Clarion landed with severe maladministration finding from Housing Ombudsman
Clarion, the UK’s largest housing association, has been handed a severe maladministration finding from the Housing Ombudsman following a failure to deal with complaints from a resident with “vulnerabilities”.
Picture: Getty
Sharelines
The ombudsman said that the 125,000-home landlord did not “sufficiently acknowledge” issues around extensive delays in resolving water issues and leaks and repairs, which lasted 15 months.
According to the finding, the resident lacked hot or cold water for days and months at a time, and there were lengthy delays dealing with a number of necessary repairs that were known to the landlord, damp and mould, and rodent issues.
The landlord’s response to a rodent infestation was deemed a service failure by the ombudsman, which noted that it “clearly led to some distress to the resident, who reported mice in almost every room at one point”.
The ombudsman also found that during the complaint there were issues with “complaint-handling, communication and consideration of the resident’s vulnerabilities”
Read more
The resident reported her vulnerabilities, but the ombudsman said there was no evidence the landlord took steps to make further enquiries about these.
The ombudsman said it intends to conduct a further investigation following the issues raised around damp and mould and pest infestation. These will be made under the ombudsman’s “systemic powers” to identify areas for the landlord to learn and improve.
Clarion offered the resident £1,507.97 in compensation and was ordered by the ombudsman to pay a further £600 in recognition of the “distress and inconvenience” caused by its complaint-handling.
Richard Blakeway, housing ombudsman, said: “Had the landlord not made reasonable offers of redress for the delays resolving water issues and leaks and repairs, its actions would have amounted to multiple findings of severe maladministration.
“We are dealing with other cases about similar issues which may be indicative of repeated failure, which is why we will be carrying out a further investigation.
“It’s concerning in this case that there is no evidence that the resident’s vulnerabilities were given consideration.
“In the information provided to us from the landlord during our investigation, it stated that the resident had no vulnerabilities.
“The landlord’s communication with the resident was poor and this lack of communication appears relevant as to why matters became so protracted.”
A spokesperson for Clarion said: “This was a complex and challenging case, which has concluded with the resident moving to a new Clarion home.
“We are disappointed by the judgement made by the ombudsman, as we don’t believe it reflects all of the support that our colleagues provided.
“This is particularly the case regarding the resident’s vulnerabilities; we have provided evidence that when alerted to these, they were taken into account.
“We fully accept that we were too slow to act in the early stages of this case, have apologised for this and conducted a full internal review into what went wrong.
“However, a number of issues were exacerbated by the resident refusing to grant Clarion staff access to the property over a period of time.
“Housing associations do not have the same power as private and local authority landlords to access homes and we’d like to see this changed, so the problem does not recur in the future.”
- © Social Housing
- All rights reserved