Westminster City Council (202214558)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202214558

Westminster City Council

13 June 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 concerns the landlord’s response to the resident’s request for compensation due to an issue with mice.

Background

  1. The resident is a tenant of the landlord and lives in a flat. The landlord is a local authority.
  2. The resident reported the presence of mice behind her kitchen cupboards in July 2022. A pest control officer attended the resident’s home that month and laid bait. He also made recommendations for proofing works (such as filling holes/gaps) to be undertaken in various areas of the resident’s property, in order to reduce and prevent access for pests.
  3. The resident raised a formal complaint to the landlord in late July 2022 whilst she was waiting for proofing works to begin. She mentioned that she had previously  caught a mouse on a glue trap in her living room. The resident believed that the issue had occurred due a result of poor workmanship by the landlord’s operatives when replacing her kitchen unit following a leak, as she said she had not had an issue with mice prior to this work being undertaken. To resolve her complaint, she wanted the landlord to pay her compensation “for stress suffered due to poor workmanship”. In its final complaint response, the landlord did not uphold the complaint. It said that it found no evidence that there was a direct correlation between poor workmanship and the mice in her home. It apologised for its delay in concluding the matter, and offered £20 compensation in light of this.
  4. In the resident’s complaint to this Service, she was adamant that the landlord was responsible for causing the mice issue. She wanted the landlord to revise its offer of compensation in light of this.

Assessment and findings

  1. In her complaint to this Service the resident raise issues about work on the kitchen cupboards, the landlord’s communication when arranging for proofing works, and the conduct of a member of the landlord’s staff. However, these specific issues were not raised with the landlord through its formal complaints process and as such will not be considered in the investigation. The Ombudsman will not investigate matters which have not exhausted the landlord’s internal complaints procedure. This is because the landlord has to be given the chance to respond to any issues before they are brought to the Ombudsman. The resident should consider contacting the landlord to discuss any of the above matters, if they are of ongoing concern.
  2. The Ombudsman’s role, in this case, is not to say where or how the resident’s pests arrived. The Ombudsman’s role is to assess how the landlord responded to the resident’s reports, and whether its actions and conclusions were in line with its policies and the relevant evidence.
  3. In her complaint to the Ombudsman the resident explained that she had not had mice problems before the new kitchen unit was fitted, and so she attributed the pests to poor workmanship completing the kitchen unit. In general, mice can enter a home through a variety of external entry points such as doors, windows, vents, pipes, cracks and holes found in walls and floors. The pest control officer made recommendations for proofing works in a range of areas in the resident’s home, including external and communal areas of the building, and no single point of entry was identified. Because of that, the landlord’s conclusion that the new kitchen unit was not the cause of the mouse problem was reasonable and supported by the evidence. Although the situation would undoubtedly have been distressing for the resident, nothing in the evidence in this case indicates that the mice were due to any service failing by the landlord.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in respect of the complaint.