Tower Hamlets Homes (202317945)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202317945

Tower Hamlets Homes

28 November 2024

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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of:
1. The resident’s report of a leak affecting the property.
2. The associated complaint.

Background

The resident is the leaseholder of the property, a 2 bedroom purpose built flat. The local authority landlord is the freeholder. The landlord has no recorded vulnerabilities for the resident. However during the course of the complaint, the resident told the landlord she suffered from respiratory conditions, including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The resident told the landlord that a damp patch had appeared on her bedroom ceiling on 4 January 2023. The landlord inspected the property on 25 January 2023 and confirmed there was a leak from the external wall or roof. The resident later discovered that her neighbour had reported a similar leak 2 months prior and the landlord had ordered scaffolding. However, no work had gone ahead.
The resident raised a complaint to the landlord on 27 January 2023. She felt the landlord’s failure to repair the leak reported by her neighbour had led to the leak affecting her property. She was also unhappy that the landlord had failed to attend booked appointments to inspect her property after she reported the damp patch.
The landlord responded at stage 1 on 10 February 2023. It said that its roofers had attended on 3 February 2023 and confirmed scaffolding was required to complete a full roof survey. The scaffold was due to be erected on 17 February 2023. The landlord apologised that the issue hadn’t been followed up sooner and confirmed any damage to the property caused by the leak should be claimed on insurance. It provided details of how to make a claim to its own insurers and offered £100 compensation.
The resident asked to escalate the complaint on 27 February 2023 due to ongoing concerns about recurring leaks. She was also unhappy with the landlord’s offer of compensation. The landlord logged the escalation on 22 March 2023. The landlord responded at stage 2 on 10 May 2023. It apologised for the delays installing the scaffolding which it said were caused by inclement weather and backlogs in workload caused by the Christmas period. The scaffolding also had to be adapted which caused a further delay. It confirmed it had completed a gutter clearance and roof repair work on 20 March 2023. It reiterated its stance on damage caused and provided details again on how to make a claim against its insurance. The landlord increased the overall offer of compensation to £150 in recognition of the additional delays and inconvenience the resident may have suffered.
The resident remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response and escalated the matter to this Service in August 2023. She said she remained unhappy with the landlord’s handling of the leak and offer of compensation.
It is relevant to note that after the landlord issued its final response, the resident referred the matter to the insurers in May 2023 who commenced investigations into liability for putting right the damage caused to the resident’s property. The resident also sought legal advice and commenced a disrepair claim in November 2023. In July 2024 the landlord confirmed to the resident that it had closed the disrepair file as there was no actionable disrepair identified in the property.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

The resident’s initial complaint and landlord’s stage 1 response contained information related to repairs reported by the resident’s neighbour. The complaint raised to this Service related to the landlord’s handling of the matters impacting the resident’s property alone and the compensation offered to the resident. For the avoidance of doubt, no assessment has been made of the landlord’s handling of the reports of repairs made by the neighbour. However, issues with the neighbouring property may be mentioned to provide context.
After exhausting the landlord’s internal complaints procedure, the resident made an insurance claim to make good the damage caused within her property. The evidence shared with this Service notes that the resident was dissatisfied with the quality of the work and that there was a query about the ongoing liability for the work. This Service cannot investigate matters of liability, which would be a matter better dealt with by the courts. Nor can it assess the action taken by the insurers, which would be a matter to be raised with the insurers directly and escalated to the Financial Ombudsman Service in due course if required.
The resident made this Service aware that she continues to have issues with the roof and guttering at the property. This Service can only investigate matters which a landlord has had the opportunity to investigate through its own internal complaints procedure. For this reason, the scope of this investigation is limited to the landlord’s handling of the leak reported in January 2023 about which the landlord issued its final complaint response in May 2023.

The resident’s report of a leak affecting the property

The lease confirms that the landlord is responsible for maintaining and repairing the main structure of the building, including the roof and exterior walls. The lease also confirms that the resident is responsible for the repair of all internal plastered coverings and plaster work of the walls and ceilings within the flat.
The resident first made the landlord aware of the issue on 4 January 2023. She reported that a damp patch had appeared on the ceiling in her bedroom and that this was extending down onto the walls. The landlord arranged for its plumber to inspect the property on the morning of 17 January 2023. However, it did not attend until the afternoon when the resident was unavailable. The landlord asked for photos of the issue and rebooked the inspection for 25 January 2023. It failed to attend in the morning as planned and instead attended in the afternoon at the resident’s request. The plumber confirmed there was a leak and noted scaffolding was required to inspect the issue from the outside. The landlord’s repairs policy notes it will attend to non-emergency jobs, such as this, within 20 working days and it met this timescale. This was appropriate.
Following the plumbing inspection on 25 January 2023, the landlord:
1. Sent a roofer to inspect on 3 February 2023. The roofer also confirmed scaffolding would be required to fully survey the roof.
2. Erected the scaffolding on 17 February 2023.
3. Identified that changes to the scaffolding were required to enable access to all areas of the roof and gutters on 20 February 2023.
4. Completed the changes to the scaffolding on 6 March 2023.
5. Completed repairs to the roof and cleared the gutters on 20 March 2023.
The landlord’s repairs policy notes that some repairs fall outside of its usual timescales, for example if they require scaffolding. It does not suggest a reasonable time period in which the scaffolding might be erected. In this case, the landlord took 53 working days to complete the repairs from the report of the issue in the resident’s property. Considering this timeframe included erecting the scaffolding, inspecting and repairing the roof, this was a reasonable timescale and no failures have been identified in the landlord’s handling of this. The landlord also apologised for the delays in completing the work in its complaint responses which was appropriate.
In her complaint, the resident explained that she felt the landlord had failed to act on her neighbour’s reported leak in November 2022. She suggested if it had done so then it may have prevented the leak from spreading to affect her property. In its stage 1 response, the landlord acknowledged it had approved for the scaffolding to be erected on 24 November 2022 but this had not gone ahead. In its stage 2 response it suggested the failure to erect the scaffolding was caused by inclement weather conditions and a backlog of works over the Christmas period.
This Service is not able to speculate about any potential outcomes if the work had been completed in November 2022 and whether the resident’s property would have been affected. Furthermore, as this work related to a neighbouring property, no evidence has been supplied to this Service in relation to these jobs. However, we can assess the landlord’s response to this matter.
In its stage 1 response, the landlord acknowledged that it had previously inspected the neighbouring property and apologised for the delays in erecting the scaffolding. It acknowledged that it should have followed up on the roof issue sooner and offered £100 compensation for the “sub-standard service” the resident had received. The landlord increased this offer to £150 in it stage 2 response in recognition of the further delays experienced following the stage 1 response. This is within the range of awards, as outlined in this Service’s remedies guidance, for failures which adversely affected the resident. However, the landlord failed to consider the resident’s potential vulnerabilities when making this offer.
The resident sought legal advice about the leak and her solicitor contacted the landlord on 27 February 2023. The solicitor advised the landlord that, due to the resident’s health conditions, she could not use her bedroom while the area was damp. There is no evidence that the landlord acknowledged the resident’s health concerns or considered any obligations it might have under the Equality Act. Nor did it address the fact that the resident considered the room to be uninhabitable. By not responding to this concern in a timely manner, the landlord missed the opportunity to make further enquiries into this or confirm if it considered the room uninhabitable. The landlord is ordered to apologise to the resident for failing to consider her potential vulnerability in its responses.
The landlord’s compensation policy says that leaseholders that have lost the use of 1 or more rooms because of a landlord fault will receive compensation on a case by case basis. This may take the form of 1 off compensation payments. On this basis, it was inappropriate that the landlord failed to consider whether a 1 off payment of compensation was appropriate.
The landlord’s compensation policy says that it will consider the severity and the impact of the distress when calculating offers of compensation. We have not seen any record of the resident or her solicitor providing the landlord with any evidence or details about the length of time the room was uninhabitable and the severity and impact of any distress. It would have been inconvenient for the resident to lose access to the bedroom. However, the resident did have access to a 2nd bedroom which was unaffected by the leak. Therefore, the severity of the situation and the impact on the resident were reduced. In line with this Service’s remedies guidance, an order for compensation of £50 has been made below. This is within the range of awards set out in our remedies guidance for failures which the landlord did not fully put right.
In her complaint, the resident raised a concern that damage had been caused to her property as a result of the leak. In both its complaint responses, the landlord included information on how to make a claim for damage caused to the resident’s property. It noted that she believed the damage was caused by negligence on the landlord’s part and provided a link to make a claim against its insurance policy on this basis. It also advised the resident to contact her own insurance provider. This was an appropriate response to the resident’s comments about damage. This Service has been made aware that the resident did make a claim on insurance following the landlord’s final response.
On 21 March 2023 the resident told the landlord that its contractors did not appear to know what job they were being asked to carry out. She reported attendances from contractors in March 2023 who had asked to inspect her property again to identify where the leak was. She felt this was unnecessary given the inspections that had already happened and the photos that had been taken. The evidence shows that the resident refused access to the contractor who was due to complete the repointing to the brickwork on 21 March 2023. As a result, the contractor repointed the areas of brickwork that appeared to need repointing (around the resident’s bedroom window) and brick sealed the entire wall. The landlord explained to the resident that it was normal for a contractor to need to see the affected area. Although it was understandably frustrating for the resident having contractors repeat the inspections, it was not unreasonable that the contractor wanted to confirm the location of the leak prior to completing the works.
On 20 April 2023 the resident made a new complaint to the landlord about the repointing work done to the property and the landlord’s failure to install gutter guards to prevent future guttering issues. It is noted that the resident raised a query in 2015 about gutter guards and the landlord informed the resident that it would not be installing these as they can cause more issues than they solve. This Service has not seen or assessed the landlord’s response to this new complaint. It did not form part of the resident’s initial complaint and so it was reasonable for the matter to be raised as a separate complaint.
In conclusion, the landlord apologised and provided some compensation for the delays in completing the required repairs. However, the landlord failed to evidence it had considered the resident’s potential vulnerability and did not acknowledge or consider compensating her based on her claim that she was unable to use the bedroom. This investigation has found service failure in the landlord’s handling of the matter and orders have been made below. Given that the resident has informed this Service that there are still issues with the roof and guttering we have included an order for the landlord to inspect the property.

