Ombudsman to investigate ‘systemic’ problem of poor record-keeping among landlords

The ombudsman’s latest decisions include a joint investigation into two landlords. In the first case, Plymouth Community Homes (PCH) was found to have given misinformation about a resident’s tenancy before and after a mutual exchange with The Guinness Partnership that meant they thought they had a preserved right to buy. 

The ombudsman said it was due to an error on PCH’s computer system that it was aware of and took 10 years to correct, and could have caused problems to other PCH residents. Guinness had relied on the information but also made further errors in its communication with the residents, the ombudsman said. 

John Clark, chief executive of PCH, said: “We are very sorry for this instance of poor communication, with misinformation provided to one of our residents on their Right to Buy status, and have apologised directly to the residents involved as well as paying compensation.

“This occurred as the result of legacy issues with internal data, and since the complaint was made, we have identified and corrected records, installed new systems and carried out extensive staff training to ensure it does not happen again.”

A Guinness spokesperson said: “We are very sorry for the errors when communicating with our residents regarding their RTB eligibility. We were reliant on information provided to us by the transferor landlord, but this does not excuse our subsequent service failure.

“We had acknowledged this and apologised prior to the case being referred to the ombudsman. Our legal services team now handles all RTB applications. Again, we apologise to the residents concerned.”

In another case, the ombudsman found maladministration by L&Q as it “failed to keep robust records in a complaint about the end of a resident’s tenancy and his deposit following a bereavement, which led to additional distress and inconvenience”.

L&Q said in a statement: “We are sorry that our service did not meet the high standards we set ourselves and for the distress the resident was caused as a result.

“We take every ombudsman intervention very seriously and use this as an opportunity to reflect on our processes. We’ve already made some changes to the way we operate which will help us to better support residents in future.”

This has included L&Q introducing a new compensation policy and reviewing the way in which it returns deposits. 

A separate case involving Stonewater found maladministration over the landlord’s complaint-handling involving problems with a tenant’s water supply and rent arrears. A repeated failure to open a complaint over more than two years meant there was no record to keep track of events, resulting in delays to the repairs and resolving the complaint, the ombudsman said. 

David Lockerman, director of housing operations at Stonewater, said: “We’re really sorry when we make mistakes. Our first priority is always to put things right for the customer and then make sure we learn from what went wrong. In this case, we’ve acted on every recommendation made by the Housing Ombudsman Service.”

The final case highlighted by the ombudsman involved Dudley Council and its failure to tell leaseholders that major works in their building would result in extra costs. The landlord apologised and said it had limited information available on the requirement to carry out the works in the first place as requested by a resident, the ombudsman said.

Laura Taylor-Childs, the council’s cabinet member for housing, said: “We accepted the findings of the report which also recognised the good work we carried out to correct the issue. We have apologised and are confident we have procedures in place to ensure people receive the best service possible from us.”