Summary: The Ombudsman found fault by the Council on Mr K’s complaint about the way it investigated his tenant’s report of harassment. Its record keeping was poor, and it failed to deal with his complaints according to its complaint’s procedure. The agreed action remedies the avoidable injustice caused.

The complaint

1. Mr K complains about the way the Council investigated:
1. a tenant’s report against him of harassment; and
2. his complaint about how it dealt with that report.
2. As a result, he suffered distress and financial loss because of rent arrears.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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)
4. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered all the information provided by Mr K, the notes I made of our telephone conversation, and the Council’s response to my enquiries, a copy of which I sent him. I sent a copy of my draft decision to Mr K and the Council. I considered their responses.

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What I found

6. Mr K is a landlord who rents out a property. In June 2018, the Council had contact from his tenant as she wanted advice about landlord harassment. She claimed Mr K harassed her because a change in her personal circumstances might affect her ability to pay rent. She claimed he intimidated and threatened her about what would happen if she failed to pay. The tenant did not want the Council to contact Mr K about it at this point.
7. The tenant then contacted the Council again claiming further harassment. This included claims Mr K called in the evening demanding all the rent due and threatening to charge her £50 for each day rent was late. She agreed to leave the property in August and to let viewings take place when present.
8. Towards the end of July, Mr K served the tenant with a section 8 notice which sought possession of the property. A valid notice means a landlord can then issue proceedings at court to evict a tenant. The earliest date Mr K could start court proceedings was after 9 August. The tenant claimed Mr K told her to leave on 10 August.
9. Following contact from the homeless solutions team, the Council’s Private Sector Intelligence Officer (the officer) told Mr K attempts to evict her without following the correct procedure would amount to illegal eviction. Repeatedly telling her to leave by that date was landlord harassment and it was at this point the officer started investigating Mr K.
10. The officer also told Mr K the courts could decide in his tenant’s favour if it found she had made efforts to pay the rent or could show making offers to pay. When Mr K said he would not ask the tenant to leave by 10 August, the officer stopped his investigation.
11. Later that month, the tenant called the officer because of an urgent housing appointment which conflicted with a prior viewing Mr K arranged to re-let the property. She claimed Mr K said he had keys and would do the viewing with or without her there. The officer contacted Mr K. Both Mr K and the officer claimed the other shouted at them during the call.
12. Mr K says the investigation lasted more than 3 months and found no evidence of harassment. He believes the Council delayed its investigation to delay having to re-house the tenant. He is unhappy with the officer’s conduct and the way it dealt with his complaint.

Council investigation: harassment

13. Mr K claimed he felt threatened, belittled, and intimidated by the officer when contacted.
14. The evidence I have seen includes the following:

• 5 May: Mr K, in his later complaint to the Council, said the tenant confirmed on this date she would accept an amendment to the tenancy agreement which meant she would pay £44 a day for late rent payments. He introduced this amendment to act as a, ‘deterrent’.
• 14 July: Mr K, again in his complaint to the Council, said he had sent her a text asking her to contact him about arrears and arrangements for her to leave. The following day he sent another text to her to get an update. This told her he would attend the next day which he did, despite not receiving a response.
• 27 July: Mr K hand delivered the section 8 notice to the tenant.
• 3 August: The housing team sent the officer an email about a report of harassment from the tenant. It referred to her previous contact on 19 June about homelessness. The email confirmed the housing team contacted Mr K about helping the tenant pay the rent and arrears. He refused the offer saying the tenant needed to leave at the end of the notice period. The text of an email received from Mr K was also inserted confirming his decision. The team’s email explained the tenant was distressed by Mr K’s behavior. He was contacting her about leaving by 10 August and the team advised there was an eviction process to follow.
• 6 August: The officer emailed the tenant with information.
• 15 August: The officer emailed the housing team saying he had contact with the tenant but noted legal proceedings by Mr K may fail if shown he refused to accept efforts to pay the rent. The same day he emailed Mr K. In this email he: said he received a report about harassment of his tenant; asked him to confirm he was the landlord; noted he declined the Council’s attempts to help with the rent, arrears, and extending the tenancy; queried the eviction process; and explained unless done properly, any eviction could be illegal. The officer pointed out the courts could find in the tenant’s favour if it took account of the Council’s offer to help.
• I saw a copy of Mr K’s response to the officer’s email sent the same day.
• 22 August: In his complaint, Mr K confirmed the tenant said access was inconvenient, but he wanted to let himself in as he had given 72 hours’ notice. He said he told the tenant this would be as, ‘a last resort’.
• 9 October: In response to my draft decision, Mr K provided a copy of an email received from the officer. This said he had not received any further information from the tenant about whether she wished to pursue the report further. As a result, the officer would close the case.
• The Council’s stage 1 response, sent in November, claimed Mr K shouted at the officer during his call on 22 August. The response claimed the officer suggested further contact should be by email only at which point Mr K began to shout again. The officer ended the call. No direct evidence was provided in support of these claims. The letter referred to Mr K’s complaint in which he alleged the officer had shouted at him.

Analysis

15. The Council confirmed it had no specific policy covering harassment investigations but has an Enforcement Policy for Regulatory Functions. This sets out principles of good regulation (section 3) which includes being:

• Proportionate: its activities will reflect the level of risk to the public;
• Accountable: its activities will be open to public scrutiny, with clear and accessible policies, and fair and efficient complaints procedures;
• Consistent: its advice will be robust and reliable;
• Transparent: it will ensure those it regulates are able to understand what is expected of them and what they can anticipate in return; and
• Targeted: it will focus resources on higher risk activities.

16. The Council could not provide any notes of telephone conversations with Mr K and has no information against the property he rents out. It explained it had limited access to the officer’s email account following his departure from the Council. In its stage 2 response, the Council said his account was deleted when the officer left its employment. It has no records of email contact between the officer and Mr K on key dates between June and August. The Council managed to access some emails from another team’s files.
17. The Council’s failures with its record keeping means the evidence I have seen is limited and not in its original form in some cases. For example, the content of some emails was inserted into other emails which means I am unable to verify whether I have seen an email in its entirety.
18. I consider the failure to produce records is fault. It did not have any system in place to save and recover information about investigations from officer email accounts when they left their employment, for example. It could not show what this officer’s investigation involved or that a final decision on its outcome was communicated to Mr K.
19. I am satisfied this caused Mr K an avoidable injustice as he has the uncertainty about whether the decision on the Ombudsman’s investigation would have differed if the Council had more evidence to provide.
20. As Mr K explained to the Council, he was not complaining about its right to carry out an investigation but complained about the way the officer did it. He claimed the officer intimidated and threatened him. He claimed the officer was rude to him. What little evidence I have seen does not show the officer intimidating or threatening Mr K.
21. It is unlikely I could establish whether the officer or Mr K shouted at each other or were rude without listening to recordings of their telephone calls. Such records do not exist as calls are not routinely recorded. Without this kind of evidence, the allegation cannot be proven either way as it would be reduced to Mr K’s word against that of the officer. The lack of evidence means I am unable to reach a formal finding on this complaint.
22. I have seen nothing to show the officer had any formal procedures to follow when investigating this complaint. There is nothing to show the officer wrote to Mr K to advise him of the outcome of the investigation, for example. This is fault.

Council investigation: complaint

23. In August 2018, Mr K complained about the Council. It was passed on to the service department dealing with harassment claims. The Council later accepted the department failed to respond to it, and the other complaints he sent online, which were also passed through to it.
24. In October, the Ombudsman told Mr K he needed to complete the complaints procedure with the Council.
25. Towards the end of November, the service department finally sent its stage 1 response. The copy I have seen is undated. The Council later accepted this response contained errors, lacked a reference, lacked a date, and gave incorrect information about how to escalate it to stage 2.
26. Later the following month, Mr K wrote to the Council unhappy with the quality of the stage 1 investigation which he believed did not focus on his central complaint of his treatment by the officer during the harassment investigation.
27. In April 2019, after not receiving responses to several emails that month when Mr K made further contact, the Ombudsman warned it would pass the case to investigation. The Council replied sending a copy of its stage 1 response and offered to take the complaint to stage 2. The Ombudsman decided to pass the complaint through to investigation.
28. On 16 July, the Council sent Mr K its stage 2 response. This explained:

• The private sector housing team did not have a fully functioning data base to record full details of officer investigations but had re-organised. Records were held on individual officer email accounts. When the investigating officer left the Council, his email account was deleted, along with details of his investigations;
• It recommended the team look at how they record investigations; and
• It accepted if failed to properly deal with his complaint for which it apologised. Officers involved would be spoken to about the handling of the stage 1 complaint and delays.

Analysis

29. The Council’s complaints procedure has the following stages:

• Stage 1: after acknowledging a complaint within 2 working days, the service manager will investigate and send a response within 10 working days;
• Stage 2: upon request, a complaint is reviewed by the head of service of their executive director who will send a response within 20 working days; and
• Stage 3: upon request, an independent adjudicator will review the complaint and send a response within 30 working days.

30. It took the Council 3 months to send the stage 1 response and, as the Council later admitted, it contained errors. This is a delay of about 2.5 months. This failure to follow its own timescale is fault.
31. It took the Council 4 months to send him its stage 2 response. This is a delay of about 3 months. This failure to follow its own timescale is fault.
32. I consider the delay under its complaint’s procedure caused Mr K an avoidable injustice as it caused inconvenience and frustration over a prolonged period.

Agreed action

33. I considered our guidance on remedies.
34. The Council will, within 4 weeks of the final decision on this complaint, carry out the following:
1. Send Mr K a written apology for the failures to keep proper records and the delays with its complaint’s procedure;
2. Pay him £150 for the distress the fault caused;
3. Provide details explaining what steps it took to ensure officers make and retain records by officers in the private sector housing team;
4. Provide details explaining what steps it took to ensure there are no delays on complaints in the future; and
5. Look at whether specific guidance about procedure needs issuing to officers investigating landlord harassment.

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Final decision

35. The Ombudsman found fault on Mr K’s complaint against the Council. The agreed action remedies the injustice this caused.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman