Hackney special investigation report

Hackney report summary 

This special report follows an investigation carried out under paragraph 49 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, which allows us to conduct further investigation into whether there is a systemic failure. 

The investigation was prompted by the level of maladministration and severe maladministration findings in our casework, with poor practice found in 79% of complaints. 

The investigation identified issues in several areas, including its knowledge and information management, risk assessment and prioritisation and its response to vulnerable residents. There were also issues with the scrutiny and oversight of complaints, with performance data not being used effectively to inform policy and practice improvements.   

The landlord has faced significant challenges, many shared across the sector; the Covid-19 pandemic, inner city demand, ageing housing stock and insufficient budgets. It also suffered a cyber-attack in 2020, when it was already responding to the pandemic.  

Hackney Council special investigation report (PDF) 

Key themes 

This investigation highlights the importance of culture within an organisation. The report made a range of key findings. 

Repairs 

The landlord used a performance-related bonus scheme, which created an incentive to mark jobs as complete to meet targets. Additionally, system limitations allowed repairs to be recorded as ‘complete’ or ‘refused access’ restricting accurate reporting. The landlord later found around 33% of its recorded repairs visits are repeats.  

The landlord presented repairs performance data positively and reported increasing satisfaction levels, without highlighting the very low response rate. This lack of transparency hindered opportunities to identify and address underlying service failures.   

Damp and mould  

The landlord has a self-imposed 5-day target to respond to damp and mould, with an initial inspection. However, cases we investigated suggest the real issue is the time taken to complete work following an investigation.   

The landlord produced 3 separate action plans for leaks, damp and mould, and repairs that lacked supporting analysis and risk assessments to guide decision making and prioritisation.  

We found the landlord had a distorted view of reality and misguided reassurance, committing resources without fully understanding whether it would address the identified issues.   

Complaint handling   

The investigation found that in almost every complaint, the timescales to respond took longer than the timescales in its complaints process.   

The landlord’s own analysis found repeat cases where complaint issues remained unresolved and poor communication with residents. There were also stark differences between compensation it was offering, and what the Ombudsman ordered following investigation.  

The landlord developed an in-house alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme. We hold reservations about this process, creating additional stages or barriers accessing resolution through its complaint procedure.   

Knowledge and information management  

The landlord tried to build a housing management system (HMS) but eventually decided this was not viable due to cost and delays. The delay reaching this decision meant the landlord was still operating without the use of a dedicated housing management system at the time of our investigation.  

Senior management referred to the cyber-attack repeatedly throughout the investigation as a reason for the lack of progress across the issues investigated, despite operational staff saying data and systems issues pre-dated the cyber-attack.   

Despite over 70,000 contacts a month to its call centre, the landlord missed opportunities to fill significant data gaps by asking residents for information about themselves and their home.  

Scrutiny and oversight  

The investigation found a disconnect between the oversight and scrutiny of the landlord’s performance and its complaints handling.   

There was evidence throughout the investigation of missed opportunities to analyse and understand performance data to inform decision making and process improvement.  

This shows the importance of the Member Responsible for Complaints (MRC) role to ensure the landlord is learning from complaints and is accountable for its complaints performance.  

Policy and procedure  

Many of the landlord’s policies or procedures were not reviewed and needed updating. The landlord said updating its policies and procedures was “one of the areas that needs focus.” The landlord said it wanted to be ‘resident focussed’ but it lost sight of that when reviewing and prioritising its policy and procedures.   

Vulnerabilities  

During the investigation, the landlord was in the early stages of a significant change in approach to supporting vulnerable residents. It introduced its policy ‘supporting residents with additional needs to thrive’ acknowledging the need for a culture change – stating responding, recording, and reporting should become ‘everyone’s responsibility.’   

It was encouraging to hear staff show real insight into vulnerability. However, the landlord did not have an overarching reasonable adjustment policy in place. Instead, it dealt with each resident on a ‘case by case’ basis and viewed this a positive approach.  

We disagreed, stating that while the individual consideration of a resident’s needs is vital, the absence of such a policy risks inconsistency.