One Housing Group Limited (202409695)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202409695

One Housing Group Limited

245 February 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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
1. Reports of no heating and hot water at her property.
2. Complaint.

Background

The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord and occupies a second–floor, 1-bedroom flat with her infant child. The landlord has told the Ombudsman that no vulnerabilities are recorded for the resident on its system.
The resident reported issues with no heating and hot water to the landlord on 14 February 2024. Records show that a contractor attended the following day and carried out repairs, but this did not resolve the issue. A further repair was raised on 29 February 2024 and the contractor recommended that the cylinder, fitted 2 months earlier, was under warranty and should be repaired by the company that installed it. Those follow–on works were carried out on 8 May 2024.
Meanwhile, on 2 April 2024, the resident complained to the landlord about the delay in completing the repair as she had been without hot water for over a month. She said she had a newborn baby and she was seeking compensation for the inconvenience caused as a result of having no hot water in the property.
The landlord acknowledged the resident’s complaint on 4 April 2024, but a stage 1 response was not issued. The resident subsequently requested a review of her complaint, a copy of which has not been provided to the Ombudsman, but the stage 2 response stated that this was received on 3 May 2024 and raised the following points:
1. The complaint did not receive a stage 1 response.
2. The gas team did not contact the resident to give any updates on the progress of the works at her property.
3. The resident was without hot water for 2 months.
The landlord provided its stage 2 response on 10 May 2024, stating:
1. It accepted that the contractor’s recommendation that the cylinder should be repaired under the warranty agreement was not followed up correctly.
2. On 29 April 2024, the contractor fitted a new fuse spur to the hot water cylinder, reinstated the electrics, tested and left the system in working order. They attended again on 30 April 2024 in response to an out-of-hours call and reported that the system was working correctly.
3. It offered its “sincere apologies for the stress and inconvenience” the resident had experienced due to “ongoing hot water issues” at her home.
4. It expected its contractor to attend, diagnose, repair or replace in a timely manner. Having reviewed the repairs history, it had identified failings by its contractor and internal teams to communicate efficiently in order to resolve the issues and restore the resident’s hot water.
5. It was “unacceptable” that her concerns were not addressed at stage 1 and that she had to chase repairs. It was “deeply sorry” for the distress this had caused her.
6. It was working with its contractors, operatives and internal teams to improve communication and the services it provided to residents. It would be addressing the issues she had raised with all involved parties.
7. It offered compensation totalling £425, comprising:
  1. £225 for no hot water from 14 February 2024 to 29 April 2024, calculated at a rate of £3 per day.
  2. £200 for the impact due to failure in service.
The resident was not satisfied with the landlord’s response and referred her complaint to the Ombudsman. She has told us that “the hot water is still an issue as it goes every other day, week or month for a long period of time” and this, together with other issues at the property, was impacting her mental health. She said her baby had a rash and she could not bathe them every day as needed, having to use kettle water for 3 weeks. She was fed up with chasing the landlord and felt she was “never heard”. She said it was unfair she had to continue paying rent and bills as she was “barely able to live in the property or call it a home”. She was constantly travelling between the property and her mother’s home 20 minutes away, but this was unsettling for her baby. She told us she would like to be re-housed and is seeking an apology and compensation.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

The resident has raised additional concerns with the Ombudsman that did not form part of her complaint or the landlord’s response. The Scheme provides that, normally, before we can investigate, the complaint must have been raised through the landlord’s internal complaints procedure. Therefore, our investigation will be limited to the issues raised and which formed the basis of the landlord’s final response dated 10 May 2024. In accordance with the Scheme, the additional issues have not been included in this investigation.
The resident has told the Ombudsman that the outstanding heating and hot water repairs have impacted her mental health. The Ombudsman recognises that this situation has caused the resident significant distress as she has experienced the issue over several months. Where we identify failure on a landlord’s part, we can consider the resulting distress and inconvenience. However, unlike a court, we cannot establish what caused the health issue or determine liability and award damages. This would usually be dealt with as a personal injury insurance claim or through the courts.

