London & Quadrant Housing Trust (202403694)

Decision
Case ID	202403694
Decision type	Investigation
Landlord	London & Quadrant Housing Trust
Landlord type	Housing Association
Occupancy	Assured Tenancy
Date	19 June 2026

 

Background

1. The resident reported a loss of hot water in December 2023. He then reported a further loss of both heating and hot water in February 2024. According to the resident, the landlord restored his service in September 2024. He complained that month about the time taken to complete the repairs, and associated issues with his energy bill. He requested compensation for the time he spent without service.

What the complaint is about

2. The complaint is about the landlord’s:
   1. Handling of the resident’s reports of no heating and hot water.
   2. Complaint handling.

Our decision (determination)

3. We found:
   1. Maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of no heating and hot water.
   2. Maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

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

Summary of reasons

Heating and hot water

4. The landlord mistook the resident’s complaint for a separate matter, meaning it did not address the issue and it left him without a resolution.

Complaint handling

5. In addition to the landlord’s misunderstanding about the complaint itself, it did not follow its internal complaints procedure or our Complaint Handling Code (the Code).

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 dates set.

Order	What the landlord must do	Due date
1	Final complaint response order The landlord must investigate and respond to the resident’s complaint about his loss of heating and hot water between December 2023 and September 2024. It must issue a final complaint response and provide documentary evidence by the due date. The landlord’s response must: Comply fully with the Code. Address the resident’s complaint in full and explain the reasons for its findings. Consider appropriate remedies, including but not limited to compensation in additional to what it has already paid. Confirm this is a final response and set out the resident’s rights to approach the Ombudsman.	No later than 17 July 2026
2	Compensation order The landlord must pay compensation of £200 for its complaint handling failures. It must pay this directly to the resident and provide documentary evidence by the due date.	No later than 17 July 2026
3	Other order The landlord must review the case to establish: The reasons for the failures outlined in this report. Whether it needs to (or already has) considered its complaints training and quality checking processes. Any other steps it will take to prevent similar issues in future. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of this to us by the due date.	No later than 14 August 2026

 

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

Date	What happened
8 December 2023	The resident reported a loss of hot water in his flat. It is unclear when the landlord addressed this however he told us it restored the service in early January 2024.
February to September 2024	The resident reported a total loss of heating and hot water on 16 February. In his complaint of 6 September, the resident said it had only just completed repairs and he had been without service for 8 months. He requested compensation for this. The resident also said he had built up a large heating bill despite not being able to use the system, and he asked the landlord to cover the cost.
8 September 2024	A separate incident caused the whole block to be without hot water for 24 hours. The landlord accepted a group complaint about that issue and paid each household £50 in compensation. However, it did not respond to the resident’s own complaint.
20 to 27 February 2025	The resident made a second complaint repeating the issues he raised in his first. He did not complain about the above site outage. The landlord replied, however it did not issue a stage 1 response and it only referred to the site outage.
25 March 2025	The landlord issued a stage 2 response, which also referred solely to the site outage rather than the resident’s specific complaint.
Referral to the Ombudsman	The resident referred his complaint to us for investigation, as he said the landlord had not understood or addressed his complaint. He said he wanted the landlord to pay additional compensation and/or reset his heating bill to zero.

 

What we found and why

The circumstances of this complaint should be well known by the parties involved, so it is not necessary to detail everything that’s happened or comment on all the information we’ve reviewed. We’ve only included the key information that forms the basis of our decision of whether the landlord is responsible for maladministration.

Complaint	Heating and hot water
Finding	Maladministration

 

6. In the resident’s complaint of 6 September 2024, he stated that:
   1. He had been without hot water throughout December 2023.
   2. He was then entirely without both heating and hot water between February and September 2024.
   3. The landlord had paid compensation for the loss of service up to June 2024, however he requested further compensation for the period of June to September.
   4. He had incurred an unusually large heating bill which he believed was due to either a faulty system or contractor error, and he asked the landlord to pay this.
7. The landlord provided evidence that it paid a total of £760 in compensation on 10 and 11 June 2024. However, it has only provided minimal evidence of other events between December 2023 and September 2024, so it has not been possible to conclude what happened or assess the adequacy of its actions.
8. The landlord did not respond to the resident and he complained about the matters again on 20 February 2025. Both parties exchanged emails over the following week. The landlord did not address the resident’s complaint points, and instead repeatedly referred to the site outage which had affected all the flats in September 2024. The resident did not include that event in either of his complaints and the evidence shows he replied to the landlord at least 6 times between 25 and 27 February to clarify this.
9. However, the landlord continued to refer to the wrong issue, including in its stage 2 response of 25 March 2024. It said it had already paid the resident £50 for the site outage and, although it briefly acknowledged the earlier period he was complaining about, this was only to say that if he had not been compensated for that period, it must have been because investigations had found no failings. Given there had been no investigation of his complaint about that earlier period, this response was unreasonable.
10. This was a significant failure by the landlord. It did not recognise what the resident’s complaint was about, despite his repeated attempts to explain this. It therefore left him without a resolution, and this also means it has not been possible to determine the reasonableness of its handling of the repair. The landlord has been ordered to investigate the resident’s complaint and provide him with a final response. If the resident remains unhappy with that response, he can ask us to open a new investigation.

Complaint	Complaint handling
Finding	Maladministration

 

11. The landlord’s complaints policy aligns with the Code. It will acknowledge complaints and escalation requests within 5 working days. It will then respond within a further 10 working days at stage 1, and 20 working days at stage 2. It will not escalate a complaint until it has provided a stage 1 response.
12. The landlord did not respond to the resident’s initial complaint of 6 September 2024 or acknowledge this in its later correspondence. However, there is no evidence that the resident contacted it about this again until his second complaint of 20 February 2025, which mitigates the landlord’s failing.
13. The landlord then replied promptly to the resident. According to its stage 2 response, it considered that correspondence with him on 27 February 2025 was a response at stage 1, however this was not the case as this did not describe itself as a stage 1 response or set out any of the other information required by the Code. The landlord therefore misapplied its policy and the Code by providing a stage 2 response before it had replied under stage 1.
14. The Code also states that landlords must set out their understanding of the complaint, clarify this with residents where needed, and ensure that they address all the points raised. The landlord failed to do so in this case, despite the resident actively and repeatedly explaining that it had misunderstood his complaint. This caused him unnecessary frustration and directly led to it not addressing the substantive issue.
15. The landlord’s combined complaint handling failures had a significant impact on the resident, and it has been ordered to pay compensation of £200. This in the upper scales of our compensation guidance for complaint handling failures and represents their scale and nature. It has also been ordered to review the reasons for these failures and consider what it can do to prevent them from reoccurring.

Learning

Knowledge information management (record keeping)

16. The evidence the landlord provided did not give any clear detail about what happened and when. Its failure to recognise the nature of the resident’s complaint also indicates that its records were not clear and robust. The landlord would benefit from keeping comprehensive repair logs and considering how to make sure this information is easy to spot. This may allow it to quickly identify issues and avoid any misunderstanding.

Communication

17. The landlord may also wish to look at how it reviews communication from its residents, to ensure it has the appropriate time and resource to consider relevant information. This includes recognising the need to seek clarity when needed, particularly if a resident is stating that it has not understood the situation fully. This could help it to resolve future issues satisfactorily, avoiding the need for a resident to make or escalate a complaint.