Ombudsman slammed for council’s £66k fine when PRS landlords would have been fined £2 MILLION

The Housing Ombudsman has been slammed by a legal expert after it handed out a fine of £66,441 for poor housing – an average of £2,000 per case – when a landlord in the private rented sector would have been fined more than £2 MILLION for the same offences.

The Ombudsman highlighted a range of issues at Islington Council including a ‘disjointed’ approach to complaints and a ‘lack of clear ownership’.

An investigation has now led to the council being fined £66,441 for severe maladministration in handling complaints about disrepair and anti-social behaviour (ASB) in its properties.

‘Let off with a slight slap on the wrist’

However, Phil Turtle, the compliance director with Landlord Licensing & Defence, said that despite Islington Council having a 25% severe maladministration rate, it has been ‘let off with a slight slap on the wrist by the Ombudsman’.

He said: “Once again a rogue council is let off with fines that are a minuscule proportion of those the same council hands out to private landlords.

“The Ombudsman fines them just £2,000 per property when councils across the country would fine private landlords upwards of £10,000 for similar offences.

“What is more, any landlord with 186 properties in disrepair would be declared ‘not fit and proper’ and hounded out of business with a Banning Order.”

He added that a PRS landlord would have been fined more than £2 million by a council for the same offences.

Report covered 30 determinations involving 89 findings

The Ombudsman’s report covered 30 determinations involving 89 findings and, in each case, it upheld at least one aspect of the resident’s complaint and in almost half of cases, found severe maladministration on at least one of the issues raised by the resident.

The landlord has a severe maladministration rate of 24.7% – that is four times the national average rate of 6.7%.

The Ombudsman also made 186 orders or recommendations to put things right.

Of the £66,441 fine, more than half (£33,792) was for complaints about property condition.

‘Contributing to the resident’s poor experience’

The Housing Ombudsman, Richard Blakeway, said: “Many of the underlying themes we have identified are present in multiple individual cases, each contributing to the resident’s poor experience.

“The way in which the same issues recur indicates failure to learn from complaints.

“We have also identified a lack of managerial oversight to ensure that officers are appropriately capable and empowered to follow the policies, procedures and guidance that the landlord does have in place.”

Series of recommendations

The Ombudsman identified three key themes and set out a series of recommendations:

• Disrepair: There were unreasonable delays within repairs in terms of both acknowledgement and taking action to resolve the issues. The Ombudsman also found that ineffective appointments were a key factor causing delay and inconvenience and disrespected the value of residents’ time. Communication was another poor aspect of repairs.
• ASB: The landlord approached noise reports using its ASB policies and procedures but could not demonstrate it followed them. Sometimes long-term patterns of disturbance went unresolved. If the landlord deemed the problem not to meet certain policy thresholds, it offered no alternatives.
• Complaint handling: The landlord does not do enough to promote its complaints process to residents nor learn from complaints that do make it through the process. Until March 2022, the landlord operated an unnecessarily protracted complaint process which has now been amended to two stages.

The severity of the issues

The report included some examples of individual cases that illustrated the severity of the issues:

• A disabled resident could not use a ground floor wet room for several months because it needed repairing
• One resident had a complaint stuck in the council’s system for three years
• A resident with mental health issues could not get a working key fob to enter her building for 10 months – a problem that should have fixed within 24 hours.

Council has issued a ‘learning statement’

Islington council has issued a ‘learning statement’, saying it fully accepted the Ombudsman’s report and recommendations.

It adds: “We want everyone in Islington to have a safe, decent, and genuinely affordable place to call home.

“Our tenants and leaseholders deserve a high-quality service, and we deeply regret that we haven’t always delivered this in the past.

“We’ve been working to put things right and believe this report further clarifies the actions and resources needed, building on the external critical appraisal we’ve sought from partners over the last two years.”

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