Thames Valley Housing Association Limited (202016953)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202016953

Thames Valley Housing Association Limited

5 November 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 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:
1. The landlord’s handling of the resident’s communal electricity charges and refund.
2. The landlord’s handling of the resident’s associated complaint.

Background and summary of events

The resident is a leaseholder of the landlord at the property, and he is liable to pay a proportion of communal service charges, including for lighting common parts of the landlord’s estate.
The resident emailed the landlord on 22 May 2018, querying the amount of his share of the communal electricity bill up to 10 January 2017. He stated that the readings on the bill were much higher than the ones that he had taken from his own electricity meter, despite the communal bill only being for two lamp posts.
The resident contacted the landlord again on 7 March 2019, querying that the charge for communal electricity was not included in the estimated service charges for 2019-20 that had recently been provided by it, which had followed previous bills for this by the energy supplier without the correct meter readings.
The landlord subsequently emailed the resident on 26 March 2019, advising that the above estimated electricity charges were omitted from the service charge estimate for the forthcoming financial year because these had yet not been billed by the energy supplier. It therefore explained that it would add an estimated electricity charge based on the resident’s previous two years’ usage, which it would send to him.
The landlord then sent the resident a revised service charge bill on 2 April 2019, which included his share of the communal lighting and electricity costs.
On 10 October 2019, the landlord sent the resident a breakdown of communal electricity and water charges from April 2016 to March 2019, at his request.
The landlord emailed the resident again on 15 October 2019, adding that it appeared from a review of the invoices that no actual meter readings had been taken by the energy supplier for a considerable period of time. It therefore agreed to query the high estimated electricity charges compared to a recent meter reading in October 2019 with the energy supplier, and to inform him accordingly.
The resident subsequently emailed the energy supplier pictures of the electricity meter in 2018 and on 18 October 2019, showing that day’s reading of 9751.
The landlord then emailed the resident on 23 October 2019, advising him that it had asked to be billed by the energy supplier to the reading taken by its estate manager on 2 October 2019. It agreed to update him on the energy supplier’s response, and it explained that the estimated readings were being investigated by supplier’s metering team.
On 20 December 2019, an email sent from the energy supplier to the landlord advised that the electricity meter was deleted from their systems because this could not be found on site by the supplier in 2017, and that the landlord had been receiving estimated bills ever since. The energy supplier advised that they could not amend data that was more than 12 months old, and so the billing would be recommenced from 5 November 2018 with a reading of 9346.
The resident subsequently emailed the landlord on both 1 and 9 July 2020 regarding a lack of responses from it to his previous correspondence from 16 June 2020, asking whether any progress had been made in relation to the incorrect communal electricity bills received from the energy supplier.
The landlord then emailed the resident on 22 July 2020 to explain that it had tried twice to call the resident about the communal electricity bills, but that it was unable to get through to him.
An email from energy supplier to the resident suggesting that a refund request be made to them by him was passed by the resident to the landlord on 24 July 2020 after he had received this on the same date, in which the supplier asked him to confirm that the refund that he was seeking was for £1,986.03.
An email was subsequently sent from landlord to the resident following a chasing call from him to it on 14 August 2020, advising him that his service charge query was being dealt with by it, but that the person dealing with this at the energy supplier was on maternity leave and that someone else there was having to look at this afresh.
An internal email from the landlord to its service charge team was sent on 14 August 2020, with the officer dealing with this passing on the resident’s report that he had received no further acknowledgements or contact from it regarding his electricity charge refunds and meter readings. The officer added that the resident had also reported that his messages about this were going unanswered.
The resident emailed the landlord on 15 September 2020 asking for the monthly update on the energy supplier’s monthly bills that he had been promised by it in August 2020. The landlord replied to him on 16 September 2020 that he could not be updated on this by it because it had not yet received the necessary credit note from the finance department to enable it to do so, but that it had attached its correspondence with the energy supplier instead.
The resident emailed the landlord again on the same subject on 16 October 2020, and he received a from it reply on 20 October 2020 promising him an update by the end of November 2020,when the credit notes should be loaded on to its system for the present financial year. System migration was cited by it as the cause of the delay in uploading these.
The resident then emailed the landlord on 1 December 2020 complaining that the above updates had still not been received by him from it. The officer responsible was later asked by it on 4 December 2020 to contact him by the end of that day, as he had called it to chase this on the same date.
The landlord subsequently sent the resident a breakdown of unaudited electricity charges’ credit notes for the financial year 2020-21 on 7 December 2020. He was advised that these would not be applied to his account until these had been audited, and that there might be more charges and credits applied to the account before the financial year’s end.
The resident then submitted a stage one complaint to the landlord by telephone on 9 December 2020 about his service charges for its communal electricity meter payments, he was given the name of the investigating officer, and a response to this was promised by 23 December 2020. An email acknowledgement was sent by the landlord to him for this on the same day as the complaint.
