Southwark Council (202115107)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202115107

Southwark Council

12 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:
   1. How the landlord responded to the resident’s reports of a burst pipe in the building’s pump room.
   2. The associated formal complaint into the issue.

Background

2. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord, which is a local authority. The property is a flat in a communal building. The landlord has stated that it has vulnerabilities flagged on its system for the resident relating to “a physical disability with other medical issues.”
3. On 26 June 2021, the resident called the landlord to inform it that the communal heating system was very hot, it was making loud noises and that he was concerned that it was a health and safety risk, The resident then wrote to the landlord on the same day to request to raise a formal complaint. He described the elements of the complaint as:
   1. The wall between the living room in his property and the building’s pump room was “red hot”, the heating system was making loud banging noises and the cold water tap in his property was running hot.
   2. A similar situation happened in the building five years previously where steam from a burst pipe in the pump room caused a power outage.
   3. He had called the landlord to report an emergency repair prior to raising a complaint. However, the advisor he spoke with ignored his report and ended the call.
4. The landlord sent stage one complaint response to the resident on 2 July 2021, then a stage two complaint response on 10 August 2021. It also sent a follow-up to its stage two response on 26 August 2021 after it was able to locate and listen to the recording of the call the resident made on 26 June 2021. In its responses, the landlord:
   1. Informed the resident that it received his complaint on 30 June 2021, then arranged an appointment for 1 July 2021 which identified a burst pipe in the pump room. A make-safe repair was completed to stop the leak. A work order was then raised for its contractor to inspect the pump room and recommend what repairs were required. The contractor recommended that the affected pipework was replaced and two isolation valves added to the system to prevent a similar issue happening again in the future.
   2. Apologised to the resident for the delay in completing the make-safe repair caused by an emergency repair not being raised when he first reported the issue on 26 June 2021. The landlord also apologised for the poor level of service he received from the customer advisor who he spoke to during the telephone call. It explained that a manager had listened to the recording of the call and will be providing feedback to the advisor and their team leader.
   3. Offered £140 compensation, which it broke down as £90 for not raising an emergency repair on 26 June 2021 and £50 for the poor service the resident experienced when he first reported the issue.
5. In referring the case to this Service, the resident described the outstanding issues of the complaint as the landlord had not provided its complaint responses within its published target times and that the level of compensation it had offered did not properly reflect the stress and inconvenience the situation had caused to him and his family.

Assessment and findings

Relevant policies and procedures

6. The tenants’ handbook sets out the landlord’s responsibilities for repairs and maintenance of the property. This states that the landlord is responsible for “maintaining the structure and outside of [the] home and pipes for water, electricity, gas and drainage inside [the] home.”
7. The landlords’ repairs policy categorises its repair types as Emergency (attend and make-safe within 24 hours), Urgent (attend within three working days) and Non-Urgent (attend within 20 working days). An emergency repair is defined by the landlord as a repair that “poses a serious risk to health and safety [or] poses a serious risk to the structure of the property”. As an example of an emergency repair, the landlord suggests “burst pipes or hot water cylinders, causing internal flooding.”
8. The landlord operates a two-stage complaints process. When a complaint is received, the landlord aims to provide a response at stage one within ten working days. If the complainant is dissatisfied with the response, they can request an escalation of the complaint to the next stage. The landlord will then undertake a review of the complaint and provide a stage two response within 20 working days. This will be the landlord’s final response to the complaint.
9. The landlord’s compensation policy categories its payment tariffs as Low Impact (up to £250), Medium Impact (up to £500) and High Impact (up to £1,000). The landlord defines the low impact tariff for distress and delays as “the service has not achieved the expected standard. However, the impact is not greater than a reasonably tolerant person could be expected to accept and therefore the compensation constitutes a token in acknowledgement of the failure to perform”.

How the landlord responded to the resident’s reports of a burst pipe in the building’s pump room.

10. Once it had received the report from the resident regarding the problems he was experiencing from the pump room, the landlord had a duty to respond to the matter in line with its obligations set out in the tenancy agreement and its published policies and procedures. In line with its repairs policy detailed above, the landlord would have been expected to raise an emergency repair to make-safe the issue and then raise the follow-on work to fully repair the pump room as an urgent repair.
11. It is not in dispute that the landlord did not respond to the resident’s report appropriately. The landlord did not raise an emergency repair when the resident called on 26 June 2021. It was not until the formal complaint was opened on 30 June 2021, four days later, that an emergency repair was raised and the pump room inspected on 1 July 2021, at which point a make-safe repair was completed to stop the leak. The follow-on work then started on 3 July 2021, within the landlord’s published timescale for an urgent repair.
12. Therefore, it was appropriate for the landlord to apologise to the resident, offer compensation and explain what steps it had taken to improve its service. This is in line with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles of: be fair, put things right and learn from outcomes.
13. The landlord acted fairly in acknowledging its mistakes and apologising to the resident. It put things right by completing the repairs to the pump room and awarding £190 compensation. It looked to learn from its mistakes by improving its customer service. The landlord noted that the five-day delay in it attending the emergency repair, reported by the resident on 26 June 2021, was caused by the staff member who took the resident’s call not actively listening to the issues raised by the resident and recognising their significance. The landlord’s quality and training manager wrote to the staff member’s team leader on 12 August 2021 highlighting these issues and explained how it expected resident’s reports of repairs to be handled. The team leader then provided this feedback to the staff member directly.
14. The £190 compensation offer by the landlord was calculated in line with the guidance given in its compensation policy detailed above. The payment is also broadly in line with the Ombudsman’s own remedies guidance (which is available on our website). This recommends a payment of £100 to £600 in cases of considerable service failure or maladministration by a landlord. This includes distress and inconvenience, time and trouble, disappointment, loss of confidence, and delays in getting matters resolved. Therefore, a payment of £190 that recognised the five-day delay in the landlord raising an emergency repair and the poor level of service the resident experienced when he first reported the matter, is appropriate in the circumstances and proportionate to the impact that its failures had on the resident.

The landlord’s complaint handling

15. The resident has stated his dissatisfaction with the length of time it took the landlord to respond to his complaint at both stages of the complaint process. The resident raised a complaint on 26 June 2021 and received a stage one complaint response on 2 July 2021, five working days inside the landlord’s published target of ten working days. The resident then requested an escalation of the complaint on 2 July 2021 and received a stage on complaint response on 10 August 2021, eight working days outside of the landlord’s published target of 20 working days.
16. The landlord would have been expected to recognise this delay in its complaint response, apologise to the resident and consider offering a compensation payment at the low impact tariff of its compensation policy. As this did not happen, there has been service failure by the landlord in its complaint handling. In order to fully resolve this aspect of the complaint, further compensation is warranted.
17. The Ombudsman’s remedies guidance recommends a payment of £50 to £100 in cases of service failure of a short duration that may not have significantly affected the overall outcome. Therefore, it would be appropriate for the landlord to pay £50 compensation for the eight working days delay in providing the stage two complaint response and the inconvenience that this caused the resident. This payment is also in line with the landlord’s own compensation policy.

Determination

18. In accordance with paragraph 53(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord made an offer of redress to the resident in respect of how it responded to his reports of a burst pipe in the building’s pump room which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, satisfactorily resolves the complaint.
19. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in respect of its complaint handling.

Orders

20. For the service failure in its complaint handling, the landlord is ordered to pay to the resident a further £50. This payment should be made within four weeks of the date of this report. The landlord should confirm to this Service when payment has been made.

Recommendations

21. As the finding of reasonable redress was made based on the landlord’s offer of £190 compensation, it is recommended that this is now paid to the resident, if the landlord has not done so already.