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London Borough of Wandsworth (202320361)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202320361

London Borough of Wandsworth

7 August 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 handling of the resident’s requests for repairs to the front door entry system.

Background

  1. The resident has been an assured tenant of the landlord, a council, since July 2002. The property is a 1-bedroom flat on the second floor. The landlord has recorded vulnerabilities for the resident due to his disability.
  2. The resident emailed the landlord on 6 June 2023 and said he had left a voicemail the previous week about the entry system being faulty since October 2022. He said this had been reported many times by different neighbours and needed to be fixed. He requested a refund of charges for all residents of the block.
  3. The resident made a complaint on 28 June 2023 about the landlord’s refusal to refund the requested charges. The landlord initially dealt with the complaint under its early resolution stage before escalating it to its formal stage 1 at the resident’s request on 11 July 2023. He said his neighbours had reported the faulty intercom and they should all be refunded £8.28 each.
  4. In its stage 1 response of 18 July 2023, the landlord said its records showed 5 jobs had been reported for the door entry system since November 2022 and all had been resolved within agreed timescales. It attached a spreadsheet with dates and details of these jobs. It said it had received no written complaints from any other residents. It did not refund the charges.
  5. The resident escalated his complaint the same day, saying a refund was justified as other residents had reported the faulty intercom. He said the landlord should have a phone system that records calls for professional and safety reasons. In its stage 2 response of 9 August 2023, the landlord reiterated its stage 1 position and added that it had completed 4 jobs within target dates, and one was extended at the resident’s request to change the appointment date. It noted his concerns about recording calls; this was used in certain council services and may be rolled out further as telephony services were reviewed. It did not uphold the complaint.
  6. The resident referred his complaint to us in August 2023, saying he wanted to be refunded £8.28 in charges for the periods the door entry system was not working. He later contacted us to advise there had been developments such as the installation of a new entry system, and he had concerns he wanted to raise as a complaint. He recently told us he wants the landlord to remove the intercom system entirely.

Assessment and findings

  1. We are only able to consider issues which have first been raised with the landlord and addressed through its complaints process. Therefore, our investigations broadly consider events up to the landlord’s final complaint response. As the complaints process was exhausted in August 2023, concerns about the installation of a new entry system or its removal fall outside our investigation.
  2. The resident has requested a refund of charges for services not provided. We asked the parties for information about the specific nature of these charges. The landlord did not respond, but the resident was able to provide a copy of a notice of change of rent and other charges letter. Based on this, it appears the charges are part of a service charge. We cannot assess the level or reasonableness of a service charge and/or whether a refund is due; this would be for the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) to consider. Our investigation has, instead, assessed the reasonableness of the landlord’s response to the queries he raised.
  3. In assessing complaints, we consider if there was a direct, material, and/or significant impact on the resident. The issues he reported affecting other residents (where he was not directly or materially affected himself) are not considered in this report. These matters may be better referred to the FTT as it can consider them from a service charge perspective. The affected residents might also make their own complaint to the landlord, and once it has issued its final response, and if they remain unhappy, they may refer the matter to us.
  4. The landlord’s repair policy says it is responsible for entry call systems and entry call communal doors. The policy sets out response times for repairs to a security door entry system of 4 hours (where it has failed in locked mode) and 24 hours (for other faults). These are categorised as emergency repairs. Its response timeframe for non-urgent repairs is 10 to 60 working days.
  5. A fault with the entry system was reported on 2 November 2022 by another resident. The issue was resolved and confirmed with the resident concerned. The second report was logged on 12 December 2022. The attendance report noted it as an issue with the trades function, with the resolution confirmed with 2 other residents. A third report was logged on 21 April 2023 by the same resident of the first report. Again, this was resolved and confirmed with the reporting resident. There is no evidence to show if the resident’s property was affected by these issues or if he had reported them to the landlord at the time.
  6. The first report logged by the resident (also reported by another resident) was on 6 June 2023. This was noted as an issue with the entry panel calling flats and the door release function on handsets. This was resolved on 7 June 2023, with the resolution confirmed with the other reporting resident. The operative noted they could not reach the resident at the property or by phone. The response time for this report was 24 hours under the repair policy and the job was attended within this timeframe.
  7. The resident told the landlord in later correspondence that he does not answer the door to cold callers and an appointment must always be made for attendance. He said there was a note on the door entry panel advising callers of this. However, we have not seen evidence that the landlord was informed of this previously. Further, the landlord’s repairs policy does not specify if emergency attendance is made by appointment. In our experience emergency attendance is not ordinarily by appointment. An appointment may be made following attendance for follow up work. However, we do not expect the landlord to have booked an appointment with the resident for the initial emergency attendance for this report.
  8. During an email exchange with the landlord on 14 June 2023, the resident reported that his current issue was not with the door release but his handset. He was experiencing sound quality issues and was unable to hear callers on the intercom due to crackling. The landlord told him it was possible he needed a new handset, logged a repair the same day, and said its contractor would email him to make an appointment (it had asked for a phone number, but the resident said he does not own a phone).
  9. The landlord’s contractor emailed the resident the same day, 14 June 2023, to arrange an appointment. A further email was sent on 23 June 2023. The resident contacted the landlord to say he had not heard from the contractor about an appointment. The landlord explained that its contractor had emailed him to arrange a suitable appointment but had not received a response. The resident said he had not received either email and there was nothing in his spam folder.
  10. We have seen copies of these emails showing they were sent to the same address the resident was using at the time to correspond with the landlord. It is not clear why they were not received but we are satisfied the landlord made reasonable attempts, in line with his request to arrange an appointment. Once the issue with the emails was flagged, an appointment was arranged for the next available date suitable for him. This appointment was rearranged at the resident’s request, and the handset was replaced on the rescheduled date of 10 July 2023. The landlord’s response to these repairs was within its target timeframes.
  11. The resident expressed concerns that reports made by other residents were not logged because, like him, they had called the wrong department. He said these could have been evidenced by call recordings if the landlord had this system. The landlord explained to him that, while all of its teams did not record calls, when a call was made to the wrong department, they either transferred to the right one or contacted them on the resident’s behalf. It said a repair report would still be raised in such a situation. It pointed out this is what happened when the resident called the wrong department. It said that, if other residents had made the same error, it was confident they too would have received the same service.
  12. The landlord offered to investigate further if the resident could provide additional information about dates of reports he said were made but not logged. We find this to be a reasonable response to the concerns raised. The landlord responded to the repair reports from the resident within its policy timeframes. We have, therefore, found no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s requests for repairs.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme there was no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s requests for repairs to the front door entry system.