Southern Housing (202231795)

Back to Top

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202231795

Southern Housing

18 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

  1. This complaint is about the landlord’s handling of:
    1. Repairs to the resident’s staircase.
    2. The associated complaint.

Background

  1. The resident holds an assured tenancy. The property is a 3-bedroom house.
  2. The landlord has listed the resident as having several vulnerabilities. These include Emotional Personality Disorder (EUPD), ADHD, OCD, anxiety and epilepsy. At the beginning of the complaints process, the resident was also pregnant.
  3. The resident contacted the landlord on 26 August 2022 to report her staircase was noisy and loose. She also informed it that a stair tread was broken. The landlord attended on 14 September 2022 to inspect and again on 21 September 2022 to complete follow-on works.
  4. The resident reported that the stairs were still noisy on 6 October 2022. She called the landlord on 9 December 2022 to report the stairs had broken, causing her to fall down the stairs whilst heavily pregnant. This resulted in her having her baby prematurely.
  5. The resident contacted the landlord to raise a complaint on 11 January 2023. She said she was unhappy with the state of the stairs. She said the landlord had done a poor job when relaying her carpet and that this had caused her to fall down the stairs on 2 separate occasions.
  6. The landlord attended on several occasions between January 2023 and April 2023. It eventually completed all repair works on 26 April 2023 to fix the staircase and replaced the carpet on the resident’s landing and staircase on 12 May 2023.
  7. The landlord sent its stage 1 complaint on 6 June 2023. It recognised that it had failed to manage the repairs properly causing them to be outstanding for far too long. It offered the resident a total of £610 compensation for its failings. This consisted of £60 for the failure to complete the repair, £25 for the delays in providing its stage 1 response, £25 for needing repeat visits to resolve the issues, £50 for unsatisfactory handling of her complaint and £450 for the distress and inconvenience these failings caused.
  8. The resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 of the complaints process on 7 June 2023. She said that, based on the information provided and the impact of the landlord’s failings, the compensation was not in line with what she expected.
  9. The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 16 August 2023. It increased its offer of compensation to £625, adding an additional £15 for failing to follow its process at stage 2 of the complaints policy. The landlord also explained in detail the reasons for the delays in completing the repairs, including having to test for asbestos and communication failures between departments.
  10. The resident contacted the Ombudsman on 16 August 2023 to ask us to consider her complaint. She said that she had fallen down the stairs whilst heavily pregnant due to the landlord’s failure to complete the outstanding repairs in a reasonable timeframe. She was also unhappy with how the landlord had dealt with her complaint by continually extending its response dates. To resolve her complaint, the resident asked for more compensation. The resident also told the Ombudsman that the landlord has now resolved her issues.

Assessment and findings

The scope of this investigation

  1. This investigation is unable to determine whether the landlord is liable for the resident’s injuries, nor to decide if compensation is due in that respect. This is in accordance with paragraph 42(f) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme which says the Ombudsman may not investigate complaints which concern matters where we consider it quicker, fairer, more reasonable or more effective to seek a remedy through the courts, a designated person, other tribunal or procedure. Therefore, this report will investigate whether the landlord acted fairly and in line with its policies in its response to the resident.

