London & Quadrant Housing Trust (202400282)

Background

1. The resident lives in a flat on the fourth floor of a block. From 11 January 2023, she reported recurring faults with the communal entrance door and door entry system. She said the faults meant the main entrance door was difficult to physically open and she was unable to release it using the door entry handset in her flat – meaning she had to come down from the fourth floor to give access to visitors. The resident made a complaint to the landlord on 28 March 2023, as these issues remained unresolved.

What the complaint is about

2. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of repairs to the communal entrance door and door entry system.

Our decision (determination)

3. We found service failure in the landlord’s handling of repairs to the communal entrance door and door entry system.

We have made orders for the landlord to put things right.

Reasons

4. The landlord acts as the management company for the freeholder of the block. Under the terms of the resident’s lease, the management company is responsible for the provision of all ‘essential services’ to the block. This includes “maintaining, repairing and renewing all access systems and controls to the block”. The landlord’s repairs policy says it aims to complete routine day to day repairs in an average of 25 calendar days.
5. In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord said it received a call out in December 2023 about faults with the main communal entrance door and door entry system. However, in an email of 12 January 2024 the resident claimed the issue had first been reported by a neighbour in November 2023. The landlord’s repair logs support this. They show a repair raised on 23 November 2023 as “Intercom is broken the system does not allow residents to buzz visitors in”.
6.  The landlord said that, after ordering parts, it’s contractor returned and fitted these on 17 January 2024. It said this restored the door to full working order. Based on the evidence available, it took the landlord 55 days to resolve the issue with the door entry system. This exceeded significantly exceeded its policy’s routine repairs timescale. Although, there is some mitigation in that this appears to have been primarily due to “slow delivery times and delays for parts” as the landlord stated in its stage 1 complaint response.
7. In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord said the problem reoccurred on 1 March 2024. However, the resident emailed the landlord prior to this, on 14 February 2024 reporting that “the front door is getting stuck again”. The landlord’s repair logs also show a repair raised to its contractor on this date and marked as having been completed on 15 February 2024. However, the resident emailed the landlord on 20 February 2024 chasing up the repair, indicating that its contractor had not resolved the issue.
8. The landlord’s stage 1 complaint response referred to its contractor having attended “to resolve the fault and left the system working” on 1 March 2024. It said that following this, the fault continued intermittently and its contractor returned to complete further works on 21 March 2024. We have not seen evidence of these visits but note that the repair logs provided by the landlord contain only the completion date of repair orders and no breakdown of individual visits.
9. Regardless of this, it is evident that issues with the door entry system were still ongoing on 3 April 2024, when the landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response. In this, the landlord advised that its contractor would be attending again on 25 April 2024. We have not seen evidence of any further repairs for the door entry system being raised after this date, and the resident told us in July 2024 that the issues had now been resolved.
10. This represented a period of approximately 5 months where the resident experienced, at best, intermittent issues with the communal entrance door and door entry system. The resident told the landlord that she was having to push the door with such force to open it that it hurt her shoulder. She also informed it that she was “pregnant and fatigued” which added to this difficulty – and increased the impact of her having to travel to the ground floor to give access to visitors.
11. In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord offered the resident £180 compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused to her. The resident rejected this amount stating that she was aware of other residents who had been offered a higher amount in relation to the same issues. Our investigations consider what is reasonable in the circumstances of the individual complaint. Offers made to other residents would not factor into our decision making as we are not aware of the full circumstances behind these.
12. The landlord’s compensation policy says that when making an offer of compensation it will consider:
    1. “The individual household circumstances…where this has caused greater impact.”
    2. “The duration of any avoidable distress and inconvenience.”
    3. “How we have communicated with the customer.”

While the landlord’s stage 1 complaint response mentioned the amount of time taken to resolve the issues, it failed to acknowledge the additional impact caused to the resident due to her pregnancy, or its poor communication about the ongoing repairs.

13. Taking all of this into account, the landlord did take steps to investigate and complete repairs. However, the first repair exceeded its policy timescale, and the landlord did not show it achieved a consistent, reliable repair outcomes within a reasonable period after the fault reoccurred. This was not in line with the service standards in its repairs policy. Given the delays in carrying out repairs, the length of time the disruption continued, and the impact described by the resident, we do not consider the landlords offer fully reflected the distress and inconvenience caused. Due to this we make a finding of service failure.

Putting things right

Where we find service failure, maladministration or severe maladministration we can make orders for the landlord to put things right. We have the discretion to make recommendations in all other cases within our jurisdiction.

Orders

Landlords must comply with our orders in the manner and timescales we specify. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of compliance with our orders by the due date set.

Recommendations

Our recommendations are not binding, and a landlord may decide not to follow them.