One of the biggest social landlords in Britain has been ordered to pay £142,000 in compensation after an investigation revealed it was ‘overtly dismissive’ of complaints.
The Housing Ombudsman’s investigation into L&Q found a severe maladministration rate of 13%, which is more than double the national average of 6%.
These findings related to issues such as disrepair, poor repair services, mishandling of charges for leaseholders and failures supporting residents experiencing anti-social behaviour.
The Ombudsman found the landlord had ‘consistently failed’ to resolve vital issues and that its handling of complaints ‘demonstrated little empathy’.
In one case investigated by the Ombudsman, internal emails show staff reacting to failed repairs by suggesting the landlord send a supervisor instead of a surveyor, because ‘at least he looks like the surveyor’. In another case, they said they needed to act so that L&Q did not ‘appear on ITV News again.’
Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: ‘Resident concerns were repeatedly dismissed or poorly handled, without the respect they or their issues deserved. Crucially, the needs of vulnerable residents were not always identified, and too often this caused serious detriment and risk to them.
‘The landlord consistently failed to take sufficient action on its own monitoring and warning signs that were evident in its complaints and independent reviews – leading to a prolonged period of decline, especially in areas like repairs and complaints handling.
‘Rather than address the core issues, the landlord continued to firefight individual issues. This resulted in new policies, initiatives and reports, which failed to resolve its cultural failures in areas like repairs and complaints, resulting in these activities having little impact on service delivery.’
L&Q’s group chief executive, Fiona Fletcher-Smith said: ‘We recognise that we’ve got things wrong, and we welcome this extremely valuable learning process.
‘My senior leadership colleagues and I are personally contacting the residents whose complaints the Ombudsman judged to have involved service failure or maladministration on our part. We have apologised for the completely unacceptable service they have received. L&Q has let them down, and I’m truly sorry for that.’