The landlord’s handling of the repairs to the resident’s staircase

  1. The landlord’s repair policy has 3 timescales for dealing with repairs. Priority 1 repairs cover those where there is an immediate threat to life or danger to the property. It says it will attend to these within 24 hours. Priority 2 refers to ‘a repair that does not pose an immediate risk to person or property and can be carried out by the appointment’. It says it will complete these types of repairs within 28 days of a resident’s report. Priority 3 repairs are those that take longer and often involve more than 1 trade. It says it will complete these works within 63 days. 
  2. The landlord acknowledged that its response to the repairs was insufficient and took far too long. Its repair timescales say the landlord should have completed repairs within 28 days of the resident first reporting her concerns with the staircase. It took the landlord 8 months to complete the repairs, and it was 9 months until it replaced the carpet it committed to. This was significantly outside the timescales published in its repairs policy.
  3. The landlord managed the repairs poorly. There were several occasions where it caused delays due to inaction. It failed to act on 7 October 2022 when a contractor recommended that a surveyor attend to consider how to proceed after it had raised a re-call with the contractor. The landlord did not take any action on this for at least 2 months when the resident made a new report.
  4. Following the resident’s reported fall on 9 December 2022, the landlord raised jobs however it never followed up on these. It did not visit the property until 16 January 2023, over a month after the resident had reported a serious fall. The landlord failed to effectively manage the repairs and show sufficient oversight.
  5. The landlord attended on several occasions to complete remedial repairs that turned out to be unsuccessful. This happened on 21 September 2022, 24 February 2023 and 25 March 2023. Given the contractor’s struggles to eradicate the noise of the staircase or fix them to an acceptable standard, the landlord should have considered arranging a survey of the stairs. This would have allowed it to consider a joined-up approach to any repairs as well as clearly being able to identify the root cause of any issues the resident was experiencing. As discussed above, a contractor had recommended the landlord take this course of action in October 2022.
  6. Given the ongoing reports, the landlord should have considered the use of a surveyor. This was something a contractor identified to it on 7 October 2022 and 26 October 2022. Its failure to do so potentially slowed the repairs process and led to an increased number of visits from its contractors without a clear plan for completing the overall work. This again represented a service failure.
  7. The resident contacted the landlord on 9 December 2022 to advise it that she had fallen due to the state of the staircase. In cases where a resident claims that they have sustained personal injury due to a landlord’s actions or inactions, it is appropriate for a landlord to refer a claim to its insurers or to advise residents to make a personal injury claim or seek independent legal advice. It is unreasonable that the landlord did not provide such advice to the resident. She will inevitably have felt that a serious aspect of her concerns went unanswered.
  8. The landlord did, however, recognise some of its failings. It offered the resident a total of £535 compensation for its failure to complete the repairs in a reasonable time of frame and for the distress and inconvenience that this caused her. However, the landlord did not identify its failure to provide the resident with information about her personal injury allegation. This meant that it did not fully put right its failings.
  9. The landlord should increase its offer of compensation to £700. This is in line with the amounts recommended in the Housing Ombudsman remedies guidance where there has been ‘a failure which had a significant impact on the resident’. The landlord should also write to the resident providing details of its insurer and the process for making a claim.

The landlord’s handling of the associated complaint

  1. The landlord’s complaints policy has 2 stages. At stage 1, it says it will acknowledge a complaint within 5 working days. It will then aim to provide its stage 1 complaint response within a further 10 working days. At stage 2, the landlord says it will aim to provide its response within 20 working days. The landlord says that there may be times when it is unable to provide a response within these timescales and that it will write to residents to inform them of this.
  2. The resident first raised her complaint on 11 January 2023. She received her stage 1 complaint response on 6 June 2023. This was 100 working days later. The landlord did however contact the resident to advise of the need for extensions on 3 separate occasions. The landlord did this on 30 March 2023, 19 April 2023 and 18 May 2023. The landlord writing to inform the resident of the delays was in line with the actions it said it would take in its complaints policy. However, the length of these delays and the frequency of the holding responses was inappropriate.
  3. The resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 on 7 June 2023. The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 16 August 2023. This was 50 working days later. Again, this was significantly outside of the timescales that the landlord states in its complaints policy. The resident told the Ombudsman that the landlord had extended the complaint response on 2 occasions, firstly to 6 August 2023 and secondly to 16 August 2023.
  4. The landlord acknowledged its failures at both stage 1 and stage 2 of the complaints policy. It offered £75 at stage 1 for unsatisfactory handling of the resident’s complaint as well as the delay. It also offered an additional £15 at stage 2 for its failure to follow its complaint process. Overall, this was an offer of £90 for the complaint handling failures.
  5. Whilst the Ombudsman recognises that the landlord’s response times fell outside of the times specified in its policy, it did keep the resident updated on its delays for the most part. It also attempted to manage the expectations of the resident by providing her with new expected response dates and the delays apparently did not affect the overall outcome. Given this, the landlord’s offer of compensation was sufficient to recognise the uncertainty caused by the delayed complaint responses.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of repairs to the resident’s staircase.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 53b of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was reasonable redress in the landlord’s handling of the associated complaint. 

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this letter, the landlord should:
    1. Pay the resident £700, inclusive of its offer of £535, for the distress and inconvenience caused to her by the failures in its handling the repairs to her staircase.
    2. Apologise to the resident for the failings identified in this report.
    3. Write to the resident to provide details of its insurer and guidance on the process of how to make a claim.
    4. Evidence to the Ombudsman that it has done so.

Recommendations

  1. If it has not already paid this, the landlord should reoffer the resident the £90 compensation that it made in its stage 2 complaint response for complaint handling failures. The landlord should note that our finding of reasonable redress is based upon the landlord paying the resident this amount.