Ombudsman makes severe maladministration finding against city council after resident lived with damp for two years

The Housing Ombudsman has found severe maladministration for Leeds City Council after “significant failings” in repeated repairs by the landlord.

The Ombudsman report notes that the local authority failed to effectively tackle a water leak, causing a resident to live for two years with damp in both the kitchen and bathroom.

When the resident behind the complaint first reported the leak, Leeds said it would replace the extractor fan in the bathroom and make multiple repairs to the kitchen, including new worktops and replacement cupboards, the Ombudsman said.

While the measuring up work took place, there was no indication of any other visits, and the resident contacted the landlord six months later to ask for an update.

In line with the repair policy, the landlord had a duty to attend to general repair issues within 20 working days, the Ombudsman said.

The report noted that internal emails showed the landlord did not action the major repairs, and therefore “no quick action was taken”. Two months after, when contractors did arrive, they were only tasked with removing units and fitting thermal boarding, which the resident refused as he didn’t believe it would fix all the issues, the Ombudsman noted.

The resident subsequently reported tiles peeling off the walls and floor, to which the landlord conducted an inspection of the property, but took a further month to do so.

The report noted that the inspection found many of the problems from the initial complaint were still unresolved.

The Ombudsman stated that “while the landlord notes that the repairs were then completed following this inspection, they do not appear in any of the landlords’ repairs records”. The resident later told the Ombudsman that several jobs were outstanding.

The Ombudsman contacted the landlord to ask for the remaining repairs to be completed, but after a ‘no access’ report from the contactor, it took a further eight months for the landlord to be in contact with the resident about the repairs.

Even though the landlord highlighted the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on its repairs service, the Ombudsman’s investigation found this “did not account for the very long delays and seemingly poor management of the repairs.”

The Ombudsman found that the landlord repeatedly failed to complete repairs even though it was “made aware of outstanding works over a prolonged period of time”.

The Ombudsman concluded that in accordance with section 54 of the Scheme, there was:

a. Severe maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the repair.

b. Maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the formal complaint.

The Ombudsman found that the landlord’s response was inadequate and “often missed opportunities to recognise what had gone wrong and learn from mistakes”.

To remedy the injustice caused, the landlord has been ordered to pay the resident a total of £1,000 compensation, comprising of £700 as a remedy to the adverse effect the failings in the handling of the repairs had on the resident, and £300 for the adverse effect caused by the failings in complaint handling.

Leeds has also been told to provide a written apology to the resident, start staff training on complaint handling and carry out a review of the case for future learning.

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “The landlord repeatedly failed to complete repairs even though it was made aware of outstanding works over a prolonged period. While I do not doubt the pandemic was a factor, the information available highlights significant failings in the management and monitoring of repairs by the landlord, leading to an adverse effect to the resident."

In a statement Leeds City Council said: “We have apologised to the customer for the delay in completing the outstanding repairs and the time taken to resolve the complaint.  We welcome feedback from our customers to help us improve the service that we offer. On this occasion, the service that we offered fell below the standard that our customers should expect."

The local authority said it continued to review lessons learnt from all its complaints. As a result of this case, it had:

• given its ‘out of hours’ staff mobile devices to update its repairs system. "This allows our day-time staff to see exactly what work is outstanding and information isn’t lost."
• shared the learning as a case study with all Housing Leeds staff and our contractors – "this helps staff to understand the impact on our customers when things go wrong".
• provided refresher training/extra guidance for all officers who investigate and respond to complaints, including the council's contractors, to make sure that it is meeting its service standards – "during the complaint investigation we missed the opportunity to put things right for the customer".
• introduced a new process which tracks any further works needed after a job has been attended.
• set up a new Damp & Mould team that tenants can contact directly. "This makes sure that damp and mould reports are recorded and responded to quickly, and that tenants are kept updated."
• created a minor works team to manage this type of ‘multi trade’ jobs in the future.

The council added: “Our aim is to continually learn from customer feedback. We ask all customers to complete a satisfaction survey after we have responded to their complaint and after every repair. This allows us to understand what works well, and where we need to improve.”

Lottie Winson