G15 landlord leaves premature baby with health complications in cold home for months

The watchdog launched a broad investigation into Catalyst in October over concerns with its complaint-handling. 

It made a finding of severe maladministration over the way the housing association responded to complaints from shared owners about cold and draughty rooms in their new homes.  

The investigation looked at complaints made to Catalyst over a six-month period from May 2022. 

This totalled 13 cases and related to complaints initially made to the housing association during 2020-21.

The ombudsman made 31 findings across the cases and found maladministration, including service failure and severe maladministration, in 28 of them. 

Overall, this represents a maladministration rate of 90%. 

In the case of the premature baby, the mother had complained about draughts and an issue with the property’s heating. 

She expressed concern about the cold living conditions for her and her young family and said they could not use the top floor at all, as it was too cold for her baby, who had health complications. 

Catalyst passed the resident, and the responsibility for addressing her complaint, between multiple departments and did not begin to investigate the issue until four months later. 

During this time, the resident and her family continued to live in a property with inadequate heating and insulation. 

The ombudsman found that Catalyst “failed to treat the resident’s complaint with the necessary attention, care and importance”. 

Poor record-keeping by the landlord and a resulting failure to do repairs meant another resident lived with pools of water and mould in her home for months. 

“During this time, Ms M reports that her health deteriorated and new furniture she had purchased was riddled with mould. 

“She was unable to enter certain rooms due to the immediate impact it would have on her body. 

“She also reported that her baby’s mattress was covered in mould on the underside,” according to the report.  

In another case, Catalyst’s failure to deal with reports of anti-social behaviour meant that a resident’s carers stopped coming to his home because they felt too intimidated. 

During the investigation, the watchdog identified seven key themes and made a series of recommendations. 

It found that Catalyst often handled complaints in an informal fashion, which led to confusion over the status of residents’ complaints and sometimes “undermined natural justice”. 

Among the changes made because of the investigation, Catalyst has adopted Peabody’s complaint-handling procedure and introduced a centralised complaints team. 

The ombudsman found that Catalyst often offered compensation as a way of resolving a complaint without investigating the issues raised. 

This meant underlying issues were left unresolved and learning from cases was not evident. 

A lack of resources in the complaints team was one reason for some of the failures, including the inability to escalate some complaints to stage two or signpost to the ombudsman at the end of stage two. 

The ombudsman has reviewed a sample of the landlord’s most recent complaints correspondence and noted “clear improvements”.

It found that Catalyst’s offer of compensation was not always in line with the severity of the issue. 

It recommended that the landlord clarify its compensation policy set amounts and the ability to consider on a case-by-case basis. 

It also recommended introducing a process for checking how staff are exercising discretion and ‘common sense’ fairly and appropriately.

The ombudsman found that Catalyst’s repairs records were “often problematic”. Repairs logs went missing, jobs were closed in error and reported repairs and completion dates were not captured accurately. 

This resulted in delays to issues being addressed, as well as confusion, uncertainty and frustration for the resident, the watchdog found.

In response, Catalyst developed a centralised customer relationship management database. 

The ombudsman remained concerned that there were still issues in this area with consistency, so recommended a training needs analysis for all staff and a review into its record-keeping process.

It also found issues with aftercare for new builds, identifying a lack of coordination between the aftercare team and the complaints team.

This led to “lengthy delays in sorting defects”. 

The housing association now has defect management and aftercare operating as a centralised team and has implemented measures to improve internal record-keeping. 

The ombudsman has recommended staff training for the new defects management system and that the landlord should publish its aftercare policy.

The watchdog also recommended a more comprehensive approach to quality assurance.

The watchdog found that problems with communication, both internally between service areas and externally with residents, underpinned and linked of all the themes. 

The repairs, complaints and aftercare teams did not always share information appropriately.

There was also concern around the landlord’s communication tone, which “did not always demonstrate empathy to residents or recognise individual circumstances”.

Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman, said: “From the outset, the leadership of both landlords has been open, focused and proactive in response to issues emerging from our investigations.

“These found the landlord routinely failed to recognise formal complaints and treat them as such. 

“This caused unacceptable delay in dealing with issues and subjected residents to ongoing distress and inconvenience.

“This could be compounded by poor internal communication, with one resident waiting 40 months for defects to be addressed, including stopping the water coming into the property.”

He said he welcomed the focus from Catalyst on “ensuring that the learning does not get lost as it finalises its merger”. 

A statement from Catalyst is included in full below.