Ombudsman finds severe maladministration at housing association after resident forced to sleep in living room for 18 months
The Housing Ombudsman has found severe maladministration for PA Housing’s repeated failings in dealing with a leak coming into a resident’s bedroom from the property above.
The problems caused the resident to sleep in her living room for more than 18 months.
The Ombudsman said PA Housing, which provides housing across the Midlands, London and the South East, 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.
It also failed to respond to her concerns about compensation for damage and failed to respond to her queries on what support it could offer in relation to her disabilities.
The Ombudsman said the landlord had acknowledged in August 2020 that it needed to carry out the works to the resident’s property following the leak and did do work on the neighbour’s property to address the leaks.
However the Ombudsman found no evidence that it carried out work in the resident’s property. It made arrangements but then failed to follow up or the works were delayed.
“It later acknowledged that the leaks had caused damage to the resident’s bedding and had led to the resident having to sleep in her living room which was still the case when the Ombudsman issued its decision in April 2022. This meant the resident had not been able to use her bedroom for 84 weeks.”
The Ombudsman said PA Housing raised the possibility of compensation but never followed it up. “It was also aware that the resident had a disability and initially failed to offer any support. When it said it could offer support by adapting her spare bedroom to her needs, it never did despite further queries from the resident.”
The Ombudsman called on PA Housing to pay a total of £2,830 compensation, apologise to the resident, provide a timescale for completing rectification works and carry out a review of its overall management of the case.
Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “Throughout this complaint there were multiple instances where the landlord’s lack of communication caused distress to the resident. Even where it did provide timeframes for works, these were often not met and no communications given to the resident with an explanation or updated timeframe for works.
“The landlord’s failure to acknowledge the resident’s reports of leaks, having previously advised that it would keep her up to date, would have caused considerable distress for the resident, who remained unsure about how and when the leak would be resolved and continued to leave her without the use of her bedroom.”
In a statement PA Housing said it was “deeply sorry for the errors made throughout this case, and the distress it has caused our resident. Our hope is always to provide the best possible services to our customers, and it’s clear this did not happen here.”
It added that it had taken a range of steps including:
- reviewing its policy and procedures for managing complex cases “to ensure there is the correct ownership and management throughout to completion”;
- producing daily reports on its oldest cases to agree action plans and monitor their progress;
- holding weekly meetings with contractors for its complex cases;
- issuing regular reports to a senior level, to the PA Housing Board, and across the organisation “so that, as a business, we make sure we both learn and address the issues raised from top to bottom”;
- giving some staff empathy training for dealing with customers, with more training being commissioned to take place in 2023;
- reviewing its written communications to ensure the tone is appropriate; and
- reviewing complaints received for similar issues in the past 12 months.
“We’re very grateful to the Housing Ombudsman for allowing us the opportunity to demonstrate the lessons we have learnt so we can prevent something like this happening again,” PA Housing said.
