Onward Homes Limited (202113324)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202113324

Onward Homes Limited

18 November 2022

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:
   1. The resident’s reports of damaged front bay windows.
   2. The associated complaint.

Background

2. The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord.
3. In May 2021, the resident reported that the bay windows at the property were beginning to leak and rot. The landlord inspected the property and arranged for temporary repairs to be completed whilst it continued to inspect the property. The landlord inspected the property several times, and arranged for the property to be surveyed on three occasions. The landlord classified the remedial works needed as a major repair, and following several appointments, the works were ultimately completed on 26 January 2022. The landlord then raised several follow-on works, which were ultimately completed on 19 April 2022. The landlord advised it would continue to monitor any settlement cracks following the repairs and complete any further remedial work when needed.
4. The resident raised a formal complaint to the landlord in March 2022 about the delays in the landlord’s handling of the remedial work. He was dissatisfied with the number of appointments which were rearranged and cancelled, and unhappy with the lack of communication throughout the process. He has said that his family’s health had been impacted as a result of the delays due to the cold temperature in the property, and he is unhappy that this led to additional energy costs. He was also dissatisfied that the property needed to be redecorated, and that following the repairs, the blinds in the property no longer fit properly.
5. In the landlord’s final response issued in May 2022, it acknowledged the delays in the remedial work and apologised to the resident for the distress and inconvenience the delays had caused. It offered the resident a total of £375 compensation which was made up of:
   1. £210 as a gesture of goodwill,
   2. £90 for the blinds in the property and,
   3. £75 in decoration vouchers.
6. The resident remained dissatisfied with the poor communication from the landlord, delays, and the overall impact the process had had on his family. resident has advised this Service that following the completion of the works, further issues arose such as a guttering leak, cracks in the timber of the bay windows and that the settlement cracks remained outstanding. He wants these outstanding repairs to be resolved.

Assessment and findings

Scope of Investigation

7. The resident has referenced how the delays to the window repairs has impacted the health of himself and his family. The Ombudsman does not doubt the resident’s comments about his and his family’s health. However, it is outside the remit of the Ombudsman to draw conclusions regarding the causation of, or liability for, impacts on health and wellbeing. This is more appropriate for it to be dealt with through the courts as a personal injury claim. Nonetheless, consideration has been given to the general distress and inconvenience which the situation may have caused the resident. This is an accordance with paragraph 42(g) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme which says the Ombudsman may not investigate complaints which concern matters where the Ombudsman considers it quicker, fairer, more reasonable or more effective to seek a remedy through the courts, a designated person, other tribunal or procedure. However, the Ombudsman has considered the general distress and inconvenience the resident and his family have experienced as a result of any errors by the landlord, as well as the landlord’s response to the resident’s health concerns.
8. The resident has also informed this Service that he has an additional ongoing complaint with the landlord regarding its failure to provide the surveyor’s report of the bay windows at the property. In addition to this, the resident has said that since the works have been completed, there have been further issues in the property such as cracks appearing in the timber of the windows, which has led to a delay in any settlement cracks being resolved.
9.  As these are separate issues to the complaint which has exhausted the landlord’s complaints process, this is not something that this Service can adjudicate on at this stage, as the landlord needs to be provided with the opportunity to investigate and respond to these aspects before the Ombudsman becomes involved. The resident will need to contact the landlord in order to escalate the complaint to stage two of its internal process, and following its stage two response, he can escalate the complaint to this Service to be investigated separately if he remains dissatisfied.