Reports of no heating and hot water

The landlord’s responsive repairs policy provides different categories and timescales for repairs based on the level of priority to be given to the issue being reported:
1. Emergency repairs (including a total loss of heating or hot water and anything that might present an immediate health and safety risk) – “Respond within 4 hours and ‘attend to and make safe’ within 12 hours… Any follow up work (if required) will be completed within the appropriate priority time.”
2. Urgent repairs – within 5 calendar days.
3. Routine repairs – within 28 calendar days.
The Ombudsman’s spotlight report on knowledge and information management, published in May 2023, highlights the importance of good record keeping practices. It is vital for the landlord to keep clear, accurate and easily accessible records to provide an audit trail of events. It should have appropriate systems in place to keep records of repairs and monitor the outcome of contractor appointments so that it can demonstrate its actions and interventions. This helps the Ombudsman to understand the landlord’s actions and decision-making at the time. If there is disputed evidence and no audit trail, we may not be able to determine that an action took place or that the landlord acted fairly and in line with its policies.
In this case, the landlord has not provided the Ombudsman with evidence of the resident’s reports of no heating and hot water that prompted contractor attendances on 15 and 29 February 2024. Nor have we received evidence of any communications between the parties at the time. Therefore, it is unclear whether the contractor attended within the 12-hour timescale provided in its responsive repairs policy.
Some of the records provided by the landlord are either undated or the date appears to have been corrupted, in that it shows as 12 December 2024 but the communications clearly took place earlier. This has further complicated the assessment of the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of no heating and hot water as it has been difficult to see a clear timeline of events. Therefore, this assessment refers to dates where it has been possible to reconcile the timeline using the available evidence.
There were significant and repeated delays in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of no heating and hot water, which should have been treated as an emergency under the responsive repairs policy. For example, there is no evidence the landlord took any steps to action the contractor’s recommendation for follow–on works on 29 February 2024. This was a serious failure on its part to monitor the outcome of the contractor appointment and proactively manage the repair.
Further, the resident’s complaint on 2 April 2024 about the time it was taking to reinstate hot water in her property was not raised to the contractor until 19 April 2024. Following a further delay and another out–of–hours report on 29 April 2024, the contractor completed the repair on 8 May 2024, 12 weeks after the initial report on 14 February 2024. This was an avoidable delay in resolving matters for the resident and was compounded by the landlord’s failure to keep her appropriately updated about the repair.
It is not clear from the available evidence if the issue at the resident’s property affected both her heating and hot water, as per the repairs orders, or just the hot water, which was the focus of the landlord’s complaint response. The stage 2 response accepted that the resident had been without hot water from 14 February to 30 April 2024. However, the evidence indicates that hot water was not restored until 8 May 2024 at the earliest. There is no contemporaneous evidence of the hot water issue having been resolved on 30 April 2024. This further calls into question the landlord’s record keeping practices, as well as highlighting its failure to properly monitor the outstanding repair.
Records show that a further repair was raised on 16 May 2024 as the electric boiler kept turning off and the switch was sparking when flipped. Due to the gaps in the evidence provided to the Ombudsman, it is not clear when the resident brought this issue to the landlord’s attention. The issue was a potential health and safety risk and was intrinsically linked to the substantive complaint as it affected the heating and hot water at the property. Therefore, in the interest of resolving matters swiftly for both parties, we have used the Ombudsman’s inquisitorial remit to include the issue in our investigation.
The sparking switch on the boiler presented an immediate health and safety concern. Therefore, the landlord ought reasonably to have dealt with this as an emergency repair, in line with its policy, but it does not appear to have done so. For instance, the first appointment that it claims was missed by the resident was 18 calendar days after the repair was raised. This was excessive and unreasonable against the 12-hour emergency repair timeframe provided in its responsive repairs policy.
The resident’s email to the landlord on 3 June 2024 noted her ongoing concerns about issues with her hot water and the safety of the boiler switch. In an email where the date appears to have been corrupted, the landlord simply advised the resident that she had exhausted its complaints process and should refer her complaint to the Ombudsman. The omission to address the heating and hot water issues demonstrated a failure by the landlord to meaningfully follow through with its assurance that it would learn from the complaint and work with its contractors and internal teams to improve services for residents.
