Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (202219537)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202219537

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

29 February 2024

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 landlords handling of the repairs to the resident’s radiators.

Background

Following an agreed management transfer, the resident has held a secure tenancy since 29 March 2021, on her 2-bed property with the landlord. According to the tenancy agreement the resident moved into the property with her daughter. The landlord is a local council.
As part of the management transfer agreement, the landlord said that the resident had been advised that the property she was moving to, did not have as high a spec as the property she was moving from. Extensive void works were carried out on the property, some in consultation with the resident, prior to her moving in.
This Service is aware that when the resident moved in she was unhappy with many aspects of her property, and repairs, that she felt should have been completed during the void works. She has made several formal complaints to the landlord that have been through its internal complaints procedure (ICP) and 4 of those complaints have been escalated to this Service.
This investigation however focuses solely on the residents complaint of the 3 February 2022, which was about the landlords failure to complete works required to the radiators in her property.

Summary of events

Following a complaint from the resident in April 2021, about the number of repairs outstanding in the property, the landlord sent a repairs manager to carry out an inspection on 4 May 2021. One of the recommendations from that inspection was to upgrade and improve a number of radiators in the property.
A job was raised on 11 July 2021, to replace the bathroom radiator with a towel rail, replace the existing bedroom radiators with larger ones, and fit thermostatic valves to the radiators in the hallway and living room.
The landlord confirmed with the resident by email on 12 July 2021, that the jobs had been raised and the contractor would contact her directly to arrange an appointment.
The resident responded on 13 July 2021, she acknowledged the repairs ordered, and advised that these had been arranged for a later date, but said a job was missing from the list, which was to replace the hallway radiator for a smaller one.
The landlord replied the same day, advising that it had no record of a problem with the size of the radiator in the hall. Following a conversation with the gas / heating team it has been confirmed that it would not be replaced, but a thermostatic radiator valve would be fitted. It acknowledged an email from the contractor had confirmed that the resident had postponed the job until other ongoing works were completed and that the resident would call them to arrange a date.
On 23 July 2022, the landlord asked the heating contractor to contact the resident again to make an appointment. The contractor replied advising that they had tried to call the resident on her mobile, but it just rang out, it had also sent text alerts asking her to call them.
The landlord checked in again with the contractor on the 27 July 2021 and asked them to write to her if she had not made contact. The same day the repairs team noted that the resident had advised it she would be unavailable until 4 August 2021.
On 14 December 2021 the resident sent an email to the landlords repairs team about the heating work, she complained that she had been calling the landlord, but getting no reply, she had confirmed with the heating contractor that the heating works had not been reinstated. She requested that all the intended heating works be re-authorised.
The landlord responded to say it was unable to raise the jobs for the radiators requested, but the gas contractor manager was working with relevant colleagues to arrange the necessary works.
On 3 February 2022, the resident wrote a formal complaint to the landlord. In it she said she had repairs outstanding since December 2021. A heating engineer attended and sent a report to the landlord for a replacement radiator in the living room and radiator parts. An appointment was arranged, but cancelled last minute (date not stated). It was re-arranged for 31st January 2022, but there was an issue with parts not being ordered. She had since tried to make contact with the heating contractor and was being “passed from pillar to post”, without being able to secure an appointment, during the coldest time of the year.
Following receipt of the complaint a call was made to the resident by the gas contracts manager on the 10 February 2022. No file notes of this conversation were provided to this service.
The landlord completed its investigation and issued its complaint response on the 16 February 2022. In summary it said:
1. It originally received a report from the resident in December 2021, that the radiators were not working and that a noise was occurring. When the heating engineers attended on 10 December 2021, they were refused access. It was rearranged for 17 December 2021, at this appointment the landlord said, the contractor explained a radiator valve could not be fitted where the room stat was situated, but recommended a larger radiator be ordered.
