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Manchester City Council (202420395)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202420395

Manchester City Council

29 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 repairs to the communal boiler.

Background

  1. The resident has been a secure tenant of the landlord since 2000. She lives in a 1-bedroom flat, in a high-rise block. There are 3 boilers which supply the block with heating and hot water. Each flat has an individual unit which stores heating and hot water from the communal system.
  2. The resident raised a formal complaint to the landlord on 12 June 2024. She said she had been living without heating and hot water for weeks. The landlord told her that it would put a temporary fix in place until the necessary parts arrived. She stated it told her this 4-weeks prior.
  3. The landlord sent its stage 1 response on 21 June 2024. It had spoken with the resident that day and confirmed the boiler had been working since it fitted the parts on 14 June. The landlord apologised for the delays and offered her £250 in compensation. It said it would learn from the miscommunication and mistakes it made.
  4. The resident asked to escalate her complaint on 2 August 2024. She said she had contacted the landlord for years about this, each time it sent a domestic engineer to her flat. Then it realised it needed a commercial engineer, and the resident must wait longer. She also had not received the compensation.
  5. The landlord sent its final response letter on 21 August 2024, by which time the resident had received the compensation. It explained it had raised duplicate jobs for the same boiler issue through different addresses. This caused confusion for the contractors. The landlord recognised it had not followed up to fully complete the repair. It fed back the service failings it found. As an update to the case, the landlord replaced the communal boilers in February 2025.
  6. The resident brought her complaint to us to investigate as she remains unhappy with the landlord’s handling. She would like additional compensation as a resolution.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

  1. The resident stated that she had been experiencing issues with the communal boiler and had advised the landlord of this for several years. We have seen the landlord’s historical repair logs that supports that earlier issues arose. It is our position, however, that any dissatisfaction with a landlord’s service (or lack of) should be raised within 12-months. In our view, this would be a reasonable time within which, the landlord may be able to fairly consider the complaint and draw on accurate and readily available records. In this case, the resident raised a complaint with the landlord in June 2024. As such, this investigation has focused on the events in the 12 months leading to the resident’s complaint, and the subsequent events up until the time of the landlord’s final response.

The landlord’s handling of repairs to the communal boiler.

  1. We expect landlords to keep robust records of contacts and repairs. The evidence has not been comprehensive in this case. It is vital that landlords keep clear, accurate, and easily accessible records to provide an audit trail. We have received the landlord’s repair logs. However, there is little information about follow on work or attendance/completion dates. We have been reliant on its formal complaint responses or references in emails for this. It appears the landlord may not have properly recorded this as it did not provide these to us for use in this investigation.
  2. During an investigation, the onus is on the landlord to provide documentary evidence showing how it acted in line with its repairs policy. Where we do not have this, we cannot conclude an action took place, unless there is further corroborating information.
  3. The landlord’s repairs records show the resident reported the faulty communal boiler on 3 September 2023. We have no further details about this repair, therefore we cannot evidence the landlord responded appropriately. We note the matter may have been resolved as the next report was in May 2024. However, we cannot identify if this was in line with its repair timescales.
  4. The resident next reported the communal boiler on 30 May, 1 June, 5 June, and the day she complained on 12 June 2024. The landlord’s repair logs tended to only state the date and ‘TF heating’ or ‘no heating or hot water.’ However, we have seen specific details about the resident’s call on 3 and 7 June 2024, when she said she had been without heating for weeks. She said the heating breaks shortly after the contractor leaves. This suggested that the landlord’s contractor did attend in response to the resident’s reports before 7 June, it did not successfully resolve these.
  5. The landlord’s repair policy states it aims to complete repairs to total loss of heating or hot water in 1-3 working days.
  6. In its stage 1 response the landlord identified delays and said it fitted new boiler parts on 14 June 2024. This was supported by its records. It was reasonable that it accepted it did not satisfactorily resolve the boiler issues from 30 May – 14 June 2024. The landlord awarded £250 for the delays which was a reasonable response. We note the landlord acknowledged it did not act in line with its repairs policy.
  7. The landlord’s records show the resident reported no heating or hot water again on 31 July 2024. The landlord has provided no records to show how it resolved this. We can see however, from its final response letter dated 15 August 2024 that it confirmed the matter remained unresolved. It confirmed it fitted a part, but another one was also required.
  8. From the landlord’s records, on the same day it issued its final response the resident called “very upset” as she had had no heating or hot water for over a week. The landlord asked for help internally as it had been receiving a lot of calls from the block. On 19 August 2024, the resident called the landlord saying that since her last email the boiler had broken down at least 4 times. She felt like she was having a nervous breakdown and thought the landlord would like her to commit suicide, so she would shut up. On 22 August 2024, the resident said the boiler had broken as soon as the landlord left. The landlord scheduled to fit a part on 28 August 2024. The landlord replaced the boilers in February 2025.
  9. It is reasonable to accept the heating and hot water were, at best, intermittent from 31 July 2024 – 28 August 2024. The landlord recognised the resident had experienced further issues with the communal boiler at the point of the final response letter, however it did not take any further steps to put things right and acknowledge the resident’s experience.
  10. We recognise social landlords have limited resources. To manage these and to be fair to all tenants it is reasonable for the landlord to repair rather than replace items outside of a planned schedule unless beyond economic repair. In these circumstances where repairs fall below agreed timescales, it would be appropriate for the landlord to recognise the impact of this disrupted service.
  11. The landlord identified failings and upheld both its stage 1 and final response letter. The resident’s experiences were similar in both. In its stage 1 it awarded £250 and said it would learn from its miscommunication and mistakes. In the final response it apologised, identified the duplicate orders, and its lack of follow up to complete a full repair.
  12. In some circumstances, an apology is enough. However in this case, it would have been reasonable to recognise the further disruption and inconvenience caused to the resident by providing compensation for this. Especially when the landlord had previously said it would learn from its mistakes. As such, we will make an order of equal compensation to that made by the landlord in its stage 1 response.
  13. The resident told us the landlord repeatedly said it was not the communal boiler but the individual unit in her flat. We have not seen evidence of this, aside in the resident’s escalation request she identified the contractor kept turning up at her flat to complete the repair, rather than the communal areas. We have seen this was the third time the resident raised this issue with the landlord during this investigation period. In the final response letter, the landlord identified it raised duplicate jobs with different addresses. The fact the landlord identified this as being an issue was positive, however it is regrettable the resident had raised this with it twice before.
  14. In accordance with the Scheme we find there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of repairs to the communal boiler. We have seen the landlord did not act in line with its repairs policy. The lack of evidence impacted our ability to establish whether the landlord did any more to resolve the issue for the resident.
  15. The landlord awarded £250 in compensation for the stage 1 failings. As it made similar failings at the final response stage, we have awarded the same level of compensation again. This is in line with its compensation policy which states where there are repeated attempts to resolve an issue over weeks or months it will award in the region £100-£600. Therefore, inclusive of the previous compensation, we have awarded the landlord to pay the resident £500. We have also made a recommendation the landlord shares learning from this report.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of repairs to the communal boiler.

Orders and recommendation

Order

  1. The landlord is to pay the resident compensation totalling £500. This is inclusive of the previous award of £250.
  2. The landlord is to confirm compliance with this order to the Ombudsman within 4 weeks of the date of this report.

Recommendation

  1. We recommend the landlord shares learning from this report and to consider how it can integrate the findings within it to improve its record keeping approach.