It is also noted that, in her email of 3 June 2024, the resident set out her numerous unsuccessful attempts to chase a resolution to the heating and hot water issues and her complaint. Due to the sparsity of evidence, it is not possible to see the frequency of the resident’s reports or chasers. However, in the absence of any dispute from the landlord, the Ombudsman accepts this email as evidence of the frustration, distress and inconvenience caused to the resident from 14 February to 3 June 2024.
There is no evidence of the landlord’s communications with the resident regarding appointments and it has not substantiated its assertion that several calls were made to her to arrange visits. Consequently, the Ombudsman cannot be satisfied that she was given reasonable notice of the appointments, particularly as she had made it aware she was staying with her mother.
The landlord has said that completion of the repairs was prolonged because the resident missed appointments due to not being at home. This is not consistent with the repairs records, which show that the resident missed appointments on 3 and 10 June 2024 and refused a further attempt by the landlord to raise a repair in respect of the “condemned boiler” on 8 August 2024. The time between the missed appointments in June and the landlord’s further attempt to arrange an appointment in August further demonstrate a failure on the landlord’s part to deal proactively with the repair. Given the nature of the issue being reported, this was a serious failing on the landlord’s part.
In the absence of evidence of the parties’ communications at the time, the Ombudsman cannot be satisfied that the landlord took reasonable steps to ensure the resident’s heating and hot water system was working correctly and safely. This supports the resident’s complaint to the Ombudsman that hot water issues remain ongoing, albeit intermittently. That said, the evidence indicates that the resident’s own actions may have contributed to the situation. While the Ombudsman acknowledges the frustration experienced by her in trying to get the issues resolved over a prolonged period of time, she was responsible for reporting repair issues and facilitating access.
While the compensation offered by the landlord at stage 2 (£425) demonstrated a willingness on its part to put things right, it was not consistent with its compensation policy. For instance, the payment for no hot water covered 75 days (from 14 February to 29 April 2024), whereas the loss of amenity lasted 83 days (from 14 February to 7 May 2024). At £3 per day, this ought to have been £249 instead of £225.
Additionally, the compensation for the impact of the service failure suggests a low-to-medium impact. Given the severity of the service failure, the potential health and safety implications of no heating and hot water during some winter months, the presence of an infant child in the property, and the fact that the resident felt the need to go and live with her mother for 2 months, there was clearly a high impact to the resident.
In all the circumstances, it is appropriate to find severe maladministration in respect of this complaint because:
1. The landlord failed to action follow–on works recommended by the contractor on 29 February 2024.
2. There was an excessive delay of 12 weeks to restore hot water to the resident’s property.
3. The landlord failed to deal promptly and proactively with her reports that the electrical switch on the boiler was sparking.
4. It did not deal with the repairs to her heating and hot water in accordance with its responsive repairs policy, demonstrating a lack of due regard for its obligations in respect of health and safety.
5. It failed to consider the household’s vulnerabilities in its handling of repairs.
6. It did not keep the resident reasonably updated about the repairs, and there is no evidence it gave her reasonable notice of the appointments it says she missed.
7. The landlord’s compensation offer was not reasonable and proportionate to remedy its failings and the severe, detrimental impact on the resident’s household.
The Ombudsman cannot make an order for a property move or transfer, as sought by the resident, as this is a matter for the landlord.
The landlord’s compensation policy allows for payments to be calculated outside the guidance provided in order to deliver the right level of redress. The Ombudsman takes the view that the exceptional circumstances of the resident’s case justify the exercise of such discretion. The policy provides for rent-based calculations for loss of facility arising from outstanding repairs, but there is no provision for circumstances where, as in the resident’s case, the property was rendered uninhabitable. The Ombudsman considers it appropriate to direct a payment based on 100% of the rent for 12 weeks, being £1,751.79, to reflect this loss of facility to the resident. This has been calculated as follows:
1. 6 weeks and 4 days @ £141.07 per week = £927.03.
2. 5 weeks and 3 days @ £151.93 per week = £824.76.
While the payment for loss of facility addresses a significant proportion of the impact, the Ombudsman considers it appropriate to award additional compensation in recognition of the frustration, distress and inconvenience caused as a result of the long-outstanding repair and its further failings following the stage 2 response. The impact of the landlord’s failings was exacerbated by the fact that the resident had a baby. In all the circumstances of the case, an award at the lower end of the range for high impact, as set out in the compensation policy, is considered fair and proportionate.