2. On 19 December 2021 it had received a report the residents heating and hot water was not working. The contractors found a leaking heating pipe and a noisy radiator valve. The leak was repaired, and a new valve ordered.
3. The contractor made an appointment for 4 January 2022, to install the new larger radiator, ordered the previous month, but cancelled for “reasons outside of their control”, (no details seen by this service). The contractors attended on the revised date of 27 January 2022 and the new radiator was installed. For the noise, further investigation was required and the need potentially for a “silencer” to be fitted.
4. It also said at the appointment the resident had asked the contractor for the radiator in the bathroom to be changed to a towel rail and the radiator in the hall to be moved. It was explained to her that she needed to request this from the landlord directly, but the landlord had since agreed, which she was aware of.
5. The investigatory visit was completed on 5 February 2022. The contractor found shut off radiator valves causing poor circulation and air locks in the system, which were causing noise. The engineer cleared the air and rebalanced the system leaving everything running as it should.
6. It noted the resident had since had a further conversation with it, about the heating not running properly, and the landlord was arranging for its inhouse gas inspector to attend to address any remaining issues with the heating.
7. It acknowledged the cancellation at short notice, by the contractor was a service failing and offered £20 compensation from the contractor and £50 from itself.
The resident requested her complaint be escalated to stage two of the complaints procedure, on 28 March 2022. In summary she said:
1. A gas manager had inspected her property and made an 8am appointment for contractors to attend. He had mentioned the radiator in the hallway was to be relocated; however, it would still be an obstruction to the front door.
2. On the appointment date, the contractor turned up at midday, without the correct equipment, with the wrong size radiators and unaware of what works needed to be done, it was another wasted appointment.
3. She thought the communication was “diabolical”, and refused to liaise with the contractor any further.
4. She was exhausted with the service failures, and said the landlord was causing her distress and anxiety. Her heating had not been working correctly since the previous year, she had accommodated the landlord and tried to resolve the problem, but felt her concerns were being dismissed.
On 6 April 2022, the landlord completed its stage two review and provided the resident with its response. In summary it said:
1. It understood the residents complaint to be about:
  1. Her heating, which had not been working properly since the previous year, and the plan to relocate the radiator in the hallway, as it would cause an obstruction to the front door.
  2. The poor performance of the contractor, who came in the afternoon for an 8am appointment, did not have the right material and were unclear what they were doing. As such, she was now seeking for the landlord to agree to moving her hallway radiator, as a priority
2. It acknowledged that the resident had been raising various repairs issues with the property for some time and understood her frustration. It was committed to putting things right and had requested a full assessment of the works required throughout. This assessment had been completed 1 April 2022 and a number of works were identified as requiring attention in addition to the radiators. In respect of the radiators it advised the heating contractors were due to return on 29 March 2022, to complete works the resident had agreed which were to,
  1. Install a radiator under each window (k2 450 x 1000) in the lounge.
  2. Install new single convector radiator by WC (K1 600 x x400) in the bathroom.
  3. Reduce radiator to single convector in the hallway.
  4. Fit new thermostatic radiator valves to all radiators except by-pass radiator in the hallway.
  5. Commission heating and balance radiators, including adding a chemical inhibitor on refill of the system.
3. During the visit it understood the resident re-iterated her request that the hallway radiator be moved. The landlord explained the work would be extensive, highly costly, and not something it would consider when a functional radiator was in place.
4. It did not uphold the resident’s complaint, because it did not agree that the discussions between itself and the resident over the layout of her property and the time taken to agree a final schedule of work, constituted a service failure.
5. It noted there were failings by the heating contractor they were acknowledged and apologised for at stage 1, and it considered the compensation it and the contractor offered was reasonable.

Post Complaint Process

A recent update email from the landlord stated that the landlords heating contractors attended:
1. On 26 January 2023 to balance the system and show the resident how to use the boiler controls.
2. On 9 February 2023 to replace the TRV’s.
3. On 13 December 2023 to fit the resident’s own towel rail.
4. It said it had no record of the new under window radiators in the lounge being “committed to”.
5. Hallway works which included the reduction of the hallway radiator to a single convector, were completed to the residents satisfaction on 24 January 2024.

