Landlord apologises after repairs operative sent inappropriate messages to resident

However, on two occasions in the letter, the operative described the inappropriate messages he had sent as “banter”.

He wrote that he had “good professional relationships” with many residents and often used this sort of “friendly banter” with them. The letter referred to a “misunderstanding” and said the messages had “come across wrong”.

“The wording in the letter suggested the problem did not lie with the repairs operative’s behaviour, but instead with the resident’s perception of his behaviour,” the ombudsman found.

In a following meeting, the landlord said it took a “firm and assertive” approach to, in the ombudsman’s words, “ensure it had control” of the meeting. This left the resident so distressed that she had to leave the meeting multiple times.

She also said she felt bullied into accepting the apology. Before one of the meetings, the repairs operative greeted her in the office, which the landlord said he did out of “respect”.

North West Leicestershire District Council said it did not appreciate how much of an impact this had had on the resident because of her history.

The ombudsman described this as “unreasonable, as they were fully aware”.

The watchdog continued: “As soon as the resident reported the issue, the landlord should have ensured no further contact could be allowed to happen until the resident was fully satisfied with the outcome... If the landlord had taken this robust approach on first reporting, it would have saved its resident significant distress.”

The ombudsman found severe maladministration for the case on staff conduct grounds. It told the council to instruct a senior member of staff to investigate and address any “potential workplace culture” that could have led the operative to believe his behaviour was acceptable.

Andy Barton, strategic director at North West Leicestershire District Council, said: “We are incredibly sorry for the distress that has been caused to one of our tenants – both in the way our staff member behaved and for our failures in the way we handled the complaint.

“We have learned from this incident and have set in motion a significant programme of customer focus within our housing service, making sure all our staff are absolutely clear about the standards that we and our tenants require of them and challenging times when this falls short of expectations.

“We are committed to making sure nothing like this happens again, with staff training and embedding an ethos of putting the customer first.”