The landlords complaint handling

The landlord’s complaints policy says that it will contact a resident within 48 hours of receiving a request to escalate a complaint. The resident asked to escalate the complaint on 27 February 2023 however she did not receive an acknowledgement. The resident chased the landlord for a response on 16 March 2023 and the landlord sent an acknowledgement email on 22 March 2023. It was inappropriate that it took the landlord 18 working days to acknowledge the resident’s escalation request.
The landlord did not address this failure within its stage 2 complaint response and missed the opportunity to put things right, in line with this Service’s dispute resolution principles. This was also inappropriate and an order for £50 compensation has been made below. This is proportionate, in line with this Service’s remedies guidance, for a failure which had an adverse impact on the resident but which was of short duration and did not significantly affect the overall outcome for the resident.
The landlord’s complaint policy says it will respond to stage 2 complaints within 20 working days. It also says if it needs to extend this deadline that a new date will be agreed with the resident. This is in line with the approach set out in the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code). In its stage 2 acknowledgment, the landlord said it would send its response in approximately 30 working days. It explained this was due to staff shortages within the team. Although the 30 working day timescales is outside of the timescales outlined in the Code, the landlord was transparent with the resident about this and the delay is minor. Therefore, this was a reasonable approach.
Unfortunately, the landlord failed to meet its own deadline to issue the stage 2 response. The resident chased the landlord for a response on 28 April 2023 and 3 May 2023 and the landlord sent its stage 2 response on 10 May 2023. There is no evidence of the landlord agreeing an extension to its initial timescales set out in its acknowledgement and this was inappropriate. The landlord did apologise for the delay in responding to the resident’s complaint within its stage 2 response which was positive. However, as above, it failed to proportionately put things right by not making an offer of compensation for the delay. An order for a further £50 compensation has been made below, in line with this Service’s remedies guidance.
In conclusion, although the landlord apologised for the delays in escalating and responding to the stage 2 complaint, it failed to proportionately put things right. This investigation has found service failure in the landlord’s handling of the complaint and orders have been made below.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of a leak affecting the property.
In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the associated complaint.

Orders

Within 4 weeks, the landlord is ordered to:
1. Write to the resident and apologise for the failures identified in this report.
2. Pay the resident the £150 offered in its stage 2 response, if not already paid.
3. Pay the resident an additional £150, comprising:
  1. £50 for the distress and inconvenience likely incurred by the resident as a result of the landlord’s failures in handling the resident’s reports of a leak.
  2. £100 for the distress and inconvenience likely incurred by the resident as a result of the landlord’s failures in handling the resident’s complaint.
4. All monies ordered by this Service are to be paid directly to the resident and not used to offset any money owed to the landlord by the resident.
5. Contact the resident to arrange an inspection of the property to establish if any further work is required to repair the roof, guttering or repointing. Within 2 weeks of the inspection the landlord is to share its findings with the resident and this Service and if any further work is identified to set out an action plan with timescales.