Assessment and findings

Landlords Legal and Policy Context.

The tenancy agreement requires that the landlord will keep in repair the structure, exterior of the building, common parts. and all installations for the supply of water, gas, electricity, heating, and sanitation, including baths, sinks and toilets provided. This aligns with its repairing obligation at section 11 of the landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Repairs must be completed within a reasonable period of time.
The tenancy agreement also requires that the resident gives the landlord or their agents and contractors the right of entry to the property on 24 hours’ notice which need not be in writing to carry out repair or improvement to the property or to any other premises.
The landlords repairs policy, notes that repair obligations and responsibilities are set out in tenancy, lease, and licence agreements. It has pre-assigned categories for prioritising repairs it is responsible for, which includes:
1. Critical – a serious safety hazard, the immediate risk of more extensive damage to a property or to cause injury – Within 4 hours.
2. Emergency – burst pipes, no power to property, broken window requiring boarding up, insecure front door, loss of drinking water – within 24 hours.
3. Urgent – minor leak that can be contained, faulty extractor fan in kitchen or bathroom (if no window in room), faulty shower – within 5 days.
4. Routine – renewing tiles, sealant to bathtubs and sinks, repairs to plaster, toilet not flushing (when there is another working toilet in the property).
5. Within 20 days – planned replacement of kitchen units, bathtubs, sinks and wash hand basins. Roof repairs requiring scaffolding – within 90 days.
The landlords housing management complaints policy stated, generally any complaint should be made within 12 months of the issue happening. It is a two-stage process. Stage one complaints are dealt with by the relevant section and responded to within 10 working days. If that timescale is not achievable, residents will be given an explanation and a revised date. To escalate to stage two, the request must be made within 20 working days of the stage one response. The landlords Director of Housing Management will review the case and the previous response, and send a full reply in 20 working days, unless an alternative date is agreed.
The landlord has a housing management compensation and reimbursement policy. This policy commits to, a flat payment of £20.00 per appointment where its operatives or contractors fail to attend an agreed appointment (excluding instances recorded as ‘no access’), arrive late to an appointment by two hours or more, or cancel an appointment giving less than 24 hours’ notice.
The policy also commits to the consideration of ex-gratia payments for miscellaneous items. Payments would be calculated based on the landlords level of responsibility (partial or full) and the resulting impact:
1. Low – Where the complainant has just cause but has suffered minimal or no inconvenience or distress as a result of the compensation event.
2. Medium – Where the compensation event is clearly an injustice to the complainant and the service has markedly failed to meet the required standards, and there is evidence of a moderate degree of inconvenience or distress.
3. High – These relate to a serious failure in service standards. This could include the severity of an event, a persistent failure over a long period, or an unacceptable number of attempts to resolve and address the complaint.

Landlords handling of residents repairs.