The resident subsequently emailed the landlord on 23 December 2020 to report that he had not received a response to his stage one complaint from it by the above promised date.
The landlord replied to the resident on 6 January 2021 apologising for the lack of a stage one complaint response to him, and it said that this was due to technical issues but that it would now seek to respond to him, although its response was not provided to this Service. The landlord then emailed the resident again on 6 January 2021, following his request on the same date for a conversation with it and for a more detailed response to the complex, over two-year-old matter to ensure that this did not happen again, for which it offered a telephone call after 4pm on that day.
The landlord then emailed the resident with details of the sinking fund at his request on 13 January 2021. It also agreed to seek to resolve his account and to respond to him about this by 20 January 2021.
Emails were later sent from the resident to the landlord on 29 January and 3 February 2021 asking for a resolution date from it for his stage one complaint.
The resident subsequently requested the escalation of his above complaint by the landlord to a final stage two complaint on 5 February 2021, as he explained that he had not received the response or call back that he had requested from it, and it had exceeded its resolution timescale for the complaint.
Further emails from the resident to the landlord on 10 February 2021 were sent to report that he had received no replies from it to his above emails, and seeking an update from it on his communal electricity charges, for which he had contacted the energy supplier.
Another internal email was sent for the resident by the landlord on 16 February 2021, reporting that he had called it on that date to explain that he had received no response from it since he had requested the above escalation of his complaint to stage two, and asking for a resolution date.
Internal emails were sent by the landlord on 23 and 26 February 2021, noting that the resident had not received a stage one complaint response from it, and requesting confirmation that the complaint had been escalated to stage two and urging a response to this.
Another internal email by the landlord asking for an urgent response to the resident was sent by it on 5 March 2021 following further emails from him chasing this on that and the previous day. The landlord then emailed the resident on 5 March 2021, apologising to him, saying that the electricity charges were being examined, and that they needed clarification from the energy supplier before the accounts could be signed off and the matter resolved.
A further email was sent from the resident to the landlord on 5 March 2021, asking for its manual confirmation of receipt of this email and that the complaint has been escalated to stage two.
Another email was sent from the resident to the landlord on 16 March 2021, urging it to issue its response to his complaint and to his previous enquiry about the 2019-20 service charges of 10 February 2021.
Following a request from the resident, a letter was sent from this Service to the landlord on 25 March 2021, advising it that he had reported to us that his final stage two complaint had not yet been responded to, and requesting a written response to this within 20 working days.
This was after the resident had telephoned this Service on 25 March 2021, saying that the landlord had erroneously believed that the above complaint was only about poor communication from the service charge team rather than him being overcharged by it for his communal electricity charges.
A subsequent email from the resident to the landlord was sent on 27 April 2021, again urging it to issue a response to the complaint about his communal electricity charges, which was later on the same day also urged by it internally from the person dealing with this.
Further correspondence was sent by this Service on 27 April 2021 to the landlord, advising that we had been informed that it had not responded to the resident’s final stage two complaint, and requesting a reply from it to this within five working days.
An email from the landlord was sent to this Service on 30 April 2021, advising us that it would contact the resident, and that it would investigate and escalate his final stage two complaint as necessary.
An email was sent from the landlord to the resident on 4 May 2021, confirming that his complaint had been escalated to stage two of its complaints procedure, and that a final complaint response will be provided by it to him by 1 June 2021.
Another email was sent from the landlord to the resident on 7 May 2021, advising that he would get a telephone call from it to discuss his complaint and agree a timeline for a resolution to this early in the following week.
The stage two final complaint response from landlord was then issued by it to the resident on 26 May 2021, acknowledging that there had been service failure in the way in which it had handled the complaint, apologising to him for this, and identifying training needs and people accountability issues. It explained that it was dealing with the latter by working in accordance with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, and via its four-year service charge improvement programme that it had commenced in 2020. The resident was therefore offered a total of £500 compensation by the landlord, which was broken down into £200 for its service failure, £150 for his time and trouble, and £150 for its poor complaints handling.
The landlord subsequently emailed the resident again on 13 July 2021, apologising for the delay in paying the above compensation to him due to the departure of a member of its staff, and offering him an extra £50 compensation to reflect this failure that it agreed to process and now pay to him with the rest of the compensation.
The resident then complained to this Service that the landlord had not contacted him about his communal electricity service charges as it had previously agreed to do so regularly or explained how far back it would investigate these, which he considered should be for seven to eight years. He added that his future service charges had been calculated and increased by it based on the disputed electricity bills for the communal charges from the previous year. The resident also told us that he was dissatisfied with how long the landlord was taking to investigate and arrange a refund for him being overcharged for electricity, which had been ongoing for three years and that he requested all of its invoices from the energy supplier for, so that he could see how any refunds were calculated.

