Watchdog urges landlords to ‘see the person behind the repair’
The housing ombudsman has highlighted how the impact of service failures by social landlords are exacerbated when residents are disabled, survivors of domestic abuse and children in its latest report.
The ‘learning from severe administration’ publication includes a case where A2Dominion took nine months to repair the entry door for a domestic abuse survivor’s home.
The ombudsman said the repair should have been treated as an urgent priority due to the household’s circumstances, which the landlord knew about. After completion of the complaints process, the provider did not monitor the progress of the repair and therefore took “an unreasonably long time to resolve the issue.”
The watchdog also described the landlord as failing to communicate proactively or show care towards the tenant, who said she experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder due to the security of the door.
In its learning statement, A2Dominion told the ombudsman it has introduced refresher training on domestic abuse and prioritisation policies for staff, also covering improvements to record keeping. The landlord is also setting up a new repairs IT system to make sure it does not miss surveys and follow-up work.
In another case, Birmingham City Council failed to repair a wet room for 12 months, which left a disabled resident without cleaning facilities.
The ombudsman reported that the landlord cancelled appointments with no further communication with the resident over the course of the year and that there were no notes on any works carried out when it did attend.
There was also no evidence that the resident was aware of appointments before the landlord arrived, which meant it cancelled some appointments and recorded them as ‘refused access.’
The ombudsman noted that the resident had reported having suicidal thoughts to the landlord due to the lack of shower. At one point, the police and ambulance services visited the tenant and referred him to adult social care. The council did not address this intervention.
Since the case, the ombudsman reported that the landlord has resolved the issues for the resident and is “reviewing how it will take these lessons forwards.”
Richard Blakeway, housing ombudsman, said: “It is always important to see the person behind the repair. In these cases, had individual circumstances been adequately considered by the landlords when making decisions, the outcomes could have been different.
“And these cases show the importance of a customer focus in one particular area: appointments. Throughout these cases, repairs appointments do not take place. This is inefficient for landlords and can waste residents’ time. A missed appointment can trigger a series of events from which the landlord finds it hard to recover.
“It is important for residents to allow access for landlords to do repairs. But these cases indicate inadequate or outdated systems or approaches to appointments which lack a customer focus.”
No comments yet