The Riverside Group Limited (202452244)

Background

1. In January 2025, the landlord’s contractor visited the property to install a new extractor fan. During the visit, the contractor broke the resident’s mirror. The resident sought compensation for the damage and was unhappy with the landlord’s complaint handling.

What the complaint is about

2. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of:
   1. The damage.
   2. The complaint.

Our decision (determination)

3. There was:
   1. Reasonable redress in the landlord’s handling of the damage.
   2. Reasonable redress in the landlord’s handling of the complaint.

Reasons

The landlord’s handling of the damage

4. The landlord’s compensation policy says it may offer discretionary compensation if damage is caused by a contractor.
5. Although the landlord was unable to find a record of the contractor visit to the property in January 2025, it accepted the resident’s version of events and her evidence of the damage. However, it is a record keeping failure that the landlord could not find details of the visit, which it acknowledged in its complaint responses.
6. The resident told the landlord that it would cost her between £110 and £145 to replace the mirror. In the landlord’s complaint responses on 1 May 2025, it offered to compensate the resident £145 for her to replace the mirror. As such, a finding of reasonable redress has been made, as the offer adequately compensated the resident for the financial detriment of having to replace the broken mirror.

The landlord’s handling of the complaint

7. The landlord acknowledged the stage 1 complaint 17 days beyond its 3-working-day policy timescale and issued its response 57 days beyond its 10-working-day policy timescale. On each occasion, the landlord did not give the resident an update, causing her avoidable time and trouble having to contact it repeatedly for a response.
8. In the landlord’s stage 1 response, it offered the resident £50 compensation. This is in line with our remedies guidance for circumstances where a failure did not significantly affect the overall outcome. While the landlord’s complaint handling could have reasonably been improved, as receiving both stage 1 and 2 responses on the same day effectively denied the resident access to the advertised 2-stage complaints process, a finding of reasonable redress has been made as the offer was proportionate to acknowledge the complaint handling failures and the inconvenience this caused the resident.

Putting things right

Where we find service failure, maladministration or severe maladministration we can make orders for the landlord to put things right. We have the discretion to make recommendations in all other cases within our jurisdiction.

Recommendations

Our recommendations are not binding, and a landlord may decide not to follow them.