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Housing Ombudsman details ‘severe maladministration’ findings against five social landlords
The Housing Ombudsman has released details of the ‘severe maladministration’ findings it made last year, including the social landlords involved.
It marks the first time the sector’s complaints arbitration service has named landlords found at fault in individual cases as part of its drive towards greater transparency.
The ombudsman’s report describes serious failings it uncovered in 2019/20 in five incidents concerning Camden Council, Newham Council, Together Housing, Cottsway Housing and Hyde Group.
Both Camden Council and Newham Council left residents in poor living conditions for years, having failed to perform repairs. The ombudsman ordered each to pay thousands of pounds in compensation.
Together Housing did not properly consult 29 supported housing residents before it withdrew support services.
Meanwhile, Cottsway gave a tenant the wrong tenancy agreement to sign, leading her to believe wrongly for 15 years that she had the Preserved Right to Buy. The association attempted to resolve the issue by asking her to sign a backdated amended agreement.
Finally, Hyde ignored a leaseholder’s queries about service charges for eight months – and then failed to respond to her formal complaint, despite the ombudsman asking it to do so six times over the four subsequent months.
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Housing ombudsman Richard Blakeway said: “This report is focused on the few but most serious failings where we investigate and make a finding of severe maladministration.
“Issues with complaint-handling featured in all the cases, together with poor record-keeping in several.
“I have been encouraged by the response from landlords in wanting to put things right and hope that by publishing these cases, the learning is shared more widely across the sector, to help improve services and benefit residents.”
The report follows the ombudsman’s decision to name the landlords it most frequently finds at fault following leaseholders’ complaints.
The service will continue to release details of cases that resulted in a ‘severe maladministration’ determination and will inform the Regulator of Social Housing of its findings, per a recent memorandum of understanding.
It will also begin performance reports for individual landlords later this year.
Inside Housing launched the first ‘complaints failures index’ this month, which will show how often the ombudsman criticises social landlords relative to their size.
A spokesperson for Camden Council said: “We are committed to providing the best standard of living and safety for our residents and, while it was disappointing to receive this judgement, we responded by taking swift action to complete all the ombudsman’s recommendations and by carrying out our own internal review to identify and implement improvements – resulting in a better quality of service for our residents.”
Vivian Rosser, chief executive of Cottsway, said: “We pride ourselves on providing excellent customer service, reflected in our high customer satisfaction rates, and we are committed to getting things right first time for our customers.
“It is extremely disappointing for us that we fell short of this on this occasion and we fully accept the ombudsman’s findings.
“This determination related to a mistake caused by human error and we have apologised to the customer involved and implemented the ombudsman’s recommendations.
“We have taken steps to put extra procedures in place to prevent this from happening again.”
Sue Lewis, head of supported housing at Together, said: “We fully respect the ombudsman’s findings, which are published in today’s report.
“We have fulfilled all our obligations to tenants in line with the ombudsman’s determination and subsequent recommendations.
“We apologised unreservedly to tenants for our failing to consult appropriately prior to the removal of the support service in April 2017 and paid compensation to those affected.
“We have resolved the contractual issues regarding tenancy agreements and worked with tenants to resolve matters by undertaking further consultations on the options available.”
Paul Singleton, director of customer experience at Hyde, said: “On this occasion, our service level fell below its normal high standard and we have said to our customer how sorry we are for the poor service she received from us.
“This determination from the ombudsman was particularly disappointing because it is the first of its kind we have received in recent years.
“We have been successful in resolving disputes with our customers and we have received relatively low levels of maladministration findings as a result.
“We intend to use the new housing ombudsman complaint handling code to support continued improvement in our service.”
Newham Council has been contacted for comment.
