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Council hit with severe maladministration finding after resident left with rotting windows for two years
A council in North East Essex has been hit with a severe maladministration finding after a resident was left with a leaking roof and rotten window frames for more than two years.
The Housing Ombudsman made the finding for Tendring District Council’s “significant and avoidable” delays in dealing with the repairs. It also found that the landlord’s record-keeping had “extensive issues”.
The repairs, including a leaking roof, rotten window frame, blown plaster and damaged artex, had initially been reported in 2019 and were still not fully resolved in late 2021.
When the resident complained about the lack of repairs in late 2020, the council failed to acknowledge or address her concerns, or give a timeframe for when the issues would be resolved.
The resident said she felt angry, frustrated and depressed at the prospect of having to endure another winter without the repairs being completed.
In its stage-two response to the complaint, the council acknowledged that there had been significant delays in addressing the repairs.
But it was not able to provide any detailed repair records or a satisfactory explanation for why the repairs were not appropriately addressed for such a long period of time.
While the council apologised to the resident and did provide better communication regarding the progress of repairs in late 2020, its responses were often vague.
The authority offered the resident £100 compensation, but the ombudsman did not judge this reasonable for the inconvenience and distress caused.
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The watchdog found severe maladministration for the Tendring Council’s handling of the repairs, maladministration for its complaint-handling, and service failure for its record-keeping.
The ombudsman ordered the landlord to pay the resident £2,110 in compensation, issue a further apology, carry out a further final inspection of the property and provide a plan of action.
Housing ombudsman Richard Blakeway said the delays in dealing with the repairs were a “significant concern”.
He said there were “missed opportunities” during this time to fully respond to the resident’s concerns and provide a more detailed explanation of the action it had taken, along with a timeline.
He added: “As our Complaint Handling Code sets out, landlords should clearly set out what will happen and when and it did not do so in this case.
“The landlord’s stage-two response did not amount to a ‘substantial response’, nor did it fully outline any findings of the enquiries it had made into the resident’s complaint.
“This was not appropriate and meant that she was not treated fairly during the complaint-handling process.”
Paul Honeywood, portfolio holder for housing at Tendring Council, said: “On behalf of the council I would like to wholeheartedly apologise again to our tenant for our failure to provide the quality service they have every right to expect and the poor way in which we then handled their complaint.
“I have taken this issue up with officers to ensure that lessons have been learnt and our systems have been improved to ensure we provide a high-quality housing service to the more than 3,000 homes in our stock.”
He said that as well as starting an overall review of the repairs process to look at what other improvements could be made, the council has taken a number of steps already to address the issues highlighted by the ombudsman’s report.
“These include implementing new IT systems to better record and track property inspections, appointment of a new maintenance contractor and development of an in-house team following the winding up of the previous supplier, and further training on complaints-handling.
“We are proud that for at least 10 years this is the first report from the Housing Ombudsman indicating maladministration by TDC as a landlord, but even one case is too many and we will do our utmost to ensure the lessons learnt from this are implemented,” Mr Honeywood explained.
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