Housing complaints annual report 2024/2025

Appendix 2 Analysis of Housing Ombudsman determinations

In these cases, the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) found that the council failed to respond to complaints at both stage 1 (10 working days) and stage 2 (20 working days) within their target timescales.
Complaint responses failed to address all the different elements of the complaint, with no explanation provided as to why.
Often vulnerabilities, such as age and disabilities, were raised by the customer when they made the complaint, the HOS found on several occasions that these weren't considered or addressed in the complaint response. One customer provided medical evidence of the health impact caused by the issues complained about, which weren't acknowledged in the response.
When a complaint response was delayed, the customer was not kept informed of when they would receive a response to their complaint. In some cases, residents waited months for a response to their stage 1 complaint.
The council didn't follow its own complaints policy by failing to escalate a stage 1 complaint to stage 2 following the customer's request.

There were unreasonable delays in the time taken for the council to attend the customer's home to carry out an inspection following them reporting a repair.
There were also unreasonable delays in the time taken to carry out work following an inspection or survey.
Failure to comply with our own timescales for carrying out urgent repairs, particularly relating to roof repairs.
In one case, a customer waited 17 months for the full repair to be completed after the council carried out a 'make safe' repair. This repair related to a leak in the customer's roof and subsequent water ingress. This caused a further issue of damp and mould which could have been avoided if the initial repair was completed quickly.
Poor communication with the resident meant that they regularly had to contact the council for updates to their repair work, leaving one customer chasing updates for over a year without any record of the council proactively contacting them.
Unreasonable delays in decision-making when moving residents into temporary accommodation due to the condition of the home. In one case, this happened despite prior knowledge of disability vulnerabilities in the household and having dealt with the customer for similar repair issues in the past.

The council failed to take vulnerabilities into account, such as disability and age, when reports of damp and mould were made, leading to vulnerable customers living in a property with these issues.
Most cases were linked to other ongoing repairs. Delays to carrying out these repairs meant it took longer to resolve the damp and mould issues. In one case, a customer reported damp and mould three months after reporting a leaky roof which wasn't resolved for another 14 months.
There was a breakdown in the relationship between the council and the customer in some cases, due to multiple visits not fixing the issues and the overall time taken to carry out repairs. This made it harder for the council to gain access to the customer's home to carry out works, and delayed matters further.

Poor record-keeping was highlighted in several cases, particularly that we couldn't provide the HOS with evidence that repairs, or an inspection/survey had been carried out and when.
The council was aware that a customer had health issues, but our records didn't accurately indicate what they were, which prevented us from taking proactive action to reduce the impact of any works required.
In one case, the council were unable to provide any record of any communication with a customer while they were in temporary accommodation, awaiting repairs to their home.
In several cases, the council were unable to provide copies of inspections/surveys to the HOS due to changes in contractors.
This also meant that the council often had to carry out a further inspection/survey due to having no record of the initial work, which delayed matters further.