Policies and Procedures

10. The landlord’s complaints policy states that both a stage one and stage two complaint will be responded to within 10 working days, and the resident will be contacted if a longer timescale is needed.
11. The landlord’s Home Standard policy states that it is responsible for maintaining external decorations of the property, such as painting timber windows. It states that replacing windows is classed as a planned repair. Routine repairs should be completed within 20 working days but  there is no specific timescale listed in the policy for planned repairs.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of damaged front bay windows

12.  Both parties have stated that the remedial works needed to the bay windows at the property have been completed. It is also not disputed that there were delays in the landlord’s handling of the repairs throughout the process, and that this impacted the resident. The landlord has acknowledged the delays, and identified that its communication with the resident could have been better.
13. When failings are identified, the Ombudsman’s role is to consider whether the redress offered by the landlord has put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily. This is in accordance with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles: to be fair, put things right and learn from outcomes.
14.  In this case, the landlord ultimately put things right by completing the repairs to the bay windows, and apologising to the resident for the delays. It also put things right by offering the resident £300 compensation, and a £75 voucher for the redecorations needed at the property.
15. In line with the tenancy agreement, the resident would usually be responsible for redecoration within their own property, However, given that the redecorations required in the property were due to the ongoing repairs completed by the landlord, it was reasonable for the landlord to consider the additional costs of redecoration, and to recognise the impact it would have had on the resident. It acted fairly by offering the resident compensation in view of this.
16.  In addition, when considering that the repairs were identified as ‘major’ by the landlord’s contractors, it is understandable that the remedial works needed may have taken longer than the 20-day timescale for routine repairs, as is industry standard. Furthermore, given that the majority of the works being completed were external, it should be considered that some of the works were delayed due to weather conditions, such as on 9 September 2021, which was outside of the landlord’s control.
17.  The landlord acted appropriately and arranged for temporary works to be completed in June 2021 once the problem with the bay window was identified. The temporary works were completed by 2 August 2021, and following this, the landlord arranged for the property to be inspected, surveyed and made an action plan for the major works to take place. It was appropriate for the landlord to ensure that it maintained the condition of the property whilst the root cause of the issue continued to be investigated. This is evidence that the landlord was taking the resident’s concerns seriously, and had tried to minimise the impact on the resident by implementing temporary fixes until the major works could take place.
18. This Service recognises that there were numerous occasions where the landlord had to chase its contractor for updates, such as on 1 September 2021 until 7 September 2021, which resulted in further delays. However, the landlord is ultimately responsible for its staff and contractors and any delays caused by communication issues with contractors. Similarly, there were also delays due to the landlord seeking a second opinion for the works needed. Given the extent of the work, it was reasonable for the landlord to do so, and following the inspection on 18 November 2021 the works took place on 26 January 2022. Whilst there was a delay in between the inspection and the works being completed, this was due to the contractor waiting for materials to arrive. This Service recognises that there may be occasions where ordering materials leads to delays. However, in these circumstances, the landlord would be expected to advise the resident of this in order to adequately set his expectations, which in this case, did not happen.
19. Following this, the landlord raised several follow-on works on 9 February 2022, which were ultimately completed by 19 April 2022. During this time, contractors attended the property several times to complete works such as on 15 March 2022, 25 March 2022 and 19 April 2022. Throughout the entire process of remedial works, the delays were exacerbated by the landlord’s poor communication, and poor record-keeping such as on 23 July 2021 where contractors attended to complete works but then re-arranged the appointment as the timeslot allocated to the appointment was not sufficient. It would have been appropriate for the landlord to maintain effective communication with its contractors, to ensure that any appointments made were sufficient for the works needed.
20. In addition, the resident had to continuously chase the landlord for information and updates in relation to the next steps for the works. This is further evidence of poor communication from the landlord as the resident was often told that there was no update, something which the landlord has acknowledged and apologised for. However, it would be appropriate for the landlord to consider how it can improve its communication with residents going forward, in order to avoid similar communication issues in the future.
21.  Throughout the process of remedial works, the resident had informed the landlord on 14 March 2022 of the cold temperatures in the property, and that this had impacted the health of his family. However, there was no evidence provided to this Service to show that the landlord addressed this. It would have been appropriate for the landlord to investigate the temperature of the property, and where appropriate, consider alternatives available for the resident such as providing temporary heaters. Likewise, the resident had informed the landlord of the additional costs of energy he had experienced given the ongoing remedial works to the windows. It would have been appropriate for the landlord to consider the additional costs experienced by the resident if he was able to provide evidence of these costs. However, there is no evidence to show that this was addressed by the landlord and this constitutes a failing.
22. In addition, as part of the resident’s escalation request to this Service, he stated that the one outstanding concern remained to be the leaking gutter that contractors had identified as an issue at the property. The resident has advised this Service that remedial works were supposed to take place to the gutter on 19 August 2022 as part of the follow-on works, but this was postponed. Therefore, it would be appropriate for the landlord to ensure these works are completed, if it has not done so already, to ensure no further issues arise from the guttering.
23. This Service’s Remedies Guidance (published on our website) sets out our approach to compensation for distress and inconvenience. The Remedies Guidance says the Ombudsman may award compensation of £50 to £100 where a landlord has made an offer of compensation but it does not fully reflect the detriment to the resident, and is not proportionate to the failings identified by our investigation. Therefore, it is the opinion of this Service that an additional £100 compensation would provide adequate redress for the landlord failing to fully address some of the resident’s concerns.

