Southern Housing Group Limited (202116632)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202116632

Southern Housing Group Limited

06 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 is about the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of an upsurge of waste into his property from the communal drains.
2. The Ombudsman has also considered the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Background

3. The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord. He lives in a one bed flat with his wife and two children.
4. The resident first reported an upsurge of waste into his bath and bathroom sink in March 2021. He made various reports to the landlord between March 2021 and October 2021 as the issue kept recurring, despite frequent repairs carried out by the landlord’s contractors to rectify the issue.
5. The resident submitted a Stage 1 complaint to the landlord on 30 September 2021. He advised the landlord that he was dissatisfied as there had not been a permanent solution to the upsurge and he was waking up to sewage-like substances in his bathroom sink and bath on a daily basis.
6. At the end of its complaints process, the landlord apologised to the resident, advised him that a works order had been raised for works to be carried out to the communal drains and urgent approval requested. It also offered him £100 compensation (£50 for the delay to the repair, £25 for the delay in responding to his Stage 2 complaint, and a goodwill gesture of £25).
7. The works to the communal drains were carried out in December 2022, and there are no outstanding repair issues. As a resolution to his complaint, the resident would like the compensation offered to be increased.

Assessment and findings

The landlord’s response to reports of upsurge of waste into the resident’s property.

8. The resident’s occupancy agreement states that the landlord is responsible for keeping in good repair the structure and exterior of the property, including drains, gutters and external pipes.
9. The landlord’s responsive repairs policy states that emergency repairs will be completed (or made safe) within 24 hours. This includes blocked main drains, burst pipes or other major plumbing repairs. The landlord does not give a timeframe for all other non-emergency repairs. The policy states that all routine repairs will be arranged by appointment at a time to suit the resident.
10. Although there is no timeframe to complete routine repairs, this Service is of the opinion that works should be completed as soon as is reasonably practicable.
11. The resident first reported an upsurge of waste into his property – namely into his bath and bathroom sink, in March 2021. He reported this issue on at least seven occasions between March 2021 and August 2021. After several attempts to provide a temporary fix to the issue, the contractors carried out a CCTV inspection of the drain in August 2021, and advised the resident that they had found the cause of the issue, would write up a report and send through for approval for remedial works to be carried out. The resident chased an update on this on several occasions and raised a Stage 1 complaint on 30 September 2021, when he had received no updates and was still waking up to sewage in his bath and bathroom sink every day.
12. There is no dispute that there were delays and issues with the landlord’s response to reports of upsurge of waste into the resident’s property. At the end of its complaints process, in March 2022, the landlord fully upheld the resident’s complaint regarding ongoing delays to resolve the repair. It apologised for the inconvenience, advised an urgent works order had been raised, which was awaiting approval with a senior surveyor and advised the resident the works would be completed within a reasonable amount of time. It also advised it was committed to improving communication and would let residents know when communal works would be carried out, which directly impacted the resident’s property. It also advised that it should have realised sooner that the communal drain needed further investigation. The landlord offered the resident £50 for the delay in works. The works were completed in December 2022.
13.  The landlord has also advised this Service that it offered the resident a temporary decant in March 2022,  whilst remedial works were being completed and offered to have the resident’s property deep-cleaned on a weekly basis. It advised that the resident declined an offer of a temporary decant.
14. It was appropriate that the landlord apologised to the resident, acknowledged its failings in handling the repair, and offered the resident a temporary decant whilst it sought to complete the repair. After receiving several complaints from the resident regarding the same issue, however, the landlord should have undertaken a greater investigation to determine the root cause and a more permanent solution sooner. The resident suffered adverse effect in terms of stress, frustration, inconvenience and time and trouble due to the lengthy delays to the repair. Although the landlord did offer the resident £50 for the delay, this is not in line with the Housing Ombudsman Service’s remedies guidance. The works were not completed until December 2022, several months after the resident approached this Service. In light of the several delays experienced by the resident prior to the landlord’s offer to decant him, a finding of service failure has been made, along with orders for redress.

The landlord’s complaint handling

15. The landlord operates a two stage Complaints Policy.
    1. Stage 1 – where the landlord will provide a response within 10 working days.
    2. Stage 2 – where the landlord aims to respond within 20 working days. If this is not possible, the landlord will contact the resident to let them know and request more time – this will not exceed a further 10 working days.
16. The resident submitted a Stage 2 complaint to the landlord on 20 October 2021. This was not accepted as a complaint until 4 February 2022, once the resident had contacted the Housing Ombudsman Service, and this Service wrote to the landlord to ask the landlord to provide the resident with a Stage 2 response. The landlord acknowledged the Stage 2 complaint of the 20 October 2021 on the 4 February 2022 and provided a response on 24 March 2022. As the resident submitted a Stage 2 complaint on the 20 October 2021, however, this was 113 working days after, considerably outside of the landlord’s own timeline for responding to complaints. This was a failure in service. This caused the resident frustration, inconvenience and time and trouble. Although, the landlord did apologise for the delays in the substantive issue of the delay to the communal drain blockage, it did not apologise for the delay in responding to the Stage 2 complaint. Furthermore, it did not advise the resident of any lessons learned from the complaint handling.
17. This Service is aware that the landlord sought to recognise the stage two delay by making an offer of £25 compensation. In the Ombudsman’s opinion, however, this offer does not proportionately reflect the time, trouble and frustration the resident would have experienced. As such, this service makes a finding of maladministration as well as orders for redress.

Determination

18. In accordance with Paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was a service failure in the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of an upsurge of waste into his property from the communal drains.
19. In accordance with Paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

20. To put things right, the landlord is ordered to award the resident £400. This has been calculated as:
    1. £150 to recognise its handling of the repair. This is inclusive of the £50 offered by the landlord at stage two.
    2. £225 in recognition of its handling of the complaint. This is also inclusive of the £25 previously offered by the landlord at stage two.
    3. £25 which the landlord had offered as a goodwill gesture.
21. The landlord should provide this Service with evidence of compliance within four weeks of receiving this determination.

Recommendations

22. The landlord to review the findings of this report, alongside its responsive repairs policy, to determine how it can prevent future issues of this nature reoccurring.