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Silva Homes Limited (202213671)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202213671

Silva Homes Limited

10 July 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 handling of concerns about staff conduct.

Background

  1. The resident is an assured tenant of the landlord living in a three-bedroom house with her children.
  2. The resident submitted a subject access request (SAR) to the local authority. The authority disclosed an email sent to it by the landlord on 21 July 2021. The email stated the resident shouted ‘black lives matter’ out the window whilst refusing to allow trades people into the property. The resident disagreed with this statement made within the email as she felt it was untrue and ‘racially charged’.
  3. The resident raised a complaint on 8 June 2022. The landlord issued its response on 24 June 2022 and did not uphold the complaint as it stated it was a factual recollection of events. The landlord apologised for any offence caused.
  4. The resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 of the l complaint process on 27 June 2022. She felt the explanation of who had made the comments was contradictory and that the response provided had not fully addressed her complaint. The landlord responded on 27 July 2022 and again did not uphold the complaint as it stated the comments were made in good faith. Additionally, the landlord had contacted the local authority to have the comments removed and offered £100 compensation as a gesture of goodwill for the distress and inconvenience caused.
  5. The resident remained dissatisfied and escalated her complaint to the Ombudsman seeking an investigation back to the date of the alleged comments, to identify who made them.

Assessment and findings

  1. On the 21 July 2021, a member of the landlord’s staff sent an email to a local authority social worker, who was supporting the resident and her children. It was within this email that the landlord alleged that the resident has said ‘black lives matter’. The resident challenged the landlord around the accuracy of the information it had shared. In particular, the resident queried the source and reason for including the statement regarding her shouting from the window, as she maintained that this incident and these comments never took place.
  2. From the evidence seen by this Service, which includes notes of meetings and discussions held internally by the landlord, it is not disputed that the landlord has been unable to identify the person who witnessed these alleged comments. There has been no contemporary record produced which shows any member of the landlord’s staff logging this alleged altercation, nor any response from the landlord seeking to address this behaviour, which would, at the very least, have required it to reschedule the appointment. On that basis, there is no basis for the landlord to conclude this incident took place at all.
  3. It is noted that the landlord’s stage 2 complaint response included a commitment to contact the local authority and withdraw the email and the comments it contained. The landlord did this in July 2022 and followed up in May 2023, where it received confirmation from the local authority that this had been completed. The landlord justified this request to the local authority on the grounds that there was no evidence to support that the comments had been made.
  4. In the absence of any records to verify that the alleged altercation or comments took place, it was not reasonable for the landlord to share this information with a third party as it could not assure itself of the accuracy of the data it was sharing. More widely, it is unclear why the alleged comments were included within the email initially, as they do not add to the substantive point around a lack of access to conduct repairs.
  5. Overall, as the landlord shared information which it cannot identify the source or accuracy of, it was unreasonable for it to share this with a third party in any event. Additionally, the motivation behind including the alleged comment “black lives matter” in the email is unclear. On the balance of information seen by this Service, it was unnecessary as it did not add to the substantive issues being discussed, which was not linked, in any way, to the resident’s protected characteristics. This amounts to service failure, as it had the effect of causing the resident unnecessary distress and inconvenience throughout this process.
  6. This matter has caused some significant concern and worry to the resident. It is understandable that a resident could feel they were treated differently based on race by including a comment like this in external communication where there was no contemporaneous evidence to substantiate it. Even if the resident had made the comment, it is not entirely clear why it was relevant to the issue of not allowing tradesmen into the premises.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there has been maladministration in the landlord’s handling of concerns about staff conduct.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. Within 28 days of the date of this determination, the landlord must:
    1. provide the resident with a full written apology; and
    2. pay the resident an additional £300 compensation for distress and inconvenience, in addition to the £100 compensation previously offered in its stage two complaint response.

Recommendations

  1. The landlord should:
    1. Consider reviewing its data management processes to ensure that it has methods to verify the accuracy of information prior to it being processed or shared.
    2. Consider providing training for its customer-facing staff around identifying and managing unconscious bias, particularly related to protected characteristics, to ensure that staff can identify when this is influencing decisions and information sharing.