Newlon Housing Trust (202303556)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202303556

Newlon Housing Trust

12 March 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:
   1. Concerns about the safety and security of the communal bin stores.
   2. Associated complaint.

Background

2. The resident is a leaseholder of a 2-bedroom sixth floor flat, owned by the landlord.
3. The resident and other occupants of the building made multiple reports to the landlord in 2022. They reported homeless people using drugs and sleeping in the bin store.
4. The resident complained to the landlord on 10 April 2023. She was concerned about the safety of the bin stores due to a fire and said the issue with the bin store was ongoing. She said there was a “domino effect” of uncompleted repairs and lack of inspection leading to fire safety worries and antisocial behaviour. She suggested it meet with residents to discuss the issues.
5. The landlord sent its stage 1 response on 15 May 2023. It apologised for not responding to her email. It had arranged a meeting for the following day to discuss a long term solution. It suggested setting up a residents association to appoint a lead person. It offered a £25 shopping voucher for its communication failings.
6. The resident asked the landlord to escalate her complaint on 29 May 2023. She said she was not satisfied with its response or compensation offer. She had emailed her concerns about the fire risk and, due to a fire, the lift had been out of service. She believed that it should compensate all residents of the building.
7. The landlord sent its stage 2 response on 4 July 2023. It repeated its stage 1 response about its communication failings. It acknowledged it had failed to follow its out of hours procedure resulting in the lift being out of service for longer than necessary. It had completed a repair to the bin store doors in June 2023 to mitigate vandalism. It increased its compensation offer to £75 for its communication failings.
8. The resident was unhappy with the landlord’s response and brought her complaint to us. She told us that it had resolved the issue with the bin store doors. It replaced them in April 2024 with doors which opened outwards. But it had failed to understand the effects the fire and security concerns had on all residents. She wanted it to follow its processes and communicate more effectively.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

9. The resident and her neighbours reported their concerns to the landlord through group emails throughout 2022 and 2023. It responded to the resident’s complaint as an individual complaint rather than a group complaint. Our investigation has, therefore considered the resident’s complaint. This report may refer to communications from other residents for context purposes only.

 Concern about the safety and security of the communal bin stores

10. The landlord’s repair policy says it will attend to communal repairs within 24 hours for emergencies. It will attend urgent repairs within 7 days, and 20 days for non-emergency repairs such as broken bin room doors.
11. The evidence shows that the resident and other occupants of the building were reporting their concerns about the bin store from July 2022. Many of the emails referred to the problem having been ongoing for years. The concerns related to individuals forcing entry to the bin stores, where they slept and used drugs. This caused residents to feel unsafe when disposing of their refuse.
12. In August 2022, the resident wrote to the landlord stating she had reported incidents to the police. The police had referred her back to the landlord to provide preventive measures. She said there was a lack of concern and action from it and many residents had asked for help to resolve the problem. She approached an individual with a syringe in his hand and asked him to leave the bin store, but he closed the door on her. She had witnessed several people entering the bin room but had not confronted them. The situation was causing her to leave her rubbish in her flat. She had flagged numerous times that the doors did not close properly and was told someone would make contact to find a solution. There had been several months with no action. She made suggestions of adding handles to the doors and installing blue lights to prevent drug use.
13. The landlord wrote to all residents on 28 August 2022, stating it would install steel door handles on 2 September 2022. It received a response from a resident stating that while adding handles would help to close the doors, it would not prevent the doors being “kicked in”. It needed to do more preventive work.
14. Throughout September 2022 the resident and occupants continued to report their concerns. She said that a meeting was required to discuss a solution. Its repeated repairs were not adequate or an effective use of the service charge. There was no evidence to show that a meeting was held at this point.
15. The landlord’s records of 20 October 2022 referred to residents being “fed up” with the doors being tampered with. The “mag locks” were being removed by drug users so they could gain access more easily the next time. It wrote to residents the same day outlining the actions it was taking. This included jet washing the bin stores and installing an industrial air freshener, installing blue lights, and requesting the mag locks to be made more permanent. It fitted the blue lights in December 2022 but they were removed by an unknown person.
16. The landlord received further reports in December 2022 and January 2023 that the bin store doors were not closing. Residents asked for a long term solution due to the systematic vandalism, and constant repairs at service charge expense. The destruction of the doors had prevented the waste from being collected and caused bins to overflow.
17. In the resident’s email on 5 April 2023, she again reported that the bin store doors would not close. She asked the landlord to fix the door properly. She said she had to get a homeless person to leave but he had returned and was waiting on the bench to regain access. She considered it to be a health and safety issue as there had previously been a fire.
18. In her complaint the resident reported that a fire had occurred on 6 April 2023. This activated the fire panel and caused the lift to be out of service. The landlord had not resolved this as an emergency and the fire panel and lift had been out of service for 5 days. She asked whether residents of another block had access to the bin store, if CCTV had been checked for those causing ASB, and for it to repair the doors.
19. The landlord’s records on 11 April 2023 referred to a fire investigation report. While we have not had sight of the report, it said the report gave a good explanation and summary of the incident which revolved around the lack of continuous security for the refuse store. There was no evidence provided to suggest that a fire risk assessment was done.
20. The same day the landlord raised an order to attend and install “3 EMX resettable buttons” to the bin and recycling stores. It asked for this to be prioritised to assist with unauthorised access. It referred to chasing the local authority to ensure the bin store doors were closed properly after waste collection. Its cleaner had arrived to find drug paraphernalia and human faeces and had to clean up.
21. On 19 April 2023 the landlord made a referral to a homeless agency about the rough sleepers to seek assistance. It provided an update to the resident about installing re-settable buttons to help prevent access without a fob. It confirmed that another building did not have access and it was sourcing a more robust air freshener due to the removal of the previous one. It was considering a suggestion of underground bins but needed to ascertain land ownership and had requested land registry documents. But it did not believe there would be room to install this.
22. The landlord’s records show that its operatives completed work to the bin store doors in April 2023 but it was struggling to get “good fixings”. In May 2023 its records referred to completing repairs but as soon as it repaired the doors they were vandalised. The bin stores had cameras and it needed to raise this with its estates team to identify the “culprits”.
23. The landlord’s records of 4 May 2023 referred to getting a quote to replace the doors for ones which opened outwards. After speaking with representatives from the local authority it was told it could not have doors which opened outwards. It caused a safety risk and could hit someone walking past. Its contractor asked whether it would be allowed if it installed a barrier to prevent any collision. There was no evidence to suggest that this was pursued further.
24. In its stage 1 response the landlord said it understood that the matter was concerning for the resident and her neighbours and they wanted to see progress made and the matters resolved permanently. It arranged a meeting for the following day at 7pm at the community centre. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the issues with the bin store and find a long term solution.
25. The landlord’s response did not provide any explanation of the actions it had taken, orits consideration of solutions. It would have been helpful to have explained the difficulties it was having in resolving the matter. This would have demonstrated a commitment to resolving the issues. Its response failed to address all of the points raised by the resident such as her fire and security concerns. Its response focussed on its communication failings rather than the substantive matter.
26. The landlord’s records of 16 May 2023 referred to reviewing CCTV of the bin stores. It asked who was dealing with the ASB as people were sleeping in the bin store and the doors were badly damaged. There were sleeping bags and the water tap was not locked and was being used for drinking/washing. It referred to needing to get someone to site as the doors and locks were a “mess”.
27. In the resident’s escalation of her complaint, she repeated her concerns about the fire and lift being out of service. She said that all households had been negatively affected by the lack of follow up.
28. In its stage 2 response the landlord said that the resident had suggested that it refund 1 month service charge. It said that any reimbursement would be applied at the end of the financial year. It had asked its building services team to review the repairs orders and lift being out of service and where applicable request any reimbursement. Its building services manager identified a failing with its out of hours response to the fire. This resulted in the lift being out of service longer than necessary and it would review its handling of the matter. It completed a repair to the bin store on 19 June 2023 with a number of measures to prevent vandalism.
29. The landlord’s response was reasonable in relation to the refund of service charges. It is not known whether any refund was eventually made. It was reasonable to acknowledge its failing in dealing with the fire and lift and that it would complete a review. While it had completed further work to the bin store in June, it did not specify what repairs were made or provide any assurance that this would resolve the matter.
30. The resident responded on 14 July 2023 stating that she did not believe this was an adequate solution or response. There had been a chain of failures and it should compensate all residents. The insecure doors led to a fire which led to the lift being out of service. There was communication failings between the landlord and its out of hours service. It had failed to resolve the main issue of her complaint and she had again had to call the police that day due to drug users in the bin room.
31. Following the landlord’s final response, the resident and her neighbours continued to make reports throughout July and August 2023. The evidence shows that the bin store was locked in October 2023 and the safer neighbour team were doing patrols. Reports continued in November 2023 with the doors again being forced to gain entry.
32. In the landlord’s explanation it said that the bin store doors were repeatedly forced by homeless people and drug users. It placed signage by the doors reminding residents to ensure the doors were closed and added a self closing mechanism. It set up a residents group to consult and discuss the matter. Its installation of blue lights did not prove to be successful. It reached out to a homeless agency to see if they could assist and offer suitable accommodation solutions. It replaced the doors on 15 April 2024 with a purpose-built reinforced door and had not received any reports since.
33. The evidence shows that the landlord took a number of measures in trying to resolve the issues with the bin store doors as set out above. However, its approach was reactive rather than proactive. It repeated the same repairs which had proven unsuccessful over a period of 21 months. We appreciate that it met barriers in changing the doors initially. But it could have considered alternative solutions at an earlier stage, such as its final solution of a purpose built reinforced door. The landlord failed to demonstrate that it gave due regard to the resident’s security and safety concerns.
34. For the above reasons we find that the landlord did not provide a resolution to the matter within a reasonable timescale and have made a finding of service failure.

