0:03 AM, 28th July 2023, About A year ago
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One of Britain’s biggest social landlords has been hit with the largest fine handed out by the Housing Ombudsman.
The fine comes after a special investigation found what the ombudsman says is ‘a prolonged period of decline’.
L&Q must now pay £142,000 in compensation to its tenants after evidence of severe maladministration, including the mishandling of repairs and antisocial behaviour issues.
The landlord was also found to be ‘dismissive’ of tenant complaints.
L&Q rents out more than 105,000 homes, mostly in London, the south east and the north west of England.
Housing Ombudsman Richard Blakeway said: “The scale of the findings in this report are indicative of a period of significant failure in its services.
“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.”
He added: “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.”
The Ombudsman made 103 determinations involving L&Q in the months from January to June 2023, spanning 30 local authority areas.
Overall, the Ombudsman found a severe maladministration rate of 13%, which is more than double the national average of 6%, for disrepair, poor repair services, mishandling of charges for leaseholders and failures supporting residents experiencing anti-social behaviour.
In one case, 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, staff said they needed to act so as not to ‘appear on ITV News again’.
L&Q also told another resident it would pay compensation only if they agreed to a confidentiality clause in their tenancy agreement.
Fiona Fletcher-Smith, L&Q’s group chief executive, 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.”
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