Major social landlord to pay more than £2k after disabled resident left without use of toilet

The Housing Ombudsman has found severe maladministration at major social landlord Clarion after repeated drain blockages left a disabled resident unable to use a functioning toilet in their new build home.

The Ombudsman concluded that the landlord “did not acknowledge the frequency of blockages or the distress and inconvenience caused by the issue”, and has since called for a ‘culture change’ at Clarion.

The residents behind the complaint are shared ownership leaseholders. One of the residents has muscular dystrophy and mobility issues and is disabled.

Since reporting the first issue, the residents told the Ombudsman that ‘intermittent issues remained’ 21 months later.

The Ombudsman's report noted that months after initial reports of blocked drains “backing up” were not dealt with by the landlord, the residents employed their own contractor to fix the issue. The contractor advised that if the issue was to arise again, “a CCTV survey would be needed”. The residents informed the landlord of this, and the landlord reimbursed the residents for the works.

However, over the coming months the residents reported that the toilet was “backing up, not flushing properly and was unusable,” said the Ombudsman.

The landlord consequently spoke to the developer about the problem to get them to fix it. The developer “blamed the residents for flushing wipes and excessive toilet roll and wrote to residents reminding them of what they can safely flush,” the Ombudsman found.

The residents refuted the claim they ever flushed wipes down the toilet, the report noted.

After further complaints, the residents arranged their own drainage contractor to carry out a CCTV survey and a further inspection.

The inspection found “multiple issues with the structure of the drains and their installation”, as well as “no evidence of wipes being the cause of any blockages”.

The landlord forwarded this evidence to the developer and arranged for “reimbursement of contractor costs”. The developer attended to fix the issues raised by the contractor but the residents reported that not all the actions in the report were taken, which, as said by the Ombudsman, left the issue ongoing.

The Ombudsman revealed that the residents bought the necessary materials to complete the actions set out in the contractors' report and paid for installation, “once again at their own cost”.

The Ombudsman investigated and concluded that Clarion "did not acknowledge the frequency of blockages or the distress and inconvenience caused by the issue and the impact on the disabled resident’s ability to use the toilet”.

The Ombudsman found severe maladministration in the landlord’s response to the residents’ reports of drain blockages. The reasons stated by the Ombudsman were:

• The landlord did not ensure all the residents’ blockage reports were responded to in an appropriate or timely manner.
• It did not ensure vulnerabilities, professional recommendations for a CCTV survey and reports of issues with the drain installation were appropriately and robustly considered.
• It did not effectively monitor the completion and effectiveness of the works or maintain effective communication with the developer and the residents until the issues were confirmed to be resolved.

The report noted that while the Ombudsman recognised where a third party was involved, matters might be out of the landlord’s hands “to some extent”, in this case, Clarion’s overall limited role in matters was “not satisfactory”.

The Ombudsman found that the landlord was “not mindful of its interest in the property” and responsibility to the residents.

To remedy the injustice caused, the Ombudsman told the landlord to apologise and pay the residents £2,455 in compensation, undertake an independent survey of the drains and provide options, solutions and timescales for the residents.

The landlord was also asked to carry out a review of current processes “in respect to reports of issues and defects at its new build properties, to identify any areas for learning and service improvement”.

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “In this case, the landlord has not reasonably met its commitments and ensured there has been an appropriate response, or acknowledged the impact of the issue and its handling on the residents.

“The vulnerability of one resident and impact on them should have acted as a prompt to ensure there was sufficient focus on the issues.

“I am especially concerned that in this case and others, residents who are presenting vulnerabilities, which should change the response, are not always being heard.

“I recognise the landlord has engaged extensively with the Ombudsman over the issues arising from its complaints and has made several changes to improve its services following our investigations.

“I appreciate the humility shown in response to the findings in this case from the landlord and hope it encourages them to think about the way it talks about learning from complaints moving forwards."

He added: “The special report published emphasised the importance of culture and leadership around complaints to drive improvement. This must be central to embedding change. Regardless of the number of homes a landlord has, it must recognise that they’ve thought about how to rectify issues for residents.

“In the scale of its operations, it is important the landlord does not lose sight of the individual impact of cases and the people behind those complaints. Nor should this scale be leveraged to diminish the impact of mistakes that, without the intervention of the Ombudsman, would have left the resident without appropriate redress.

“Crucially, it needs to demonstrate empathy for the experience of its residents and double down on its efforts to show complaints are genuinely used as a learning tool, not just a transaction.”

In a learning statement Clarion said: "We are sorry that the family have had to endure drainage problems for a sustained period of time, fully accept the verdict of the Ombudsman and apologise for the service we provided.

"The homeowners deserved better and we are making changes in our organisation to guard against similar issues arising in the future. As a result of a review of this case, we have provided enhanced training to our colleagues on how to manage, track and prioritise cases where there is a person with vulnerabilities in the household, and also on the management of drainage blockage issues."

The social landlord said it had also since invested significantly in a system to help it improve how it dentifies and manages repeat issues, including an automated element to reduce the risk of anything being missed.

"It is worth noting that the problems in this case first surfaced during a serious phase of the pandemic in late 2020. The country was in and out of national lockdowns during this time and our services were impacted. This does not excuse our performance, but we have undergone a lot of change as an organisation since that time," Clarion said.

"We are committed to acting on the recommendations of the Ombudsman and have updated our internal guidance and customer communications to offer clearer advice. We will be formally updating our defects policy to reflect this too."

The case follows the Ombudsman’s special report which made several recommendations for the landlord to address repeated areas of service failure.

Following this case, the Ombudsman expressed concern at the landlord’s “culture around learning from complaints”.