlord wrote to the resident in August 2023 to tell her it had received a second quote for the works.
23. In its stage 1 response of 2 November 2023, the landlord admitted its service had been poor but only acknowledged the 7 month delay between raising the order to carry out works in April 2023 and the date of the response. In reality, the resident had raised the matter regularly for 5 years. It offered £41.66 compensation per month for 7 months and £50 for inconvenience.
24. At stage 2, the landlord again upheld the complaint. On this occasion, rather than offering further monthly payments for its failure to complete the works, it offered an additional £250 for inconvenience, poor communication, and distress. It also set out a list of actions it had taken (many completed long before 2023):
    1. Appointed a party wall surveyor (in 2019).
    2. Excavated exploratory pits along the wall (2020).
    3. Acquired structural engineer’s design for the rebuild of the wall (in 2021).
25. After the stage 2 response in November 2023, the delay has continued. There appears to have been no contact with the resident or progress with the project for the next 10 months, when she again asked for an update. She did not receive a response, and has continued to press for updates into early 2025. The landlord has improved its communication more recently, sending the resident updates in February and March 2025. However, she says there has still been no progress on site, the scaffolding is still in place, and the landlord has never inspected it or checked it is safe.
26. The landlord wrote to us on 4 March 2025 saying it had completed a site inspection, issued instructions to proceed, set a date for further surveys and carried out feasibility studies. It said it intended to: carry out an asbestos survey; carry out a CCTV drain survey; get conservation and listed building consent; create a tender pack; and put the job out to tender to approved contractors.
27. The fact the landlord has now produced a detailed plan for the completion of these works is positive. However, some 7 years after it became aware of the problem, it has yet to complete many of the necessary steps before it can carry out the repairs. The landlord’s delay and inaction has been significant and impactful. For that reason, a finding of severe maladministration is warranted.
28. The landlord’s Compensation Guidance says it will pay disrepair compensation payments of between £500 and £2,500 per year depending on the severity of the problem. It also says it will pay time and trouble payments of up to £300 and distress payments of up to £1,000.
29. The landlord is responsible for a delay of over 7 years. However, the problem is with a garden wall, not a part of the property itself. The family have been able to use their garden, with difficulty, but the wall has posed a risk to children. We have, therefore, ordered the landlord to pay the resident £700 for the years of delay (inclusive of the £291.62 offered for delays at stage 1).
30. The delay has also caused the resident and her family substantial distress and inconvenience. She says it has affected their mental health. We cannot establish a causal link between health issues and the actions of landlords. The resident may wish to take legal advice about this, as a personal injury claim may be a more appropriate way of dealing with this aspect of the complaint.
31. However, we have considered the general distress and inconvenience which these events caused. We have, therefore, ordered a further £600 compensation for time, trouble and distress (inclusive of the £300 previously offered by the landlord for these elements). This brings the total compensation award for the landlord’s severe maladministration in its handling of the wall repairs to £1,300. This remedy is in line with our remedies guidance which says that payments in excess of £1,000 may be suitable in cases of severe maladministration.

Determination

32. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was severe maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of a damaged garden wall.

Orders

33. Within 4 weeks of the date of this decision the landlord is ordered to provide evidence that it has:
    1. Sent a letter of apology to the resident for the failures identified in this report.
    2. Paid the resident £1,300 (inclusive of the £592 already offered), as follows:
       1. £700 for delays.
       2. £300 for time and trouble.
       3. £300 for distress.
    3. Sent the resident a schedule of actions and works required to carry out the repairs to the garden wall with a detailed timetable for completion within 6 months.
    4. Established a single-point-of-contact for the resident and her family which will keep her informed of progress.