Associated complaint

35. The landlord operates a 2-stage complaints process. It acknowledges complaints within 5 working days and responds to stage 1 and 2 complaints within 10 and 20 working days respectively. It states that staff should be clear about the difference between when a resident is making a service request and when they are making a complaint. A complaint should be raised when the resident expresses dissatisfaction with the response to the service request. This is compliant with our Complaint Handling Code.
36. When there are failings in a landlords complaint handling, as is the case here, we will consider whether the redress offered by the landlord (apology and compensation) put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this, we take into account whether its offer of redress was in line with our dispute resolution principles, be fair, put things right, and learn from outcomes.
37. The resident sent her email to multiple departments on 10 April 2023, including the landlord’s service resolution team. We appreciate that having sent her email to multiple departments, it may have caused confusion as to which department would respond. Subsequently she received no response. Given that she copied in its service resolution team, it would have been reasonable to have assumed that this was an expression of dissatisfaction for it to raise a complaint. It could also have communicated with the other departments to ensure that it was clear which team would be responding.
38. After receiving no response from the landlord, the resident contacted us. We wrote to the landlord on 27 April 2023 and requested a response by 5 May 2023. We chased it on 9 May 2023 as she had received no response.
39. The landlord responded on 15 May 2023. In its stage 1 response it defined the resident’s complaint solely about not receiving a response and that it failed to respond in a timely manner. It would have been appropriate to have set out her complaint to include her concerns about the bin store given this was her reason for raising her complaint.
40. The landlord said it failed to respond to her email of 10 April 2023 due to receiving several queries from other residents. It apologised and offered a £25 shopping voucher for the inconvenience. Its was appropriate to apologise for its lack of response and offer some redress.
41. The landlord’s stage 2 response again defined the complaint as its failure to respond to her email in a timely manner. It was clear from her escalation request that she remained dissatisfied with its handling of the bin store repairs and should have defined the complaint as such.
42. The landlord apologised that it did not raise a complaint when she copied in its service resolution team. It said that the matter was for its estates team to respond to her concerns and her email did not contain an explicit request to raise a complaint. It increased its compensation offer to £75 which comprised £25 offered at stage 1, £25 for its delayed stage 2 response, and £25 as a gesture of good will.
43. The landlord’s comment, that her email had not contained an explicit request to raise a complaint, was not reasonable or in line with its complaint policy. While it did not demonstrate any learning from the complaint, its apology and increased compensation offer was reasonable and in line with our remedies guidance. We find that the landlord has made an offer of redress which satisfactorily resolves its complaint handling failures. We have made a recommendation for it to ensure its staff are able to recognise an expression of dissatisfaction and raise complaints accordingly.

Determination

44. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns about the safety and security of the communal bin stores.
45. In accordance with paragraph 53.b. of the Scheme the landlord offered reasonable redress prior to investigation which, in our opinion, satisfactorily resolves the landlord’s handling of the resident’s associated complaint.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

46. Within 4 weeks of this report, the landlord is ordered to take the following action and provide evidence of its compliance as follows:
    1. Pay to the resident the sum of £200 for time and trouble, distress and inconvenience for its failure to resolve the bin store doors over a prolonged period of time.
    2. Send a written apology to the resident for the failings identified in this report.

Recommendations

47. The landlord should pay to the resident £75 offered in its stage 2 response if not already paid.
48. The landlord should ensure that its complaint handling staff are trained effectively to recognise expressions of dissatisfaction and when to raise a complaint.