Assessment and findings

Agreement, policies and processes

The resident is liable under the terms of his lease to pay the landlord a proportion of the communal electricity charge incurred by it in providing adequate lighting to the common parts of the estate.
The landlord’s compensation policy gives it discretion to award compensation to its residents for its service failures, their time and trouble, and its poor complaint handling for a high level of failure on its part from £150.
The landlord’s complaints policy provides for a two-stage complaints process. Stage one complaints will be acknowledged within five working days of receipt, and a response will be issued within ten days of the acknowledgement. If the resident believes that the complaint has not been resolved within 20 working days of the stage one response, a stage two review will take place. This will be acknowledged within five working days of the escalation request, and a final complaint response will be sent within 20 days of the acknowledgment, for which the landlord is able to agree a further extension with the resident of up to 30 days in total.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s communal electricity charges and refund

The landlord’s final stage complaint response of 26 May 2021 accepted that the resident’s issue with his communal electricity charges and refund for these had taken longer to resolve than was necessary, which had caused a considerable amount of distress and inconvenience to the resident. It also explained throughout the course of his case, however, that this delay was, in part, caused by the failure of the energy supplier to respond to requests for information and action from the landlord from at least 15 October 2019 to 5 March 2021 onwards. This investigation is therefore restricted to those matters that were within the landlord’s control, as the actions and omissions of the energy supplier, not being a member of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, are outside of this Service’s jurisdiction to consider.
The Ombudsman also notes that the resident has raised additional issues following the exhaustion of the landlord’s complaints procedure. These included that it did not regularly contact him about his communal electricity service charges as it had agreed to, that it failed to explain how far back it would investigate these, that his service charges were still being based on incorrect estimated electricity bills, and the further information that he had requested from it for his service charge refund. The landlord has nevertheless not yet had the opportunity to respond to these issues through its complaints procedure, as there is no evidence that they have exhausted the procedure, and therefore these also fall outside of the scope of this investigation.
The resident had to contact the landlord a large number of times about his communal electricity charges and refund for these from 7 March 2019 onwards. This was to inform it from at least that date that these charges had continued to be based on incorrect meter readings, and that they had not been included the estimated service charges on that occasion, following his initial report to it of the former on 22 May 2018. Many of the resident’s subsequent emails to the landlord were, however, purely to request a reply to his earlier unanswered emails to it about this, including on 1 and 9 July, 14 August, 15 September, 16 October, and 1 and 4 December 2020, as well as on 10 February and 16 March 2021.
The resident dealt with several members of the landlord’s staff in different departments with regard to his communal electricity charges and refund queries on the above dates, including its service charge team and various other officers who chased a response to him from that team. The resolution of his queries may have therefore been hampered by the lack of a single point of contact for him with it about these issues, to enable him to have consistently received regular updates from it without him or it having to chase these.
The resident sent the above emails to the landlord regularly, and he also provided the energy supplier with pictures of his electricity meter readings on 18 October 2019, to assist with resolving his communal electricity charges and refund queries. The landlord responded to him by sending a revised service charge bill including his communal electricity costs on 2 April 2019, a breakdown of his communal electricity charges from April 2016 to March 2019 on 10 October 2019, and a breakdown of his unaudited electricity charges for 2020-21 on 7 December 2020.
