Southwark Council (202008460)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202008460

Southwark Council

31 May 2021


Our approach

What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction and is governed by the Housing Ombudsman Scheme. The Ombudsman must determine whether a complaint comes within their jurisdiction. The Ombudsman seeks to resolve disputes wherever possible but cannot investigate complaints that fall outside of this. 

In deciding whether a complaint falls within their jurisdiction, the Ombudsman will carefully consider all the evidence provided by the parties and the circumstances of the case.

The complaint

  1. The complaint is about the landlord’s response to the resident’s request for information regarding an incident that occurred in 2016 at his building.

Determination (jurisdictional decision)

  1. When a complaint is brought to the Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
  2. After carefully considering all the evidence, I have determined that the complaint, as set out above, is not within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.

Summary of events

  1. In the week prior to 15 August 2016 the resident was present when a child fell from a height at the building he lived at. Though the resident did not directly witness/observe the incident, he was on site shortly afterwards and provided medical assistance to the victim. On 15 August 2016 the landlord met with the resident and another neighbour to discuss the incident and get their account of what had occurred. The landlord’s records stated that “no further concerns were raised by the neighbours other than for the baby”.
  2. On 11 June 2020 the resident wrote to the landlord to raise a formal complaint. In this complaint, the resident requested information on what steps had been taken by the landlord to ensure that a similar incident did not occur in future. He stated that the incident had had a negative impact on his mental health and questioned why the landlord had not taken steps to assist him and other affected residents to access emotional support.
  3. On 30 June 2020 the landlord provided its stage one complaint response. It stated that it was unable to provide third party information about the incident due to GDPR restrictions.
  4. On 22 July 2020 the resident requested that the complaint be escalated on the grounds that he did not consider the response to be satisfactory. He requested that permission be sought from the family of the victim of the incident to allow information-sharing so that a more in-depth complaint response could be provided, given he was experiencing mental health difficulties and was having trouble obtaining help from the relevant services.
  5. On 27 August 2020 the landlord provided its final response. It noted that it had made enquiries with its various staff members and reviewed its policies, processes and the records available to it of the incident. It noted that it could not provide specific details about the incident in question due to GPDR restrictions, as set out in its stage one response. It further set out:
    1. It had considered his request for the landlord to contact the family of the victim and whether it was reasonable to disclose information about the incident in line with ICO guidance. It had decided that it was not appropriate for it to seek consent from the third party nor release the information without consent due to the nature of the incident.
    2. It typically would refer individuals affected by a significant event to counselling services if requested, but noted that its records did not suggest that a request for assistance in engaging with support services was received at the time of the incident.
    3. Beyond the clear absence of a request for signposting of the resident to medical assistance, there was no other information held about the resident’s interaction with the landlord in the time immediately following the incident on its files. It stated that this made it difficult to come to a judgement on how the matter was approached at the time, and it was therefore unable to identify any fault.

Reasons

  1. Paragraph 39(e) of the Scheme states that the Ombudsman will not investigate complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, were not brought to the attention of the member as a formal complaint within a reasonable period which would normally be within 6 months of the matters arising.
  2. The substantive incident to which the resident refers in his complaint in which the child fell from the building occurred in 2016. This was almost four years prior to the resident raising a formal complaint about the matter on 11 June 2020 in which he set out the negative impacts the incident had caused.
  3. It is unclear why a formal complaint was not raised by the resident until four years after the incident occurred. No evidence has been provided to demonstrate that the resident was unable to raise a formal complaint within a reasonable period of the matter occurring in August 2016. The evidence indicates that the landlord met with the resident to discuss the incident in the week following, and that no concerns were raised which would have required the landlord to take action to refer the resident to medical assistance.
  4. The landlord has also taken the reasonable position that the length of time between the incident occurring and the resident’s raising of a complaint made it difficult for it to assess the actions of staff at the time given the incident had taken place some considerable time before the complaint was made. The complaint is therefore outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction to consider.