The landlord’s handling of the associated complaint

24. The resident raised his initial complaint on 14 March 2022 and the landlord acknowledged this on 25 March 2022, following contact from this Service. It then provided the stage one response on 6 April 2022. This was a total of 15 working days which is outside of the timeframe of ten working days listed in the landlord’s complaints policy and the Ombudsman’s complaint handling code (published on or website) which sets out the Ombudsman’s expectations of landlords’ complaint handling procedures.
25.  The resident asked for his complaint to be escalated on 12 April 2022 and 19 April 2022, and the landlord acknowledged the escalation until 21 April 2022. This was a total of seven working days which is not in line with the landlord’s complaints policy which states that it will acknowledge a complaint escalation within two working days. This is also evidence of poor record-keeping on the landlord’s behalf as the resident had to request a complaint escalation twice before the landlord acknowledged the complaint. The landlord then sent its stage two response on 5 May 2022, which is a total of 16 working days following the resident’s initial escalation request. This is also slightly outside of the timeframe of ten working days as listed in the landlord’s complaints policy.
26. As part of the resident’s escalation request on 19 April 2022, he raised further concerns regarding the cold temperature of the property, and the additional costs of energy. The landlord failed to respond to this concern in its stage two response, which is not in line with the Complaint Handling Code which states that landlords should respond to every aspect of a complaint.
27. When considering the above factors, whilst the landlord’s complaint responses were not provided within its published timeframes, the delays were minimal and did not have a significant impact on the overall outcome of the complaint. However, it would have caused inconvenience to the resident and the landlord ultimately failed to act in line with its policies, and the guidance provided by this Service in the Complaint Handling Code. This Service had to chase the landlord for a response at stage one of its internal process and the landlord failed to address all aspects of the resident’s complaint.
28. As above, the Remedies Guidance suggests compensation of £50 to £100 in cases where there was a minor failure by the landlord in the service it provided and it did not appropriately acknowledge these or fully put them right. In this case, the landlord failed to acknowledge the failings in its complaint handling, and did not adequately address all of the resident’s concerns. For the reasons set out above, the landlord should pay the resident £100 compensation in view of its complaint handling failures.

Determination

29.  In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s reports of damaged front bay windows.
30.  In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord its handling of the associated complaint.

Orders

31. The landlord is ordered to pay the resident a total of £575 compensation, which is inclusive of the £300 compensation and the £75 voucher for decorations as previously offered, if it has not yet been paid. This is made up of:
    1. £210 for the resident’s time, trouble and inconvenience,
    2. £90 for the resident’s blinds that no longer fit,
    3. £75 voucher towards redecorating the property,
    4. £100 for failing to address the resident’s concerns throughout the repairs process and,
    5. £100 for the landlord’s complaint handling failures.
32. This should be paid within four weeks of the date of this letter.
33. The landlord is ordered to complete any outstanding works to the guttering of the property within four weeks of the date of this decision, if this has not yet been completed.

Recommendations

34. It is recommended that the landlord considers the additional energy costs that impacted the resident, if he can provide evidence of this, and considers providing additional compensation for this if appropriate.