The landlord was nevertheless unable to provide the resident with a conclusion to his communal electricity charges and refund queries despite it liaising with the energy supplier about these. It did so on 23 October 2019 when it asked to be billed by the energy supplier to a recent meter reading taken by it, and on 20 December 2019 when the energy supplier advised it that the meter was deleted from their systems and that they could not amend data that was more than 12 months old. The landlord also subsequently confirmed to the resident on 14 August 2020 that the person dealing with his queries at the energy supplier was on maternity leave, and that someone else there was having to looking at this afresh.
The energy supplier additionally suggested to the resident that a communal electricity charges refund request be made to them by him on 24 July 2020, when they asked him to confirm that the refund that he was seeking was for £1,986.03. This indicated that it would have been appropriate for him to pursue his queries regarding the charges and the refund with the energy supplier directly, as well as that they had made a substantial contribution to the landlord’s delays in responding to him about this. This was together with the energy supplier’s above lack of meter readings, records and staff absence.
The resident went to a significant amount of time and trouble to seek a resolution to his communal electricity charges and refund queries during the above period, but the above failures by both the landlord and the energy supplier contributed to the prolonged length of time that he had to seek this for. It was, however, unacceptable for the landlord to explain to the resident, on 16 September and 20 October 2020, that the monthly updates on the energy supplier’s bills that he reported had been promised to him by it in August 2020 had failed to have been provided.
The landlord stated that this was because the necessary confirmation of these from credit notes had not been uploaded by its finance department due to system migration. This was nevertheless entirely within its control, in the form of its communication with its own departments and use of its own systems, unlike the above issues with the energy supplier.
It is also of concern that the resident told this Service on 25 March 2021 that the landlord had incorrectly believed that his case was about poor communication by its service charge team rather than a reported overcharge for communal electricity. It is additionally concerning that it was unable to resolve this in its stage two final complaint response to him of 26 May 2021. Although it is understandable that the landlord might not necessarily have been able to do so given its above difficulties with the energy supplier, and their suggestion that the resident should have made his refund request for the overcharge directly to them.
When the response to the resident’s final stage two complaint was issued on 26 May 2021, however, the landlord acknowledged its above failures to him, apologised for these, and identified training needs and people accountability issues to be addressed by it. This included via its four-year service charge improvement programme that it had commenced in 2020, and this was appropriate because it demonstrated that it had recognised its shortcomings in his case, and that it had taken steps to learn from these that showed that it intended for such incidents to not be repeated again in the future.
The landlord also sought to put right its failings in the resident’s communal electricity charges and refund case in accordance with its above compensation policy, which was suitable. This is because its final complaint response awarded him £200 compensation for its service failure, and £150 compensation for his time and trouble in progressing his case, which were proportionate to recognise these in line with the policy’s recommendation that it do so for high level failures for these items from £150.
The landlord additionally agreed to compensate the resident with an additional £50 payment to recognise the delay in paying the initial award of compensation to him on 13 July 2021, which was reasonable. It is of concern, however, that the resident reports that his requests to it for updates and information on his communal electricity charges and refund remain unresolved, and so it has been recommended below to respond to his requests for these, as well as to pay him the above compensation if he has not received this already.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s associated complaint