Once reported, the landlord was required, in accordance with section 11 of the landlord and Tenant Act to carry out the repairs to the residents heating system, within a reasonable time. While there is no statutory definition of a reasonable time frame, there is guidance in the right to repair scheme, and the landlord had its own repairs policy, which determined its definitions of a reasonable timeframe.
Radiator repairs were identified on 4 May 2021, to upgrade a number of radiators that were identified as inadequate for the size of room and installing thermostatic radiator valves. This type of repair would have been a routine repair under the landlord’s responsive repairs policy, with a target completion date of 20 days. It took the landlord until 11 July 2021, to raise the repairs order, which was over 9 weeks since it had been identified. This was unreasonable and clearly not compliant with the landlords repairs policy response times.
On receipt of the order for the work to the radiators in July 2021, the landlords contractor contacted the resident within 48hrs to arrange an appointment which was appropriate. The resident requested postponement of the works, because she had a number of other contractors at the property completing other outstanding repairs, which in the circumstances was not unreasonable. However it is acknowledged that this would have caused some initial delay which was outside of the landlords control. By the end of the month despite chasing from the landlord, the resident had not made a further appointment and failed to respond to the calls and texts left by the contractor. It is a requirement of the residents tenancy agreement to provide access to the landlord to carry out necessary repairs, failure to do so undoubtedly adds to delays in completion, which the landlord cannot be held accountable for.
The resident was unhappy with the hallway radiator, from early on in her tenancy. She made several requests to the landlord that it be reduced in size and or relocated. The landlord appropriately considered the request, and initially it declined the request, but following a further gas inspection it agreed to a re-location. However the resident was not happy with the landlord plans for this as it would affect the door. The landlord declined the residents request because the work would be extensive, highly costly, and therefore not something it would consider when a functional radiator was in place. This was not unreasonable, the landlord is within its rights to decide whether or not to make improvements to its properties, and economic factors will always be considered and are a justified reason for not progressing if they are not cost effective.
An email from the resident dated the 14 December 2021, which was five months later, identified that the radiator work had not been completed. It is unclear what had happened in the period since the end of July 2021 until this date, as there was no further information on the matter. Notably no evidence that either the resident or landlord had raised the issue again until this point. Consequently we are unable to assess or comment on whether any party was responsible in respect of this delay.
The resident asked in her email, for the works orders for the radiators to be re-instated, but the repairs team said it was unable to raise this order. It gave no explanation as to why it could not, but said the gas manager was working with other colleagues to arrange the works. Notwithstanding the history of the delays with this work, at the time the resident raised the issue again in December 2021, the landlord was aware the repairs had been identified 7 months ago. As a job order had been previously raised through the routine repairs system in July 2021, it is unclear why it could not be raised on this occasion, or furthermore, why it needed the landlords gas manager to arrange the works instead. Intervention by the Manager did not expedite or provide any resolution to the repairs, as the majority of the works had still not been completed when the resident made her formal complaint on 3 February 2022. This was not reasonable, with 7 months having passed since the repairs were identified, there was an expectation that the landlord would approach the matter with some level of urgency, especially as it was now winter. Failure to do so meant the landlord was not meeting its legal repairing responsibilities and had significantly exceeded its repairs policy response timeframe again.
There was also evidence through the stage one response in February 2022, that although a variety of radiator repairs had been identified and agreed by the landlord back in May 2021, it had only attempted to progress those from December 2021, that its operatives had identified individually, when attending to other heating repairs. This was not appropriate, it added to the delay, and it was providing the resident with confusing and conflicting information. The outstanding repairs had previously been identified as necessary and ordered; the orders should have just been reinstated when it became known in December 2021, that the repairs were not complete, to adhere to policy response guidelines and bring the matter to a resolution in a timely manner. The lounge radiator was a new addition to the list in December 2021, but raising jobs for the previously identified work would not have prevented this being discovered, as this came about from a job to fit a TRV to the radiator in the lounge, which was part of the works previously ordered.
The landlord acknowledged in its stage 1 response that there had been delays in recent service from its heating engineer, and that they had cancelled an appointment, at short notice. It apologised for this and awarded compensation, £20 from the contractor which was the standard amount in its compensation policy for missed appointments and £50 from itself.
The Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code suggests at stage 1, where the problem is a recurrent ongoing issue, the landlord should consider any older reports as part of the background to the complaint. The complaint investigation however did not pick up that radiator repairs had been identified and authorised back in May 2021, neither did it mention the residents chase up email on 14 December 2021, requesting works be reinstated. This was a service failing that missed the opportunity to get the repairs it was already aware of reordered, to resolve the issue for the resident and potentially could have prevented escalation of the complaint.
A further action from the complaint investigation, was for the landlords in-house gas inspector to attend to the residents property to address any remaining issues with the heating. This Services would question whether this was appropriate; the gas manager had already been involved with the radiator repairs since December 2021, the issues picked up by the gas inspector in this further inspection were not dissimilar to those identified in May 2021. The landlords default position seems to be, to send another officer to inspect each time the issue was raised, instead of more appropriately looking at the history and progressing the necessary repairs previous inspection have already identified.
The stage 2 review requested another inspection of the property. While this service understands that the inspection highlighted a number of outstanding repairs that were outside of this complaint, the inspection did not identify anything that was not already known in respect of the radiators, so was not necessary in order to resolve the substantive issue of this complaint. In-fact it is noted that the inspection did not address the bedroom radiators at all, which had previously been identified as insufficient for the room sizes. With no other evidence provided that the upgrades were followed through this was a service failing. Progressing the radiator repairs previously identified would have resulted in a quicker and more thorough resolution.
The stage 2 response did not uphold the residents complaint on the grounds that, the discussions between itself and the resident “over the layout of her property and the time taken to agree a final schedule of work”, did not constitute a service failure. The evidence provided to this Service, did not support that the delay in completing the radiator repairs were as a result of discussions over the layout of the residents property. A towel rail, larger radiators in the bedrooms and fitting TRVs to radiators in the hall and lounge were agreed in May 2021. At the appointment to fit a TRV to the living-room radiator 17 December 2021, the operative identified a larger radiator was required. There was no evidence of any discussion about the layout or spec for these repairs that would have delayed progression. The only discussions about the layout in respect of the radiators, was over the request to move the radiator in the hallway. This only continued because the landlord changed its original decision to reject the request, and then changed it back again. The evidence identified that the radiator repairs were not appropriately progressed on more than one occasion, which was a service failure.
The landlord not recognising this as a service failure means that it did not consider any redress in the matter which was also not reasonable.
The Code requires that any remedy proposed must be followed through to completion, as the remedies were repair’s they must also be completed in a reasonable amount of time. Evidence provided by the landlord post ICP identified that the delay in progressing the radiator works continued. Although the stage two response scheduled the date for the radiator repairs as 29 March 2022, it was not until the end of January / beginning of February 2023 that the works commenced, with balancing the system and replacing the TVRs. The towel rail was fitted 13 December 2023, and the hallway radiator was changed 24 January 2024. The lounge radiators have not been completed as the landlord has said it had “no record of the new under window radiators in the lounge being committed to”. No reasonable explanation was provided for this ongoing delay. The timeframes within which the residents radiator repairs were completed, could not be considered reasonable, the landlord failed in its repairing responsibilities.

