Southwark Council (201913530)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 201913530

Southwark Council

26 February 2021

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 requests for repairs to a wall in her garden.

Background and summary of events

2. The resident is the tenant of the landlord’s property. The property next door is privately owned and there is a fence leading up to a wall separating the gardens of the two properties.
3. On 18 June 2019 the resident wrote to the landlord. She said that it visited her home three weeks previously, but she had not received an update regarding the “falling down wall” between her and her neighbour’s properties.
4. The landlord replied on 19 June 2019 and apologised for its late response to the resident’s queries. It advised that it was waiting for its leasehold team to provide details of the owner of the neighbouring property, following which it would write to them about the “fence” (on several occasions through the life of this complaint the landlord refers to a fence instead of the wall. It is not clear whether the landlord misunderstood the issue and believed it concerned damage to the fence, or whether the landlord’s correspondence was misworded).
5. The resident replied on 19 June 2019 that she did not expect the landlord to replace her fences, she would do that when the wall was repaired. She asked for an update, noting that she could not “do [her] garden until the wall … [was] sorted”.
6. On 8 July 2019 the resident asked for an update and reiterated that the garden wall needed repair. The evidence provided does not indicate that the landlord responded.
7. The resident has advised that when the landlord visited her in November 2019 in relation to another issue, it told her that it did not rebuild broken garden walls, and advised her to contact the neighbour about the matter.
8. The resident wrote to the landlord on 14 November 2019. She said she had received an email from the landlord in July, saying that a contractor had visited. She asked what the visit had been for. She also said that she believed the landlord was responsible for repairing the wall, as it was attached to her house, and the landlord had built a wall at a neighbouring property, contrary to its statement that it did not rebuild broken garden walls.
9. Following contact from the resident, this Service wrote to the landlord on 23 January 2020. We asked it to contact the resident within three weeks with a proposed resolution and steps for moving forward about the wall repair.
10. The resident wrote to the landlord on 27 February 2020. She said that it had visited her on 10 February, but she had not heard anything more about her complaint. She asked who was going to repair the wall, and expressed dissatisfaction with the length of time the matter was taking.
11. The landlord wrote to the owner/occupier of the neighbouring property on 27 February 2020 regarding the “damaged back garden fence”. It explained that this was affecting the resident’s fence and asked that this was looked into as a matter of urgency, enclosing a photo.
12. The landlord sent a stage one complaint response to the resident on 3 March 2020. It did not mention the matter of the wall, but addressed the “damaged fence”, which it said was not its responsibility to repair. It confirmed that it had written to the resident of the neighbouring property.
13. On 8 July 2020 the resident wrote to the landlord saying that she still had not heard anything about the garden wall and, and, since it was last inspected, it had deteriorated further. She reiterated that she did not want a new fence or fence repairs; she had already erected a fence up to the wall. The resident said that she was told that the landlord was not responsible for the wall and it was going to consult the owner of the next–door property, but she had not heard from anyone.
14. An internal email dated 13 July 2020 states that the resident had asked to escalate her complaint.
15. On 14 July 2020 the landlord spoke with the tenant of the neighbouring property, who confirmed that the letter it had sent was received and passed to the estate agent who managed the property. The tenant gave the landlord the owner’s email address, and the landlord forwarded the letter to her.
16. The landlord sought an update from the owner of the neighbouring property, who confirmed on 15 July 2020 that she had passed the letter to her managing agent to deal with the matter. In the email the owner confirmed she would pay for the “fence”.
17. In the landlord’s final complaint response, dated 20 July 2020, it confirmed the actions it had taken in February and July to contact the owner of the neighbouring property and bring the wall issue to their attention. The landlord said that it was satisfied that it had tried to assist the resident with this matter. It acknowledged that, due to the pandemic, progress with the garden partition had been slower than the resident would like, but the owner/managing agent had been asked to deal with this matter. The landlord confirmed that its resident services officer would continue to try and make sure the matter was resolved.
18. Finally, the landlord confirmed that the resident had exhausted its complaint process and, if she remained dissatisfied, she could ask this Service to investigate her complaint.

Assessment and findings

19. The landlord explained to the resident that its understanding was that the owner of the neighbouring property was responsible for the maintenance of the garden wall. The owner confirmed that belief in her email of 15 July 2020.
20. Accordingly, the landlord was correct to conclude and explain that it was not responsible for resolving the damaged garden wall.
21. However, the resident first raised the issue of the damaged wall in June 2019. Despite an initial prompt promise to follow up the issue with the owner of the neighbouring property, there is no evidence that the landlord did as it said it would until February 2020. It also did not make its position on the responsibility for the wall clear to the resident until November 2019. Only after repeated follow up by the resident and intervention from this Service in January 2020 did the landlord start to take the action it had said it would in mid-2019. From that time matters proceeded reasonably, albeit still slowly. This appears to have been in large part due to the pandemic situation growing at the time, and the need for communication between a range of different parties.
22. As the landlord was not responsible for the wall, the matter would usually have fallen to the resident to resolve directly with the tenant or owner of the neighbouring property. Nonetheless, the landlord had agreed to make contact with the owner itself, and therefore established a reasonable expectation for the resident that it would assist with the problem. That it did so was in itself a positive step, but the significant periods where no action was taken was a service failure.

Determination (decision)

23. In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s requests for repairs to a wall in her garden.

Orders

24. In light of the service failure identified in this investigation, the landlord is ordered to pay the resident £175. This amount is in recognition of the significant delay, and the need for the resident to follow the matter up on multiple occasions.
25. This payment must be made within four weeks of the date of this report. The landlord should update this Service when payment has been made.