The Housing Ombudsman has published a special investigation into Hackney Council, revealing multiple missed opportunities to identify root causes to improve its service to residents.

The investigation identified issues in several areas, including risk assessment and prioritisation, responding to vulnerable residents and its knowledge and information management. There were also issues with the scrutiny and oversight of complaints, with performance data not being used effectively to inform policy and practice improvements.

The investigation was prompted by the level of maladministration and severe maladministration findings in the ombudsman’s casework, with poor practice found in 79% of complaints.

The investigation included an elderly resident without heating and hot water for seven weeks, another resident without electricity using candles to light their home, and a resident who experienced flooding after their case was marked complete without repairs happening.

The ombudsman says the council has faced significant challenges, many shared across the sector – the Covid-19 pandemic, inner city demand, ageing homes and insufficient budgets. It also suffered a cyberattack in 2020.

The ombudsman publishes special investigation reports to help other landlords identify potential learning to improve their own services. The report made a range of key findings, including:

Repairs

The landlord used a performance-related bonus scheme, which created an incentive to mark jobs as complete to meet targets. Additionally, system limitations allowed repairs to be recorded as ‘complete’ or ‘refused access’ restricting accurate reporting. The landlord later found around 33% of its recorded repairs visits are repeats.

The landlord presented repairs performance data positively and reported increasing satisfaction levels, without highlighting the very low response rate. This lack of transparency hindered opportunities to identify and address underlying service failures.

Damp and mould

The landlord has a self-imposed five-day target to respond to damp and mould, with an initial inspection. However, cases the ombudsman investigated suggest the real issue is the time taken to complete work following an investigation.

Despite producing three separate action plans for leaks, damp and mould, and repairs they lacked supporting analysis and risk assessments to guide decision making and prioritisation.

The ombudsman found the landlord had a distorted view of reality and misguided reassurance, committing resources without fully understanding whether it would address the identified issues.

Complaint handling

In almost every complaint, the timescales to respond took longer than the timescales in its complaints process.

The landlord’s own analysis found repeat cases where complaint issues remained unresolved and poor communication with residents. There were also stark differences between compensation it was offering, and what the ombudsman ordered following investigation.

The landlord developed an inhouse alternative dispute resolution scheme. The ombudsman holds reservations about this process, creating additional stages or barriers accessing resolution through its complaint procedure.

Knowledge and information management

The landlord tried to build a housing management system (HMS) but eventually decided this was not viable due to cost and delays. The delay reaching this decision meant the landlord was still operating without the use of a dedicated HMS at the time of our investigation.

Senior management referred to the cyberattack repeatedly throughout the investigation as a reason for the lack of progress, despite operational staff saying data and systems issues pre-dated the cyber-attack.

Despite over 70,000 contacts a month to its call centre, the landlord missed opportunities to fill significant data gaps by asking residents for information about themselves and their home.

Scrutiny and oversight

The ombudsman identified a disconnect between the oversight and scrutiny of the landlord’s performance and its complaints handling.

There was evidence throughout the investigation of missed opportunities to analyse and understand performance data to inform decision making and process improvement.

This shows the importance of the Complaint Handling Code’s Member Responsible for Complaints role to ensure the landlord is learning from complaints and is accountable for its complaints performance, the ombudsman says.

Policy and procedure

Many of the landlord’s policies or procedures were not reviewed and needed updating. The landlord said updating its policies and procedures was “one of the areas that needs focus.” The landlord said it wanted to be ‘resident focused’ but it lost sight of that when reviewing and prioritising its policy and procedures.

Vulnerabilities

During the investigation, the landlord was in the early stages of a significant change in approach to supporting vulnerable residents, acknowledging the need for a culture change – stating responding, recording, and reporting should become ‘everyone’s responsibility.’

The landlord does not have an overarching reasonable adjustment policy instead taking a ‘case by case’ approach which risks inconsistency.

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “This investigation highlights the importance of culture within an organisation. I welcome the commitment of officers and leadership to learning and improvement through this report.

“We met officers who were often trying to deliver services with little structure, procedure, systems or data to support their work. From the evidence we have heard and seen, the good work achieved was happening despite the landlord’s structures and systems rather than because of them.

“The landlord has invested in significant resources to support and deliver its improvement programme. It has recognised the need to separate strategic and operational leadership roles to allow added time for leaders to focus on each area of work. At times the process has been rewarded rather than the outcome.

“The pressure for improvement has sometimes created a ‘positivity prism’ which has overstated changes compared to the reality experienced by residents. This could go some way to explain the root cause of the landlord’s problems. It must ensure its mindset does not prevent real learning and reflection, including from complaints, to achieve its ambitions.”

Councillor Guy Nicholson, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet member for Housing Management and Regeneration, said: “The council has never shied away from its duty to its tenants and residents to provide the best housing services and should it fall short, it must improve.

“The council acknowledges the Housing Ombudsman’s assessment that tenants have not received the service they should be receiving from the council. On behalf of the council, I apologise for this shortfall and reassure both tenants and the Housing Ombudsman that Hackney Council is fully committed to improving the service it provides as a landlord to the homes it has responsibility for.

“The Housing Ombudsman has investigated a range of cases that had affected tenants from two years ago which predated the implementation of the council’s own internally led service improvement plan.

“It is heartening to note that the Housing Ombudsman recognises the commitment of housing officers in delivering services to tenants, acknowledges the council’s work to implement its service improvement plan and the introduction of a better approach to support residents with additional needs to live in their homes.

“The Housing Ombudsman also acknowledged the range of external challenges that the council has faced in recent times which included the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, rising prices and the impact of maintaining an ageing housing stock which had all contributed to the shortfall in service.

“I can assure the Housing Ombudsman that all in the council will remain focused on improving the housing services it provides to its tenants.”