Determination (decision)

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was maladministration in the landlords handling of the repairs to the resident’s radiators.

Reasons

There was clear evidence that the landlord failed to adhere to its responsive repairs policy when the repairs were identified in May 2021 and again when the issue was re-raised in December 2021. The landlord had not considered its previous knowledge of the repairs (May 2021), in its approach from December 2021, and as a result did not apply the level of urgency it should have done in completing the repairs. Its investigations into the matter, did not acknowledge some of its failings, and while there was no permanent impact on the resident, having insufficient heating in the winter, would have had an adverse effect on the resident for which the landlord did not consider appropriate redress. Furthermore having committed to putting things right for the resident in its final stage response, the delay in completing the radiator repairs continued, with some taking a further year to complete and some not being completed at all.

Orders and recommendations

The Ombudsman orders that within 4 weeks the landlord apologises to the resident.
The Ombudsman orders that within 4 wks the landlord pays the resident the sum of £600 (in addition to the compensation previously offered) for the failings identified in the handling of the residents radiator repairs.
The Ombudsman orders that the landlord within 4 wks updates the resident (providing a copy to this service) on its current position to upgrade the radiators previously identified as insufficient for the room sizes, in the living room and bedrooms of her property.
The landlord should reply to this Service within 4 weeks of the date of this report to evidence compliance with these orders.