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A housing association has been ordered to pay one of its tenants £2,500 compensation after failing to carry out effective repairs for seven years.
Investigating complaints made by a tenant known only as Miss R, the Housing Ombudsman found that Golding Homes, the Maidstone-based housing association that provides social housing across Kent, had been guilty of "severe maladministration."
From the start of her tenancy in 2012, the tenant had described her property as “uninhabitable” with repair issues including damp, leaking windows and rotten weatherboard. She said the property was cold, the kitchen and bathroom required replacing, the electrics were old and tiles were falling from the roof.
Seven years later, she was still complaining of the same issues, when the Ombudsman intervened.
He found that the housing association had failed to use its own complaints procedure to investigate the resident’s concerns and failed to take action where it identified that something had gone wrong.
The resident said Golding Homes had informed her that it sell the property rather than complete the repair works as they were too expensive.
The Ombudsman was unable to determine to what extent the landlord had attempted to carry out repairs, because the association had kept no detailed records.
Richard Blakeway, the Ombudsman, found there had been severe maladministration in the association's complaint handling, maladministration in its response to the resident’s report of repairs, and maladministration in its record keeping.
Mr Blakeway said: "It is wholly unsatisfactory that the resident was reporting the same issues in 2019 as she had raised in 2012, a period of seven years.
“The landlord’s failure to provide a formal response to the resident’s complaint meant it missed opportunities to put things right and caused the resident further distress and inconvenience.
“This inaction also limited our ability to thoroughly investigate all aspects of the complaint.
"Without knowledge of the landlord’s decisions we are unable to assess the quality of its decision making based upon the known circumstances at the time, and therefore whether its course of action was reasonable or not. It is crucial that all landlords have robust record keeping."
The Ombudsman ordered the landlord to apologise, to pay Miss R £2,500 in compensation and to set out the steps it was taking to meet its repair obligations.
A spokesman for Golding Homes said: "We are very sorry about the service provided to our customer on this occasion.
"This historical case has given Golding the opportunity to learn and improve.
"We take the finding from the Ombudsman extremely seriously. We have worked hard over the past year to improve our focus on customers and the services we deliver.
"We take full responsibility for our failing and are determined to ensure that it cannot happen to another Golding customer."
Established in 2004, Golding Homes owns and manages more than 7,200 homes across Kent.
The full Ombudsman report can be accessed here.
Read more: All the latest news from Maidstone
