The Housing Ombudsman has released it’s monthly ‘learning from severe maladministration’ report for the month of March, once again highlighting cases where key failings have had very human consequences.
The report focuses on the ‘big six’ safety and compliance areas, those being:
- Fire safety
- Gas safety
- Electrical safety
- Asbestos management
- Legionella (water safety)
- Lifting operations and listing equipment regulations (LOLER)
Overall, the report details 23 complaints, accounting for a total of 16 landlords. The full report, detailing the cases and the landlords involved, can be found here: Learning from Severe Maladministration.
Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “Every property manager will know the importance of complying with the ‘Big 6’ health and safety issues.
“While we know areas such as gas safety compliance are high, these cases show the human impact of key obligations not being fulfilled to individuals.
“Complaints can be an early warning sign of any problems and provide valuable insight to improve services.
“Concerningly, these cases show issues remaining unresolved for months or even years, despite many of them requiring emergency repairs. And the impact on a household can be profound, with some landlords doing too little to recognize the poor conditions some residents have been left to live in.
“These complaints can also provide vital intelligence for boards to seek assurance that failings in policy, process or systems won’t be repeated and for the executive to deconstruct the case to learn lessons. This includes weaknesses in knowledge and information management.
“I would urge landlords to engage in the lessons in this report and test themselves against them. There is much to be proud of in the sector’s approach to safety, but it must not be complacent because compliance rates are high in certain areas.”
The ombudsman’s calls to use complaints in order to get ahead of and prevent wider failings will certainly not be falling on deaf ears, as across the sector currently there is a strong initiative stirring to move towards a proactive mindset, rather than a reactionary one.
Across repairs and maintenance, tenant satisfaction and a host of other disciplines, more and more innovation is taking place to maneuver the industry to a position of intervention before major complications occur. Through innovative practices, emerging technologies and more, the sector is seeing a clear mentality shift towards being proactive and getting ahead of oncoming challenges, rather than allowing problems to come to them, echoed in sentiment here by the Housing Ombudsman.
Reading the Ombudsman’s findings in the Learning from Severe Maladministration report will yield a host of upsetting scenarios, many of which had clear indicators, either not taken heed of or going unnoticed. Investigating these indicators (such as complaints) thoroughly can allow landlords to get ahead of any wider failings before they take place, and prevent smaller issues snowballing into severe cases.