Complaint handling

The landlord’s complaints policy sets out the following timescales:
1. Acknowledgement of stage 1 complaint/stage 2 escalation – within 3 working days of receipt.
2. Stage 1 response – within 10 working days of the complaint being logged, or up to a further 10 days in exceptional circumstances.
3. Stage 2 response – within 20 working days of receipt, or up to a further 10 days in exceptional circumstances.
The landlord’s record keeping failures have also affected the Ombudsman’s assessment of its handling of the resident’s complaint. For example, the complaint is undated, the resident’s request for a review has not been provided to the Ombudsman, and the date on the stage 2 acknowledgement appears to have been corrupted. Therefore, we cannot be satisfied that the acknowledgements were issued within the 3 working days of receipt. Similarly, it is not possible to say whether the stage 2 response dealt appropriately with the points the resident raised.
In its stage 2 response, the landlord accepted that it had not provided a response at stage 1 of its complaints procedure, which was unacceptable and inappropriate. This was in breach of its complaints policy and inconsistent with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles (be fair, put things right, and learn from outcomes).
The stage 2 response itself was in line with the Dispute Resolution Principles, appearing to provide a fair assessment of the substantive complaint, taking learning, and seeking to put things right. However, despite acknowledging its failure to issue a stage 1 response, the landlord did not offer any compensation in recognition of the frustration and inconvenience evidently caused to the resident. Its compensation policy provides for a medium impact payment (from £200 to £500) for a failure to investigate the complaint or follow the complaints policy or for poor handling of the complaint. In this regard, it failed to fully and appropriately address its complaint handling failure.
It is also noted that the stage 2 response was initially sent to an incorrect email address. Consequently, this was not received by the resident until it was re-sent to the correct email address on 3 June 2024.
The landlord additionally failed to use its complaints procedure as an effective tool for addressing the substantive repair issue. This is reflected in its failure to deal effectively with the repairs when it became of ongoing issues affecting the resident’s heating and hot water.
For the reasons set out above, it is appropriate to find maladministration in respect of the landlord’s complaint handling. In line with the landlord’s compensation policy, it has been ordered to pay compensation at the lower end of a medium impact award. This is a fair and proportionate level of compensation to reflect the frustration and inconvenience noted in the resident’s email of 3 June 2024.
On 8 February 2024, the Ombudsman issued our statutory Complaint Handling Code (‘the Code’). This sets out the standards landlords must meet when handling complaints in both policy and practice. The Code applies from 1 April 2024.
The Ombudsman has a duty to monitor compliance with the Code. We will assess landlords using our compliance framework and take action where there is evidence that the requirements set out in the Code are not being met. In this investigation, we found multiple failures in the landlord’s complaint handling practices. We have, therefore, referred this case to our team responsible for monitoring compliance with the Code.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was:
1. Severe maladministration in respect of the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of no heating and hot water at her property.
2. Maladministration in respect of the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders

The Ombudsman orders that, within 4 weeks of the date of this determination, the landlord must:
1. Apologise to the resident for its failings in this case, in accordance with this Service’s apologies guidance. The apology should be made in writing by the landlord’s chief executive officer.
2. Pay the resident compensation of £2,451.79, which comprises:
  1. £1,751.79 for the 12 weeks the property was without hot water and, therefore, was uninhabitable by the resident.
  2. £500 for the frustration, distress and inconvenience caused as a result of the multiple failings in the landlord’s handling of heating and hot water repairs at the property.
  3. £200 for its complaint handling failures.
  4. These sums should be paid directly to the resident and must not be offset against any arrears.
3. Arrange an inspection of the resident’s heating and hot water system by a suitably qualified contractor in order to identify any issues and recommendations to resolve the same. The landlord must send a copy of the contractor’s report to the Ombudsman and the resident, together with a timebound plan of action to resolve the heating and hot water issues.
The Ombudsman orders that, within 12 weeks of the date of this determination, the landlord must:
1. Complete any repairs required to the resident’s heating and hot water system in line with its repairs policy.
2. Carry out a review of its handling of matters in this case. A report detailing the outcome of the review should be submitted to the Ombudsman and should identify:
  1. What went wrong, what it has learned from the resident’s experience, and what it would do differently to avoid the same happening again.
  2. Any staff training needs and/or changes to its procedures required to ensure repairs and complaints are accurately recorded, appropriately investigated, and addressed in a reasonable and timely manner.