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Incommunities Limited (202208132)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202208132

Incommunities Limited

14 November 2022


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 repairs to the resident’s plasterwork, flooring and gas pipes.

Background

  1. The resident is a tenant of the landlord, a housing association. She has resided at the property, a three-bedroom house, since 1999.
  2. On 8 February 2022, the resident reported to the landlord that her heating system was making a “tapping” noise which increased as the system was in use. After a non-attendance by a gas engineer, a repair took place on 1 March 2022. Following this, a follow-on appointment was booked to inspect the bedroom flooring and re-affix floorboards which became loose during the heating repair. A proposed appointment date of 25 March 2022 was ultimately unavailable, and the landlord subsequently booked an appointment for 8 April 2022.
  3. The resident raised a stage one complaint with the landlord on 4 March 2022 to which it responded later that day. It noted she was unhappy with being offered an all-day appointment (between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.) on 8 April 2022 as per its policy. It provided a complaint response the same day acknowledging her concerns and advising it had now been able to book a specific appointment for 3 p.m. that day. 
  4. After the heating pipes in the resident’s property were replaced on 8 March 2022, the resident reported a separate repair regarding crumbling plasterwork by her skirting board for which she received an appointment for 21 March 2022. The landlord subsequently rearranged an appointment to address the floorboards on 8 April to 11 April 2022 due to a staff member leaving the business.
  5. The resident escalated her complaint to the final stage on 13 April 2022. She was unhappy about not receiving a requested call back from a manager regarding the repairs as she had requested 11 April 2022. She was also unhappy that skirting board plastering had not been repaired on 11 April 2022, and the next available appointment she had been offered to complete the repair was for 18 July 2022. The resident also reported the issue with the noisy heating pipes persisted, and she was losing time from work to provide access for repair appointments.
  6. In its final stage complaint response, sent on 11 May 2022, the landlord apologised that a manager had not called her back and offered £25 compensation for poor communication. It explained the operative who attended on 11 April 2022 was only instructed to carry out work to the flooring and inspect the skirting board plastering, rather than complete repairs to both. The landlord completed further work to the resident’s heating system on 17 May 2022.
  7. The resident informed this Service on 11 August 2022 she continued to be unhappy with the length of time the landlord had taken to complete repairs, its booking of her repair appointments, which conflicted with her work commitments, and its cancelling of appointments at short notice.
  8. Landlord records indicate that a repair to the skirting board in the resident’s living room was completed on 8 September 2022.

Assessment and findings

  1. The resident’s tenancy agreement confirms the landlord is responsible for the repair and maintenance of the structure and exterior of the property and the installations it supplies in the property for providing space and water heating. This agreement also confirms that the resident agrees to provide the landlord with access to the property for the purpose of carrying out repairs and inspections at reasonable times of the day and with at least 24 hours’ notice.
  2. The landlord’s responsive repairs and maintenance policy confirms it will complete emergency repairs within 24 hours. While this policy says it “will complete all internal work repairs within an average of nine days”, it does not provide a specific timeframe within which it will complete non-emergency repairs. The landlord’s policy states that when it is unable to attend on an agreed date it will contact the resident on the same day and agree a new appointment.
  3. While the landlord’s responsive repairs and maintenance policy does not provide a specified timeframe for the completion of routine repairs, the Ombudsman would expect non-urgent or non-emergency repairs to be completed within a reasonable period, which would usually be within four to six weeks. However, a landlord is bound by the resources it has available. While the resident’s dissatisfaction with her appointment on 8 April being rescheduled to 11 April 2022 was wholly understandable, the landlord’s explanation that this was down to a sudden change in its staff resources was reasonable and while the change of appointment will have been inconvenient, the overall delay was not significant. Furthermore, the landlord responded appropriately after the resident expressed dissatisfaction with an all-day appointment on 8 April 2022 by using its discretion to agree a set appointment time for her, outside of its usual repair procedures.
  4. When a landlord operative attended the property on 11 April 2022 to carry out work to the floorboards, it was reasonable they could not carry out work to the plasterwork at the same time as these tasks require different trades. However, the landlord should have explained to the resident in advance the actions it would be taking during the appointment, as an example of maintaining clear and positive communication with her, and so it did not raise her expectations unfairly. It was also unreasonable that the landlord did not respond to the resident’s request for a manager call back. Internal landlord communication shows it concluded that a call back from a manager would not change the fact there were no earlier appointments available. While this was not necessarily an unreasonable position for the landlord to take, it should have at least acknowledged the resident’s request, advised a manager would not be calling her and explained why. However, in its final complaint response the landlord offered an apology that the resident had not received a call back from a manager which was a reasonable step for it to take.
  5. The resident also expressed dissatisfaction with losing time from work to allow access to her property for repairs. As mentioned above, it is a condition of the resident’s tenancy agreement that she provides access for repair work. While she was unhappy with the number of appointments required, her repairs encompassed three different trades and in the Ombudsman’s opinion, at the time of her complaint, there had not been an excessive number of attendances. It is noted the landlord was required to re-attend the property to address the heating pipes. There was no evidence that the second visit on 17 May 2022, which was within a reasonable timeframe, did not fully resolve the heating pipe issue, and while one re-attendance was required after it had initially believed it had solved the issue, this was not excessive. It was reasonable for the landlord to suggest in its final stage complaint response that the resident ask someone else to be present at the property to allow access. This showed the landlord had considered her circumstances and proposed a reasonable solution.
  6. However, it is unclear if the landlord attended the appointment set for 21 March 2022 to address her plasterwork. This was not specifically raised by the resident as a missed appointment, and there is no record of this being attended. The repair records seen by this investigation are brief and lacking in sufficient detail to provide a comprehensive chronology of how the respective repairs have been attended to. A recommendation has will therefore be made at the end of this report for the landlord to review its record-keeping procedures to ensure accurate records are kept of repair appointments and their outcomes, to aid both service delivery and to help it evidence the steps it has taken to address reported repairs.
  7. Additionally, when referring her complaint to this Service in August 2022, the resident advised the skirting board repair remained outstanding. Landlord records provided to this investigation indicate the repair was not completed until September 2022, over six months after the inspection request was raised and therefore significantly outside the four-to-six-week time frame considered reasonable for a non-urgent repair. The landlord has not provided further explanation regarding why this repair took such a long time to complete, so in the absence of evidence to the contrary, this appears to be an unreasonable delay.
  8. In conclusion, the landlord’s communication could have been improved, which may have addressed the resident’s concerns before she raised a complaint. Its offer of £25 compensation made in the final complaint response was, while less than the minimum provided for by this Service’s remedies guidance, a reasonable offer to address its failures in communication which were not significant and may not have affected the overall outcome for the resident. However, as a result of the unreasonable delay in completing the repair to the resident’s skirting board, a finding of service failure has been made along with an Order at the end of this report for an increased amount of compensation to be paid to the resident.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure regarding the landlord’s handling of repairs to the resident’s plasterwork, flooring and gas pipes.

Orders

  1. The landlord is ordered to pay the resident £125 compensation for the delay in completing repairs to the skirting board. For clarity, this is in addition to, rather than in place of, the landlord’s previous offer of £25 for its poor communication.
  2. The landlord should provide this Service with evidence of its compliance with the above order within four weeks of the date of this determination.  

Recommendations

  1. The landlord should:
    1. Reiterate the offer of £25 compensation made in its final stage complaint response.
    2. Review its record-keeping procedures to ensure that repair appointments and their outcomes are accurately recorded.
    3. Review its communication with residents about outstanding repairs to ensure that adequate and timely information is provided about repairs to ensure that their expectations are managed.