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News from the Housing Ombudsman Service |
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Welcome
Welcome to the latest issue of our newsletter bringing you news and updates on our service. In this issue:
- Ombudsman's open letter to landlords
- Highest number of complaint handling failure orders issued
- Spotlight on noise report published
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Call for evidence on record keeping
- Special report on Clarion following further investigation
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Severe maladministration cases
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New ARAC
Please share this e-newsletter with colleagues and encourage them to sign up to future issues using the link below.
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Ombudsman’s open letter to landlords
The Ombudsman Richard Blakeway has written to social landlords about complaints relating to damp and mould asking them to renew their focus on the 26 recommendations in his Spotlight report on the topic published last year. It follows the tragic death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak after prolonged exposure to mould in his home.
The report, entitled ‘It’s not lifestyle’, said landlords should adopt a zero-tolerance approach to damp and mould and give it a higher priority with a change in culture from being reactive to proactive. It stated that landlords should avoid inferring blame on residents due to ‘lifestyle’ when it is often not solely their issue, and take responsibility for resolving problems.
The Ombudsman has also raised the handling of legal claims alongside complaints and published a selection of casework relating to tone and communication on damp and mould cases.
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Highest number of complaint handling failure orders issued
We issued 45 complaint handling failure orders between July and September 2022, the highest number since they came into effect in January 2021. In 39 cases the landlords complied and there were six cases of non-compliance. The latest quarterly report names the landlords and shows that the 45 orders, all related to individual complaints, were issued to 30 landlords, made up of 15 councils, 14 housing associations and one housing co-op.
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Our report, Spotlight on noise complaints: Time to be heard, brought together learning from a review of more than 800 noise related cases dealt with over three years together with insight from 374 responses to our call for evidence plus interviews with front line staff and residents of some individual landlords.
It identified a fundamental unfairness in the social housing sector’s approach to noise complaints with most of the issues treated as anti-social behaviour, even when they concerned general household noise. This was at the heart of the findings in the Spotlight report which called for the sector’s response to noise nuisance to be strengthened.
Call for evidence on record keeping
We have issued a call for evidence to landlords to support our next systemic investigation which will look at record keeping and data management. This has been a consistent theme found in our casework with 67% of investigations upheld in 2021-22 involving poor records. Strong record keeping practices are integral to effective complaint handling and landlords’ overall service provision. The purpose of the call for evidence is to understand more about the current barriers to effective knowledge and information management. The survey closes on 23 December 2022.
Special report on Clarion following further investigation
We published a special report following concerns about Clarion’s response to complaints about damp and mould and pest control. The investigation was initiated by a case where we found severe maladministration for the landlord’s significant failings in dealing with a complaint about leaks, repairs and a rodent infestation.
Based on a review of the 13 investigations featuring those issues and determined over a six-month period up to June 2022, the report shows that the individual cases involved residents living in eight local authority areas. Three-quarters of the findings across those cases were service failure or maladministration, including five findings of severe maladministration, and there were five findings of reasonable redress or no maladministration. The report identifies five key findings and sets out a series of recommendations on damp and mould, pest control, complaint handling, compensation and record keeping.
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The latest cases where we found severe maladministration following an investigation are set out below. These are the most serious failings which we publish as part of our ongoing process to increase transparency and to share the lessons learned from each case more widely. |
Clarion
We found severe maladminstration for for Clarion’s failings in handling a resident’s request to be removed from a tenancy. It had a significant impact on the resident as he was unable to start a new tenancy so did not have a secure home for two years and caused him considerable time and effort in pursuing the issue.
London Borough of Lambeth
We found severe maladministration for the London Borough of Lambeth’s lengthy delays in repairing a window that left a resident with boarded up bedroom windows since June 2019. It came as the Ombudsman wrote to the landlord expressing his concern at the high level of failure seen in our casework since issuing a special report earlier this year.
We made two findings of severe maladministration for Onward Homes’ failings in handling a resident’s complaint about damp and mould caused by rotten window frames and her request for compensation due to damaged belongings. Our investigation found that there was an unreasonable delay when the resident raised further concerns, due to the impact of the damp and mould.
Catalyst
We found severe maladministration for Catalyst’s significant failings in handling a complaint from shared owners about cold and draughty rooms and other defects in their new build house. The landlord’s responses did not sufficiently identify what had gone wrong, what action would be taken to remedy the defects or assess to what extent it had met its responsibility.
We found severe maladministration for PA Housing’s repeated failings in dealing with a leak coming into a resident’s bedroom from the property above causing her to sleep in her living room for more than 18 months. The landlord repeatedly failed to provide updates on works to fix the leak and repeatedly offered to reimburse her for the costs of a dehumidifier but then failed to do so.
We made three findings of severe maladministration for Johnnie Johnson Housing’s significant failings in responding to a resident’s complaint about anti-social behaviour, together with its record keeping and complaint handling. The cumulative impact of the failings caused significant adverse effect to the resident.
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New ARAC
We have appointed a new member to our Audit and Risk Assurance Committee (ARAC) – Tim Archer who started his new role in October. Tim is Lead Ombudsman and Director of Casework at the Financial Ombudsman Service and brings over 12 years of dispute resolution experience together with operational leadership from an ombudsman service. Prior to joining the Financial Ombudsman Service, he held a variety of senior management roles at Barclays, where he worked for 13 years.
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