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Southwark Council (202415988)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202415988

Southwark Council

26 August 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. The resident’s complaint is about the landlord’s response to his request for compensation for the loss of communal heating and hot water.

Background

  1. The resident is a leaseholder of the property. The property is a 3-bedroom maisonette. The property’s heating and hot water comes from a communal boiler.
  2. On 8 February 2024 the communal boiler was turned off due to a defective flue. The landlord fitted a temporary boiler on 9 February 2024 with heating and hot water resuming to all properties on 10 February 2024.
  3. The resident complained to the landlord on 3 April 2024. He said he had applied for compensation for loss of heating and hot water on 2 March 2024. He had not had a response from the landlord.
  4. The landlord issued its stage 1 response on 24 April 2024. It said:
    1. A form was submitted by the resident on 2 March 2024. It had not been forwarded to the complaints team for a response. The landlord apologised.
    2. Compensation payments were processed in the quarter following the outage. The resident’s payment would be processed next week.
  5. The resident escalated his complaint on 3 June 2024. He asked the landlord why he had not received the compensation payment. He felt he had to “fight” for something he was entitled to.
  6. The landlord gave its stage 2 response on 16 July 2024. It said:
    1. There had been no other outages over 24 hours from January to June 2024.
    2. It told the resident on 10 June 2024 that the compensation payment would be applied by the end of that week.
    3. £3 compensation was applied to the resident’s service charge account on 17 June 2024.
    4. It understood the resident’s frustration however it had provided reimbursement in line with its compensation policy.
  7. The resident referred his complaint to us on 21 July 2024. He said the landlord had not kept to its compensation policy. He told us he had no heating and hot water for 2 days and should have received £6 compensation.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. We are aware the resident had concerns regarding heating and hot water outages for several years. Our investigation will assess the landlord’s response to the compensation request for loss of heating and hot water from 8 February 2024 to 10 February 2024. This is because this was the matter raised with the landlord as the resident’s formal complaint.
  2. The resident did not raise his concerns about earlier outages in his complaint to the landlord. It has therefore not had an opportunity to provide a response under its complaints procedure. As we can only consider complaints about matters that have exhausted a landlord’s complaints procedure, we have not considered these concerns in this report.

The landlord’s response to the resident’s request for compensation for the loss of communal heating and hot water.

  1. The landlord’s compensation policy states: “For communal heating or hot water outages lasting longer than 24 hours [the landlord] will automatically pay £3 for each whole day for the duration of the outage”.
  2. The landlord’s compensation policy states the landlord will automatically pay the compensation once per quarter.
  3. The resident did not receive a response to his request for compensation on 2 March 2024. The landlord provided an apology for this in its stage 1 response. It was appropriate for the landlord to apologise as the lack of communication would have caused the resident some frustration.
  4. The resident told us the landlord’s stage 2 response included inaccurate information regarding the number of outages. We have seen evidence of other heating and hot water outages between January 2024 and June 2024 but none exceeding 24 hours. It was positive for the landlord to review further outages so it could review if it was appropriate for further compensation to be considered.
  5. The resident said he was due £6 compensation. The evidence shows the total heating and hot water outage time was 43 and a half hours. Under its compensation policy, the landlord was required to pay £3 compensation. This is because the supply was off for one whole 24-hour period.
  6. On 3 June 2024 the resident chased the landlord as he had not received the compensation payment. The landlord responded on 10 June 2024 stating the payment would be applied by the end of the week. The payment was credited to the resident’s account on 17 June 2024.
  7. The landlord told the resident compensation payments were made in the quarter following the outage. The compensation policy does not make this clear and states “once per quarter”. This could have been confusing for the resident.
  8. We find reasonable redress in the landlord’s response to the resident’s request for compensation relating to a loss of communal heating and hot water. We acknowledge that there was an administrative error however the landlord appropriately apologised. It did not meet the resident’s expectations by not paying the compensation when it said it would however in our opinion there was little detriment to the resident. The landlord appropriately paid £3 compensation within the timescales of its policy.

Determination

  1. In accordance with 53.b of the Scheme, the landlord made an offer of redress, which in our opinion, resolved the complaint about the landlord’s response to the resident’s request for compensation for the loss of communal heating and hot water.

Recommendation

  1. We recommend the landlord considers our comments about the wording of its compensation policy when it is next reviewed and updated.