Notting Hill Genesis (202014951)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202014951

Notting Hill Genesis

10 December 2021


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. This complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint that it delayed in completing repairs to her wet room.

Background and summary of events

Background

  1. The resident is an assured shorthold tenant whose tenancy began on 19 October 2011. The tenancy agreement describes the property as a one-bedroom flat. The property is on the upper ground floor and is based within a mid-terraced converted building.
  2. The landlord has confirmed that it is aware that the resident is disabled and can only walk a few steps unaided. The property has been adapted to meet the needs of the resident with a wet room adaptation.
  3. The tenancy agreement obliges the landlord to ‘keep in good repair and proper working order’ any installations provided for water heating and sanitation.
  4. The landlord has a responsive repairs policy that shows:
    1. it classes an emergency repair as being where there is an immediate danger to a person’s safety or ‘a resident is vulnerable and carrying out the works will ensure they are able to remain safely in their home due to their vulnerability’
    2. examples of emergency repairs include a leak between floors or properties or an electrical fault that could endanger life
    3. it aims to attend to emergency repairs within four hours and have all major services restored within 24 hours.
  5. The landlord has a complaints policy that sets out a two-stage procedure with responses required within 10 working days (at stage one) and 20 working days (at stage two).
  6. The landlord has a compensation policy that allows it to ‘consider financial compensation where we have failed to follow our published policies or there have been unreasonable delays against our service standards’. It sets out that it will award £30 for a missed appointment, 30% of daily rent for loss of use of a bathroom and up to £250 for distress and inconvenience. It adds that it will confirm with a resident how they wish to receive payment.
  7. Prior, and separate, to the events related to this complaint, the resident made a legal disrepair claim against the landlord that led to a Tomlin Order of 28 January 2020. A schedule of works, including bathroom repairs, and compensation of £4,000 was part of the order. The resident’s solicitor wrote to the landlord’s solicitor on 17 April 2020 to provide her bank details and wrote further on 7 May 2020 with a copy of her bank statement which the landlord said it needed to release the compensation payment.

Summary of Events

  1. This complaint relates to a leak into the resident’s bathroom that she initially reported to the landlord on 24 October 2020.
  2. The resident wrote to the landlord on 26 October 2020 to raise concerns that:
    1. she had spoken to the contact centre out of hours team on 24 October 2020 due to a leak coming through her wet room ceiling light but they told her they would try to speak to her neighbour and she had heard nothing further
    2. the light in her wet room had been switched off since 24 October 2020
    3. she had spoken to the out of hours team again on 25 October 2020 but they advised they had no notes of the previous call and reiterated contact would be attempted with the neighbours before a plumber being sent
    4. she needed the landlord to attend to resolve the leak now her neighbour had been in contact
    5. her carer had been unable to carry out their duties that day because it was too dark in the wet room so unsafe to use the shower.
  3. The landlord issued a stage one complaint response to the resident on 26 November 2020. It concluded that:
    1. the resident had made a report of a leak into her property from the flat above on 24 October 2020 (she had mentioned that she was disabled) and the out of hours adviser had told her he would try to get in contact with the neighbour
    2. the resident chased this up on 25 October 2020 as she said the leak was ongoing but the adviser again told her that the landlord needed to contact the neighbour
    3. contact was made with the neighbour but a plumber failed to turn up to an appointment made with them
    4. advisers told the resident that unless the leak was uncontainable, a plumber would not be sent out as an emergency job
    5. a further plumber appointment was made for 27 October 2020 but this appointment was also missed
    6. a plumber did eventually attend on 29 October 2020 and resolved the leak
    7. an electrician visited the resident’s property on 30 October 2020 to reinstate electrics and left the wet room in ‘good working order’
    8. there had been repeated service failure and out of hours advisers should have realised the resident’s vulnerabilities
    9. although there were alerts on the resident’s file about her disability, these were not accessible to the out of hours contact centre so this had been rectified and managers alerted to the case
    10. an apology and compensation of £299.62 was offered.
  4. This Service has not been provided with a copy of the resident’s escalated complaint but the landlord issued its final complaint response on 18 January 2021. It concluded that:
    1. the resident was without use of her wet room between 24 October 2020 and 30 October 2020, during which time there were six missed appointments and poor communications
    2. it awarded £514.60 compensation, including £180 for the missed appointments and £39.60 (which represented 30% of the rent liability for seven days)
    3. it apologised and said it would work with its contractors and out of hours staff to improve its service and ensure that the resident’s records were updated to reflect her vulnerability so staff were aware of this in future
    4. it asked the resident to confirm in writing her acceptance of the compensation award.
  5. The resident wrote to the landlord on 21 January 2021. She advised that she accepted the compensation proposal and asked when it would be paid.
  6. The resident wrote to the landlord on 29 January 2021 to chase the non-payment of compensation. The landlord replied the same day to ask how the resident wished payment to be made.
  7. The resident wrote to the landlord on 1 February 2021 and attached her bank details.
  8. The resident advised this Service during March-April 2021 that the landlord had failed to pay the compensation, that this had caused financial difficulties as she was relying on it to pay for the replacement of an orthopaedic bed and that this was not the first time the landlord had delayed in processing compensation.
  9. The landlord advised this Service in December 2021 that the payment had been rejected because it did not hold bank details or a bank statement from her.
  10. Following contact from this Service, the landlord wrote to the resident on 2 December 2021 to acknowledge receipt of details from her, apologise for any distress caused and confirm that it had processed the £541.60 payment and awarded an additional £50 in recognition of the delay in making the payment.

