Summary: Miss B complains about how the Borough Council supervised disabled adaptations to her home. There was no fault by the Borough Council or its agents acting on its behalf. The Borough Council acted quickly to make sure the gas leak was fixed. It met its building control duties, and the County Council, acting on its behalf, made sure that defective drainage was rectified.

The complaint

1. The Council failed to properly supervise works done to Miss B’s home under a Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG), so that there was a gas leak, and defective drainage which took a long time to rectify.
2. Miss B says that as a result of the Council’s failings, she has been caused distress and frustration; her son won’t use the facilities; and she lost income as she had to support her family through the building work.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information provided by Miss B and discussed the issues with her. I considered the information provided by the Council including its file documents. I also considered the law and guidance set out below. Both parties had the opportunity to comment on a draft of this statement. I have taken into account all comments received before issuing this final decision.

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What I found

The Borough Council’s responsibilities

6. The Borough Council is the housing authority. The County Council is the social care authority and has responsibilities toward K as a disabled child. The County Council and the Borough Council have a shared protocol for dealing with DFGs. This says that for major works such as the adaptations to Miss B’s home, the County Council will manage the project on site and give notice of practical completion.
7. In March 2022 the government issued non-statutory guidance “Disabled facilities Grant (DFG) Delivery: Guidance for local authorities in England (the Guidance).
8. The Guidance sets out how DFG’s will be handled where the Borough Council is the housing authority and the County Council has duties towards a disabled child. The Guidance makes it clear that the Borough Council as housing authority has the statutory duty to provide adaptations and administer DFGs through all stages from the initial enquiry to post-completion. The Borough Council as housing authority remains responsible for the work.
9. So in this case, the Borough Council is responsible for deciding the scope of the works, the cost of the adaptations and for technical decisions about what adaptations are feasible. It has agreed that the County Council will handle the works done under the DFG, but the Borough Council remains responsible for these.

The law and guidance

Disabled Facilities Grants

10. DFGs are provided under the terms of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. Councils have a statutory duty to give grants to disabled people for certain adaptations. Before approving a grant, a council must be satisfied the work is necessary, meets the disabled person’s needs, and is reasonable and practicable.
11. Section 23 of the Care Act explains the boundary in law between care and support and general housing. Where housing legislation requires councils to provide housing services, they must provide them under housing legislation. However, this should not prevent housing and social care councils working together. The guidance states:
12. ”... community equipment, along with telecare, aids and adaptations can support reablement, promote independence contributing to preventing the needs for care and support. A local [social care] authority may wish to draw on the assistance of the housing authority and local housing services.”
13. The maximum grant payable by a council is £30,000. A council can award other discretionary help if it thinks it is necessary.

Building Control

14. Councils have a very important role in ensuring buildings are safe for people to use. Their duty is to protect the public, rather than the interests of private individuals. They have extensive powers to protect the public, ranging from checking building works for compliance with building regulations, and requiring or carrying out emergency works to make buildings safe.
15. Most building work requires building regulation approval. Building regulations set out requirements and guidance that builders and building owners are required to follow and consider. The purpose of the regulations is to make sure buildings are safe for those that use them or live around them.
16. A certificate of building regulations approval can be granted by councils acting as building control authorities, or by independent ‘approved’ inspectors. Councils employ building inspectors to carry out this work.
17. There are two ways a building owner can get building regulations approval. These are:
• Full plans application. The owner or their agent submits plans. The plans are checked for compliance with building regulations.
• Building notice application. The owner or their agent informs the Council or approved inspector of their intention to begin building work. The Council’s inspector or an independent approved inspector will visit the site at various stages of the work to check compliance with building regulations.

