Vivid Housing Limited (202211143)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202211143

Vivid Housing Limited

24 July 2023

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 complaint is about the landlord’s handling of a gas safety inspection and gas repairs at the resident’s property.

Scope of investigation

2. Paragraph 42(c) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme states that the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which were not brought to the attention of the member landlord as a formal complaint within a reasonable period. This would normally be within six months of the matters arising.
3. The resident raised in her complaint that she had not had a gas safety check at her property for “many years”. It is not possible to make a reliable determination on historical events as, with the passage of time, the facts of the case cannot be established. This is further complicated in this case by the resident’s property being managed by three different landlords since she moved into the property in 1991. Furthermore, there was no evidence of the resident raising this issue with the landlord prior to her stage one complaint on 26 September 2022.
4. Therefore, in accordance with paragraph 42(e) above, this investigation will focus on the events from March 2022, this being six months prior to the resident’s formal complaint.

Background

5. The resident is the tenant of the landlord. She moved into the all-electric property in 1991 and arranged for the installation of pipework to supply liquified petroleum gas (LPG); this fuelled a gas cooker and gas fire.
6. The landlord’s contractor carried out a gas safety check at the resident’s property on 15 August 2022 and found that the LPG pipework serving the cooker had perished. The LPG pipework was found to be unsafe to use and the supply and the cooker were disconnected. The resident was informed that repairs to the pipework would her responsibility to address.
7. The resident raised a complaint with the landlord on 10 October 2022 as she disputed that she was responsible for the cost of replacing the unsafe pipework. She held that the landlord had a responsibility to maintain the installations in the property for the supply of gas. The resident highlighted that the landlord had not carried out a gas safety inspection for “many years”, despite being aware that LPG was used at the property.
8. The landlord’s stage one complaint response to the resident, on 10 October 2022, asserted that it would not provide repairs to the LPG pipework as it had not provided this installation to her. It confirmed that it had offered her the installation of an electric hob and oven as an alternative but she had refused this over her concern about frequent power cuts in her area. The landlord said it had not carried out a prior gas safety check as it had not been made aware of a gas supply at the property. It confirmed that it would now be carrying out this check annually.
9. The resident escalated her complaint with the landlord on 31 October 2022, contending that, irrespective of whether or not it had installed the LPG supply, it was obliged to repair and maintain it. She also disputed that it was unaware of the LPG supply at the property, as the previous landlord of the property had carried out work to the LPG pipework in 2010/11.
10. The landlord issued its final response to the resident on 28 November 2022. In this, it reiterated that it had no obligation to repair her LPG supply as she had installed it herself. It said that it had no evidence of it carrying out work on the LPG pipework. The landlord said that its offer of providing an electric oven and hob remained open and provided a comparison of operating costs between electricity and LPG, which showed that the costs were comparable.
11. The resident informed the Ombudsman on 15 May 2023 that she remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response. She maintained that the landlord had a responsibility to maintain the LPG pipework. To resolve her complaint, the resident wanted reimbursement of her subsequent costs in reinstating the LPG supply and the inconvenience of being without cooking facilities in the interim.

Assessment and findings

12. The Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 sets out that a landlord is responsible for the repair and maintenance of the installations within a property for the supply of water, gas and electricity. This is mirrored in the landlord’s tenancy agreement. Where a landlord has supplied these installations as part of the property, it would be expected to repair and maintain these. However, this repairing responsibility does not extend to improvements, unless it is explicitly stated that the landlord is responsible. When a resident adds an element to a property which was not previously present, this is an improvement to the property.
13. It is a standard feature of tenancy agreements across the industry that when a resident carries out an improvement to a property, this then becomes the resident’s responsibility to maintain. The landlord’s tenancy agreement confirms that it is not responsible for repairing any installations installed by the resident or another tenant. It was not disputed that the property was taken on by the resident as an all-electric property, and she made her own improvements to enable her to use LPG to fuel her cooker and gas fire. Consequently, the landlord had no obligation to repair the LPG pipework, and it was appropriate for it to relay this to the resident in its complaint responses.
14. The resident asserted that the landlord had replaced the pipework during a kitchen refurbishment in 2011, which therefore made it responsible for the maintenance of the pipework. The gas safety certificate from this date states that the pipework was “reinstalled” as opposed to replaced or renewed, and therefore does not demonstrate that this was the landlord’s pipework. Had the landlord replaced the pipework this would still not automatically mean that it was responsible for the future maintenance of this, as it would have carried out a repair to the resident’s installation in excess of its repairing obligation.
15. The resident also held that, as the pipework had been disconnected by the landlord as part of its gas safety check, it bore responsibility for its replacement. A landlord has a duty, in accordance with the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 to assess the safety of any gas installations in the property, whether installed by itself or otherwise. It was therefore appropriate for the landlord’s contractor to disconnect the LPG pipework once a fault was found, and this action alone does not make it responsible for the future upkeep of the pipework. A landlord would be expected, as part of its gas safety checks, to disconnect any appliances, whether provided by itself or otherwise, which were identified as posing a risk to a resident or the property. It therefore acted appropriately in doing so.
16. It was reasonable that the landlord declined to repair the resident’s LPG pipework, as discussed above. As part of this investigation, the Ombudsman has sought advice from the Health and Safety Executive, and Gas Safe, which similarly advised that a resident would be responsible for checking the safety of, and maintaining, any gas installation they added themselves.
17. The landlord explained, in its stage one complaint response, that it identified during an “off-gas” check, that gas, in the form of LPG, was present in the property. It acted reasonably in carrying out this gas check of the property to verify whether it remained all-electric. This was in accordance with its gas procedure as of 2021, which specifies that it will carry out annual checks of non-gas properties to confirm whether gas safety checks were required. The landlord acted appropriately to disconnect the faulty pipework, as this presented a danger to the resident and the property.
18. The landlord also demonstrated that it took the resident’s circumstances into account by offering her a reasonable alternative for her cooking facilities as a gesture of goodwill, and provided information to her to show that this would not disadvantage her. Overall, the landlord’s handling of the gas safety check and subsequent repairs was reasonable and there was no failure on its part.

Determination

19. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in its handling of a gas safety inspection and gas repairs at the resident’s property.