Assessment and findings

  1. The Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles are:
  • Be fair
  • Put things right
  • Learn from outcomes

This Service will apply these principles when considering whether any redress is appropriate and proportionate for any maladministration or service failure identified.

  1. The resident and landlord agree that the resident was without use of her wet room for a week in late October 2020, due to delays in remedying a leak from the property above. The landlord has acknowledged that there were a variety of faults in its actions such as missed appointments by its contractors, failures in communication with the resident and poor record-keeping that led to its staff not taking the resident’s vulnerabilities into account.
  2. Through the complaints process, the landlord apologised, set out measures to avoid failures in future (by working with its contractors, correcting its records and speaking to its out of hours staff) and awarded £514.60 compensation. These actions were in accordance with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles to put things right and learn from outcomes and would have represented reasonable redress for the failings in the landlord’s handling of the leak into the resident’s property.
  3. The resident accepted the complaint process outcome in January 2021, including the compensation award, and provided the landlord with the information on 1 February 2021 to enable it to make payment. However, the landlord failed to process the payment – it has since advised that this was because it did not hold bank details or a bank statement from her. However, the resident had already provided a copy of a bank statement in May 2020 during discussion about a legal disrepair payment and forwarded this again in February 2021 in reply to the landlord’s final complaint response. Given the landlord held the information it needed to process the payment, its failure to do so was unreasonable.
  4. This Service would expect a landlord to have procedures in place to allow it to follow up on compensation payments that it has proposed but not paid, particularly where this has been awarded in recognition of distress already caused to a resident by a failure to deliver service. There is no evidence that the landlord followed up on this issue with the resident from February 2021 to December 2021 – this was unreasonable.
  5. This failure on the part of the landlord meant that it lost the opportunity to put things right for the resident and there was a delay of 10 months in the payment being processed. The landlord has recently apologised and awarded additional compensation of £50 in recognition of this delay. However, it has not acknowledged that it overlooked the resident’s correspondence of May 2020 and February 2021 or explained how it intends to avoid this happening again and its additional compensation award of £50 was insufficient given the delay of almost a year.
  6. The resident has advised that this was not the first time she had encountered difficulty in obtaining compensation from the landlord. Correspondence seen by this Service relating to the disrepair claim demonstrates that there was indeed a similar delay during January-May 2020 in releasing a payment – this indicates that the landlord’s compensation award process is flawed.
  7. In summary, the landlord failed to process a compensation payment that it had awarded for its delays in completing wet room repairs at the resident’s property. Although it has now made the payment, its apology and additional £50 compensation award did not represent reasonable redress given the circumstances of the case.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s complaint that it delayed in completing repairs to her wet room.

Reasons

  1. The landlord failed to put right the service failure it had identified in completing repairs to the resident’s wet room when it delayed by 10 months in processing a compensation award of £514.60.

Orders

  1. The landlord to write to the resident to apologise for the service failure identified in this report.
  2. The landlord to pay compensation of £100 in recognition of the distress and inconvenience caused by the service failure in its handling of the resident’s complaint that it delayed in completing repairs to her wet room (in addition to the £514.60 and £50 payments that it said it processed on 2 December 2021).
  3. The landlord to ensure it has procedures in place to:
    1. follow up on outstanding compensation awards;
    2. check whether it already holds a resident’s bank details before it rejects making compensation payments.

The landlord should confirm compliance with these orders to this Service within four weeks of the date of this report.