What happened

18. Miss B’s child, K, has a disability. He was finding it difficult to access the family bathroom upstairs, and to get in and out of the bath, even with assistance. K needed to increase his independence with mobility and toileting. In July 2017, the County Council’s Occupational Therapist (OT) assessed K’s needs. The OT supported the application for a DFG to fund an extension to the family home so that K had access to a ground floor toilet; a safe shower; safe access to his bedroom and to the house.
19. Miss B lives in a housing association property and the Borough Council, as housing authority, approved the funding as a major adaptation under a DFG. The work started on the side extension in February 2020. The work took longer than expected and had to sometimes be suspended due to COVID-19 restrictions.
20. Although, the Borough Council remains liable for the DFG, Miss B dealt exclusively with the County Council.
21. In June 2020, Miss B reported a gas leak from the newly installed boiler to the County Council. The County Council contacted the architect and the housing association that day. The Housing Association sent an engineer who resolved the problem.
22. The Borough Council received two building regulations applications. The first for the extension and later, the second for alterations to the drainage. The Borough Council checked the plans and undertook to inspect the site as work progressed. The first plan submitted shows a single drain in the garden with the new foul drainage connection made to it. The record of public sewers showed a combined system of foul and rainwater in the road outside the house. This meant the contractor connected the foul water drain from the extension to the existing surface water drain.
23. The Borough Council said it conducted seven inspections during the construction but none of the drainage connection. This is because the information submitted to it suggested that the foul and rainwater drainage was combined and so the Council would expect the contractor to connect to the first drainage pipe located.
24. As well as these building control inspections, the Borough Council dealt with making payments due under the DFG. The Borough Council spoke to Miss B about the work before it started making payments. However, this was shortly after work had started in 2020 and the issues Miss B has complained about were yet to happen. The Borough Council tried to contact Miss B in January 2021 to check that the work had been completed properly, but it could not reach her. The Borough Council also checked with the County Council that the work had been completed satisfactorily. It authorised the final payments from the DFG.
25. After the building work was completed, Miss B found that sewage was backing up to the house. This was extremely unpleasant, unhygienic, and caused a stench. Miss B reported this to her housing association who contacted the County Council in November 2022. The County Council’s clerk of works visited the property in November and again in January 2023, following further reports from the Housing Association. The clerk of works could not detect any smell, but the County Council decided that it needed to arrange a camera survey of the drainage. The County Council contracted a drainage surveyor who visited the site in March 2023. The survey was not conclusive but the engineer told the County Council that they suspected the new wet-room drain did not connect to the foul sewage system. The County Council said this should not have happened and it paid for the work to be corrected. The work was completed in June 2023. The Borough Council inspected the completed drainage work.
26. The Borough Council was unaware of the issue with the drainage until Miss B complained to the Ombudsman. The County Council also implemented new procedures to improve site supervision.

Conclusions

27. There was no fault by the Borough Council when Miss B reported the gas leak. I realize that this was very worrying for Miss B but the Borough Council and the contractor working on its behalf soon resolved the issue.
28. The County Council acted on the Borough Council’s behalf in supervising the work under the DFG, but the Borough Council retains responsibility for this. The Borough Council also has building control duties.
29. There was no fault when the contractor wrongly connected the drainage. They did so based on the information they had. The Borough Council has explained that as long as the contractor was following the plans it would not have inspected the drainage connections, and so would not have identified the problem.
30. I can sympathise with Miss B as the defective drainage meant unpleasant smells came into her home. However, the County Council, acting on behalf of the Borough Council, visited the site twice as soon as the housing association contacted it. Despite not detecting smells, it decided to investigate further without delay. The County Council took from November to March to detect the probable cause of the problem and from March to June to rectify this. There was no unavoidable delay by the County Council and it made sure the work was completed in good time.
31. Miss B says the subcontractors made many mistakes and were rude. However, the County Council responded to her complaints about this and addressed this with its contractor. The contractor agreed not to use these workers again.
32. I appreciate that Miss B is unhappy with the final adaptations and that there were some issues with the building work. However, overall, there was no fault by the Borough Council.

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Final decision

33. I have completed my investigation. There was no fault by the Council.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman