Summary: The Council failed to take any action after it inspected Mr B’s home in 2016 and delayed taking any action after it inspected his home in 2017. As a result, Mr B has been living in poor housing conditions for longer than was unavoidable. The Council has agreed to apologise, make a payment to Mr B and take action to prevent similar failings in future.

The complaint

1. Mr B complains that the Council has failed to take action to deal with disrepair, including significant damp, in his home.
2. Mr B considers the conditions in the property are affecting his health. The Ombudsman is investigating a separate complaint, under reference 18 004 027, about the Council’s decision to not award Mr B priority on its housing register.

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 an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
5. If we are satisfied with a council’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)

How I considered this complaint

6. I have:
• considered the complaint and the documents provided by the complainant;
• discussed the issues with the complainant;
• made enquiries of the Council and considered the comments and documents the Council has provided; and
• given the Council and the complainant the opportunity to comment on my draft decision.

What I found

7. The Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), introduced by the Housing Act 2004 and in force since 2006, provides a mechanism through which local authority environmental health officers inspect and identify hazards in residential housing. Where they identify the most serious ‘Category 1’ hazards, they are required to take action. However, they can also choose to take action in regard to less serious ‘Category 2’ hazards.

Key events and analysis

8. Mr B lives in a privately rented flat. The Council is the freeholder of the flat and his landlord is the leaseholder.
9. In 2016 Mr B contacted the Council about his housing conditions. He says that an officer inspected his property in June 2016 and took photographs. But that the officer did not add any information about the inspection to the Council’s system, lost the photographs, refused to return Mr B’s calls and failed to take any further action on his case.
10. The Council says that it did inspect Mr B’s home in June 2016. But that when it transferred cases from an old computer system, it lost Mr B’s case details. This was fault. The Council has apologised to Mr B for the delay this caused in dealing with his case.
11. In June 2017, the Council’s Housing Allocations team asked the Council’s Property Regulation team to carry out a medical inspection of Mr B’s home. This was because Mr B had applied to join the Council’s housing register and said that the condition of the property was affecting his health.
12. In August 2017, the Property Regulation team carried out a medical inspection and sent a housing conditions report to the Housing Allocations Team. It identified several issues, including damp and mould and said that it would be contacting the landlord. It did not try to do so until 22 December 2017. This delay was fault. It then wrote to the landlord requiring them to complete various works. It said that it would be revisiting after 35 days to check that the landlord had completed the works.
13. The Regulatory Services Officer who inspected the property in August 2017 suspected that some of the mould was due to penetrating damp and therefore the responsibility of the Council as the freeholder. In December 2017, she made a referral to the Council’s repairs team to investigate this. This delay was fault.
14. In February 2018, the Regulatory Services Officer carried out a HHSRS inspection and identified several category 2 hazards. Neither the landlord nor the Council had carried out any works since the previous inspection.
15. The Regulatory Services Officer contacted the Council’s repairs team again for an update. The repairs team arranged for a surveyor to attend in March but it did not tell Mr B about the appointment and the surveyor was unable to gain access. The appointment was rearranged and the surveyor attended in May. This delay was fault.
16. The surveyor inspected the property and decided that the damp had been caused by condensation, rather than rising damp or water ingress. As the Council did not consider there were any structural issues contributing to the damp, it did not consider the Council, as freeholder, was responsible for carrying out any works to deal with the damp. I have found no evidence of fault in the way this decision was reached.
17. In July 2018, the Council served an Improvement Notice under section 12 of the Housing Act on the landlord. The notice required the landlord to carry out various works by 18 September 2018. The Council carried out an address search of the landlord which revealed another address. It sent the notice to that address and the address it had been using previously.
18. The landlord’s representative first made contact with the Council on 2 October 2018. He confirmed that the landlord no longer lived at the address which the Council had used before July 2018.
19. The Council re-visited the property on 10 October 2018 and found that the landlord had only completed some of the works. The Council arranged a follow up inspection for later that month to ensure the landlord addressed the outstanding matters. The Council inspected the property again on 7 November 2018 and found that the landlord had not addressed the outstanding matters. As the landlord has not complied with the improvement notice, it has arranged to formally interview the landlord and is considering further action.
20. Mr B considers the Council failed to identify all the hazards, including a faulty boiler. Mr B points out that in December 2017 the Council required the landlord to replace the water tank but did not do so in the improvement notice.
21. The Council says that it checked the boiler during its inspection in February 2018 and found it to be working. In May 2018, it told Mr B that it would ask his landlord to provide a copy of the gas safety certificate. It received a copy of the certificate on 8 October, shortly after it first made contact with the landlord’s representative. Mr B has provided evidence to show that the boiler had a gas leak in September 2018. I do not consider this gas leak shows that the boiler was faulty before September 2018. I have found no evidence of fault here.
22. The Council says that the letter it sent requiring Mr B’s landlord to replace the water tank was advisory. The Council could have included in the improvement notice a requirement for the landlord to replace the water tank but it did not have a duty to do so. It decided that it was not appropriate because there were no ongoing reports of pests in the water tank and its officer was unable to access it to witness any defects. However, the surveyor who inspected the property in May 2018 was able to access it and recommended that a new cover be fitted. Since this was pointed out to the Council, it has agreed to revisit Mr B’s home and assess the current condition of the water tank. It will then decide whether it should require the landlord to take any other action.

Injustice

23. To establish how Mr B has been affected by the failings identified, I have considered what is likely to have happened if there had been no fault by the Council.

Failure to take action following the June 2016 inspection

24. It is likely that the repairs would have been completed sooner if the Council had not lost Mr B’s case details. While Mr B has suffered injustice here, I consider Mr B contributed to it by not complaining about the matter until November 2017. If he had complained earlier, the Council could have carried out another inspection and contacted his landlord sooner.

Delays following inspection in August 2017

25. I consider the failings in this case have caused Mr B frustration and put him to avoidable time and trouble.
26. If the Council had not failed to take any action between August and December 2017, and it had not delayed arranging for a surveyor to inspect the property, I consider it likely that the Council would have served the Improvement Notice by January 2018. As it was not served until July 2018, I consider the Council’s failings caused Mr B to live in poor housing conditions for six months longer than was unavoidable. I do not consider there have been any delays since the Council served the Improvement Notice.

Agreed action

27. Within four weeks, the Council will:
• apologise for the failings identified in this case;
• make a payment of £550 to Mr B; and
• revisit Mr B’s home to assess the condition of the water tank.
28. Within eight weeks, the Council will review the way it deals with disrepair in private housing to ensure cases are progressed in a timely manner.

Final decision

29. I have completed my investigation and uphold Mr B’s complaint. There was fault by the Council which caused injustice to Mr B. The action the Council has agreed to take is sufficient to remedy that injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman