Ombudsman sanctions council over disabled tenant’s property that needed 120 repairs in four years

Several repairs were raised and attended numerous times, eight in the case of the drainage issues and six in the case of flooding in the wet room. 

The report said: “Whilst there were multiple attendances to take measurements and to inspect, the issues with the insufficient heating had been reoccurring and over five job orders were raised for the period 13 February 2018 until 31 March 2021.

“Intermittent electrics, problems with the fuse box and sockets were raised over seven times and initially on 24 April 2017. The front door repair was raised at least three times and not resolved from 5 April 2019 until 23 July 2019. The damp and mould issues in the bathroom and in the living room were reported initially in February 2018. The issues in the living room related to a leak coming from the roof were attended over seven times.”

The ombudsman found no evidence of a proper investigation into what had been causing damp patches in the living room.

The council failed to raise the resident’s formal complaint when it came in, with a councillor’s attempts to chase a formal response also unsuccessful.

There were also then delays to both the stage one and two responses, despite the ombudsman getting involved.

When the council did respond, the ombudsman said it failed to provide a thorough investigation of its repairs-handling and address the outstanding issues raised by the resident. 

It also failed to recognise the amount of time and the number of appointments it took to resolve some of the issues.

Added to this, the ombudsman said: “The landlord did not express any empathy towards the resident or recognise the impact on her child given their vulnerabilities.

“This was inappropriate, caused additional frustration and may have contributed to the resident’s accusation that she was being discriminated against by the landlord based on her disability.”

The ombudsman also found maladministration in how it handled repairs at the property and its record-keeping, as it did not keep adequate repairs records or obtain any records from its contractors.

The watchdog ordered the council to apologise to the resident and carry out repairs and a damp and mould inspection, as well as subsequent works arising from that report.

Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman, said: “A mother and her son, who both have disabilities, were not treated with the respect they deserved.

“Understandably, the family felt discriminated against because of the landlord’s poor communication, compounded by repeated failings on repairs.

“The landlord failed to respond within the timescales of the Complaint Handling Code and its policies, did not address the key failings within the case and continues to show few signs of learning from these errors.

“Whilst we often see landlords without repairs logs, this case shows the importance of not only recording data but using it as intelligence to ask questions about where services may be going wrong.”

A Milton Keynes Council spokesperson said: “We recognise the decision; we apologise to the resident for their experience, and we have put actions in place to prevent these kinds of delays happening again.”