One Vision Housing Limited (202437467)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202437467

One Vision Housing Limited

18 September 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 reports of black specks in the hot water system at the property.

Background

2. The resident holds an assured shorthold tenancy for the property which is owned by the landlord. She says she has obsessive compulsive disorder.
3. In early November 2024, the resident noticed black specks in water coming from the taps at the property. She reported this to the landlord which sent an operative to the property. They inspected and cleaned elements of the system. The specks remained and the landlord sent further operatives to work on the system over the next 3 weeks.
4. The resident complained formally to the landlord about the problem on or around 20 November 2024. She said that the landlord had failed to solve the problem and had also communicated poorly with her so that she felt that she had been “passed from pillar to post”.
5. The landlord provided a stage 1 response on 4 December 2024. It denied that it had taken too long to find the cause of the specks as it was a complex issue. It said it had recently solved the problem. It accepted that it could have communicated better and should have acted quicker to put things right. It apologised and offered the resident £150 “as a gesture of good will”.
6. The resident was not satisfied with this response and asked to escalate her complaint to stage 2 of the landlord’s internal complaint process on or around 19 December 2024. The landlord continued to investigate the problem during this time. She said the landlord had failed to solve the problem and had communicated poorly.
7. The landlord provided a stage 2 complaint response on 25 February 2024. It accepted that it had been at fault. It said, however, that the problem was a complex one which it continued to investigate. It also accepted that its communication had been poor. It apologised again and offered the resident a further £150 in recognition of its continuing failures.
8. The resident was not satisfied with this response and asked us to investigate She told us in May 2025 that the issue had not been solved. She told us in September 2025 that the landlord had solved the problem during summer 2025.

Assessment and findings

9. The resident’s tenancy agreement says that the landlord is responsible for maintaining the hot and cold-water systems at the property.  Its repairs policy says it will carry out emergency repairs within 24 hours, urgent repairs within 5 working days and routine repairs within 28 working days. It does not provide any information about what repairs fall into each category in its view.
10. It is clear from the evidence that the landlord attended, if not within 24 hours, then certainly shortly after the resident reported the specks. It replaced filters and other components. However, it failed to solve the problem, and the resident continued to report specks in the water. This was not a failure on the landlord’s part as this appears to have been a complex problem. This was, therefore, an appropriate response to her concerns.
11. The landlord has provided a works spreadsheet which shows that it attended on 5 and 8 November 2024. However, it did not attend again until 18 November 2024. This was unsatisfactory as, at this point, the records show that there were not only specks in the hot water, but the water itself was also discoloured which the resident would have found alarming.
12. The landlord acknowledged this delay in its stage 1 complaint response. It apologised and awarded the resident £150 in compensation. This was an appropriate response which sought to make amends and recognise the distress the inaction would have caused.
13. The landlord then attended 4 times in a week which shows that it was acting appropriately at this point. It carried out tests and found that, in its opinion, the specks could not be coming from the boiler. This was because it pulled water directly from the boiler and found no specks. The resident was convinced that the problem lay with the boiler. We cannot say who is correct. However, on the evidence, the landlord investigated appropriately in late November 2024.
14. The landlord attended again on 19 December 2024. An attendance note read, “[Took] out flow turbine adaptor and checked manifold. No debris found. Cleaned out inline filter. No debris found. Ran multiple baths and found about 3/4 black bits in water. [I] advise, going forward, plate-to-plate and righthand block manifold to be replaced. Ok case. Any debris has got stuck and possibly re-pipe hot outlet in property. Failing that, carry out water hygiene test.”
15. From this it is clear that, in the landlord’s view, the problem was not serious but persisted. We would therefore expect it to have acted with reasonable speed in addressing the problem. In line with its policy. It arranged for a water sampling test which took place on 24 January 2025. This was appropriate. This showed that the water at the property was safe.
16. However, we have seen no evidence that the landlord carried out any of the other actions set out in the note of 19 December before 25 February 2025. This was not appropriate. The landlord recognised this and apologised. It also offered the resident a further £150 in recognition of the further delay. This, again, was appropriate given the landlord’s failures to that point.
17. On the evidence we have seen, the landlord did not then solve the problem entirely for a further 4 to 5 months. It is true that, by this point, it had provided the resident with a water quality report which showed her that the water was not a risk to her, especially as it was only the hot water, and not the drinking water, which was affected.
18. We have made a finding of service failure in relation to this delay. We would have found it responsible for maladministration, if it had not recognised its failures in its complaint responses and paid compensation. These would have been sufficient if the problem had not then persisted for several more months.
19. However, as there was an unacceptable delay in resolving the matter, we have ordered the landlord to pay a further £100 in recognition of that delay. We have reached this figure by considering the landlord’s compensation policy and our own guidance on remedies. The landlord’s policy allows for “gestures of good will” to be paid to its tenants where its failures have caused “inconvenience, stress, disturbance or annoyance”.
20. The Ombudsman does not approve of the term “gestures of good will” when used in this way. This is because such payments are, in fact, compensation for a landlord’s failures and not gifts. We have therefore recommended that the landlord should amend the policy to call such payments what they are.
21. The landlord’s compensation policy does not set out any guidelines for the levels of payments for gestures of good will. We have, therefore, referred to our own guidance on compensation. This says that, in cases of maladministration, (as this would have been if the landlord had not acknowledged its errors in a timely manner) compensation of between £100 and £600 is usually appropriate though, in severe cases, this may rise to £1000. We believe that a total of £400, including the compensation already offered, is appropriate in this case.

Determination

22. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of black specks in the hot water system at the property.

Orders and recommendations

Order

23. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord must provide us with evidence that it has paid the resident £400, inclusive of the £300 it has already offered her in compensation for the failures identified in this report.

Recommendation

24. The landlord should review its compensation policy and consider removing reference to “gestures of good will”. The landlord should confirm its position on the recommendation.