Ombudsman urges council to make robust changes to its “fundamentally flawed” complaints handling

The Housing Ombudsman has published a special report on Birmingham City Council after a wider investigation found "fundamental failures".

The report, which was issued following concerns about Birmingham’s complaint handling, urges the council to make “robust changes”, and has set out a series of recommendations on repairs, record keeping, complaint handling and compensation.

The Ombudsman’s investigation was initiated by a case where the Ombudsman found severe maladministration for delays in repairing an extensive water leak that caused damage to a resident’s property.

The Ombudsman found that the landlord failed to offer any compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident, in contravention of the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.

The landlord said the resident would have to claim for the internal damage to her property on her insurance, the report revealed.

The special report is based on complaints made to Birmingham City Council that were brought to the Ombudsman for investigation over a six-month period from March 2022.

The Ombudsman made 25 findings across these cases and found maladministration in 24 of them, including five findings of severe maladministration, representing a maladministration rate of 96%.

Looking at repairs, the Ombudsman found that while the landlord’s policy sets out timescales depending on the severity of the issue, in practice these timescales were “meaningless”.

The Ombudsman noted that it is “not clear how the landlord assigned categories of repair and considered resident vulnerability”.

The Ombudsman identified four key themes and set out a series of recommendations, which can be read in full here.

The four key themes were:

• Repairs – “The aims of the landlord’s repairs policy were not met in practice, and residents had to make multiple attempts to get repairs resolved, often over a prolonged period. The report’s recommendations focus on how the landlord can improve triaging repairs requests, reviewing repairs progress with contractors, and taking a proactive approach to repairs”.
• Record keeping – “The landlord’s response to repair requests and complaints showed the impact of poor record keeping. The landlord had no framework in place for the record keeping and the expectations on its staff and contractors. This is a significant weakness in the landlord’s approach and the cause of repeated service failure. Recommendations included developing a framework and an action plan to ensure better external and cross-departmental communications”.
• Complaint handling – “The landlord’s complaints policy failed to comply with many of the requirements of the Complaint Handling Code, meaning there was little chance of individual complaints being handled appropriately. The report recommended the landlord update its complaint process to comply with the Code and then self-assess against it to detail how it will tackle cases of non-compliance”.
• Compensation – “The landlord’s complaints policy did not allow for compensation to be paid for distress, inconvenience, time and trouble. It also said it could not make payments where the landlord decided there was no liability, which is entirely false. In one case, the landlord initially refused to pay a financial remedy direct to the resident, instead wishing to offset it against rent arrears. The Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies is clear that compensation awarded by this Service should not be offset against arrears. The report recommends a new policy should be created so that a resident does not have to pursue a separate compensation claim”.

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “Our wider investigation reveals how the landlord’s current approach to handling complaints is fundamentally flawed.

“At every point residents are met with increasing challenge to get the landlord to put things right, while the lack of adequate policies, procedures and governance combined with limited learning from these issues means the landlord repeats the same mistakes.  

“This has often led to a collapse in trust between residents and the landlord. Some residents faced living for years in homes that required repair, making repeated attempts to get the landlord and its contractors to act decisively. In one case the resident made repeated disrepair claims for over 10 years.

“The landlord’s inadequate record keeping inevitably lead to delays and incomplete responses, forcing residents to complain, but our investigation found residents were often refused a rightful remedy.

“Effective learning from complaints is a core element of effective governance. Unfortunately, there was limited evidence of learning from complaints and procedures remained unchanged until the Ombudsman became involved.   

“The landlord has accepted our recommendations and taken steps to address the issues identified. How the landlord responds will demonstrate whether it is capable of fundamentally addressing these issues and embedding change across a large organisation.

“This landlord is not alone in facing these challenges, and there are lessons for the wider sector from this report. I continue to see cases that involve these fundamental issues which cut across every aspect of a resident's interaction with a landlord.”

It has been noted by the Ombudsman that Birmingham city council has engaged with the Ombudsman throughout and accepted it got things wrong and there is a need to improve.

Birmingham has said it has “already taken steps toward this” by acting on orders from the Ombudsman.

The report notes there will be regular meetings with the landlord to ensure compliance with these recommendations.

Birmingham City Council said: “Birmingham City Council is the largest local authority social housing landlord in England with over 60,000 homes and carries out over 250,000 repairs per year.

“Following the historical cases highlighted in the report, we have progressed in terms of improving the service for tenants and this will continue through our Transformation Programme and the new Housing Strategy.

“The findings of a recent independent review and the recommendations made by the Housing Ombudsman in the Special Report have been incorporated into a detailed action plan which focusses on addressing process inefficiencies in its response to repairs, record keeping and complaint handling.

“A new corporate complaints process was introduced in May 2021 which preceded the date of the cases included in the Paragraph 49 investigation. This included bringing in additional dedicated resources with the objective of delivering a consistently high standard of service, reducing delays and improving the quality of responses."

The local authority added: “As a result of performance issues, we terminated a failing repairs contractor in March 2022. We are working with our Repairs Contractors to develop process improvements which will help mitigate against future service failure.

“We welcome the opportunity to work with the Housing Ombudsman during the implementation of their recommendations and we are fully committed to delivering service improvements for the benefit of all Birmingham City Council tenants”.

Lottie Winson