The landlord failed to respond to the resident’s stage one complaint of 9 December 2020 within the ten-day timescale of its acknowledgement on that date stated in its above complaints policy. It subsequently said in an email to the resident on 6 January 2021 that this was due to technical issues and that it would now provide its stage one response to him, but the response was not provided to this Service, and it later suggested on 23 and 26 February 2021 that it had not issued him with a stage one response. This reportedly caused the resident to escalate the complaint to stage two on 5 February 2021. The timeliness and provision of the stage one response was nevertheless within the control of the landlord, and so it was not acceptable that it failed to issue this in a timely manner or at all.
It was also inappropriate that the resident should have to chase the landlord to urge it to issue him with a stage one complaint response, as he did by email on 29 January and 3 February 2021. It is noted with concern that, even if the date of the complaint was extended to the date that the resident was advised by it of its technical problems on 6 January 2021, the response would still have subsequently been late and outstanding.
It is further concerning that no acknowledgement to the above final stage two complaint was sent to the resident by the landlord. This was contrary to the above five-working-day timescale for this in its complaints policy, causing him to email the landlord on 10 February 2021 to urge it to provide him with a resolution date for the complaint.
It was not until this Service contacted the landlord on 27 April 2021, however, that it appeared that its investigation of the resident’s final stage two complaint to it commenced. The resident was not advised of this by it until 4 May 2021. This conduct by the landlord in not acknowledging the complaint, or responding to this within its complaints policy’s above 20-day timescale of the acknowledgement but 83 days later than this on 26 May 2021, was unreasonable.
It was encouraging by the landlord, but it also should have been unnecessary on its part, that the above internal emails were sent between its staff on 23 and 26 February 2021, seeking confirmation that the resident’s final stage two complaint had been escalated by it and urging a response to this.
While the above emails provided to this Service illustrated the landlord’s above complaint handling failings, it is noted that there were also small number of telephone calls referred to in its complaint correspondence, of which there were no notes that slightly impaired our ability to completely assess the landlord’s complaint handling.
The landlord nevertheless went on to put right its above failures in handling the resident’s complaints in its final complaint response to him of 26 May 2021. It did so by accepting and apologising to him for these, identifying training needs and people accountability issues to be addressed by it, agreeing to follow the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, and recognising its failings with proportionate compensation in accordance with its compensation policy.
The landlord did the latter by awarding the resident £150 compensation for its poor complaint handling, which the policy recommended above for a high level of a failure for this, which was appropriate and so it has been recommended to pay this to him below, if it has not already done so.

Determination (decision)

In accordance with paragraph 55(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has offered redress to the resident prior to investigation which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves the complaint satisfactorily in respect of:
1. Its handling of his communal electricity charges and refund.
2. Its handling of his associated complaint.
This decision is dependent on the below recommendations being followed by the landlord.

Reasons

While the landlord delayed responding to the resident’s communal electricity charges and refund queries and it was unable to complete a resolution to these, these delays were, in part, under the control of the energy supplier and arose following their lack of response to communications from the landlord.
The landlord acknowledged the above failures, and its unreasonable complaint handling delays, in its final stage two response to the resident, and it apologised to and made a £500 total compensation offer to the resident and identified training and people accountability issues to be addressed for these. This demonstrated a desire on its part to both compensate the resident proportionately for its failings, and to learn lessons for the future to seek to prevent their recurrence.
The landlord also offered the resident an additional £50 compensation for delayed payment of the above original compensation amount to him. This reinforced its subsequent commitment to good customer service.

Recommendations

It is recommended that the landlord:
1. Pay the resident the £550 total compensation that it previously awarded to him, if it has not already done so.
2. Implement the training and people accountability issues identified by it from its handling of the resident’s complaint, including in relation to following its four-year service charge improvement programme and the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
3. Respond to the resident’s requests for regular updates on his communal electricity service charges and refund, an explanation as to far back it will investigate these, and its invoices from the energy supplier.
The landlord should contact this Service within four weeks to confirm whether it will follow the above recommendations.
The Ombudsman accepts that, because of the present restrictions due to the corona virus pandemic, the timing of the above actions will depend on what is reasonable in the light of Government guidance regarding the health of the resident and of the landlord’s staff.