Summary: Mrs X complained the wet room the Council installed under a Disabled Facilities Grant in 2013 was not fit for purpose. She said that despite multiple attempts to repair her wet room it still flooded and caused unpleasant smells. The Council acted without fault when it assisted Mrs X with her wet room between June 2019 and July 2020. However, we have found the Council’s policy was misleading about who it would consider for extensions, garage conversions, and outbuildings under a Disabled Facilities Grant. The Council has agreed to amend the policy wording and we consider this to be a suitable remedy.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complained the wet room the Council installed under a Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) in 2013 was not fit for purpose. She said that despite the Council completing repairs in 2019 it has failed to resolve the problem.
2. She said the wet room flooded and caused unpleasant smells from the drains. She told us this meant it took more of her time and effort to clean the wet room after each shower. She further complained the latest repairs left her without a working wet room for six weeks and she was unable to shower.
3. Mrs X would like the Council to fix the wet room or return it to the state it was in before the Council adapted her bathroom.

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What I have investigated

4. I investigated Mrs X’s complaint about the actions the Council took between June 2019 and July 2020. There are parts of Mrs X’s complaint that I did not investigate, and I explain why at the end of this decision statement.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

5. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
6. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
7. We investigate complaints about councils and certain other bodies. Where an individual, organisation or private company is providing services on behalf of a council, we can investigate complaints about the actions of these providers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 25(7), as amended)
8. We cannot investigate complaints about the provision or management of social housing by a council acting as a registered social housing provider. (Local Government Act 1974, paragraph 5A schedule 5, as amended)
9. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)
10. We may investigate matters coming to our attention during an investigation, if we consider that a member of the public who has not complained may have suffered an injustice as a result. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26D and 34E, as amended)

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How I considered the complaint

11. I have discussed the complaint with Mrs X.
12. I considered the Council’s response to my enquiries, documents from its case records and a video recording made by its contractor.
13. Mrs X and the Council have had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered their comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

Disabled adaptations

14. The Council provides Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) under the terms of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. There is also detailed guidance on good practice.
15. Councils have a statutory duty to provide grant aid to disabled people for certain adaptations.
16. The Council will need to check the proposed works are:
• necessary and appropriate to meet the disabled person’s needs; and
• reasonable and practicable depending on the age and condition of the property.
17. Councils will often consult an occupational therapist (OT) from the social services department to carry out the assessments.
18. The maximum amount of a mandatory DFG is £30,000. The amount payable may also be subject to means testing of the disabled person and their partner. Where the application is for a disabled child or qualifying young person there is no means test.
19. The Council’s policy says that any equipment provided through the DFG is covered by the standard warranty. However, once the adaptations funded by a DFG are installed they belong to and become a responsibility of the applicant.
20. The Council’s policy also says the Council will not consider extensions, garage conversions, and outbuildings under a DFG, unless under exceptional circumstances to meet the needs of a child, where there is no possibility of converting the existing accommodation in the original footprint of the property.
21. The Council has a separate department called Repairs and Adaptation Services (RAS) that deals with DFG applications and the maintenance after installation of adaptations under the DFG.

What happened

22. Mrs X lives in a council owned flat. The Council’s OT assessed her disability needs and said that a wet room would be more suitable. Mrs X was eligible for a DFG and in 2013 the Council installed a new wet room in her home. This meant the bath that was in place was removed, and a shower head installed.
23. Mrs X said that six months after the installation she experienced problems with the wet room as water was escaping from the room into other parts of the property. She said the same problem re-occurred after 18 months. Mrs X said that she contacted the Council’s housing repairs department, who she says advised her to contact the contractor that installed the wet room, which she did. The original contractor returned and carried out repairs to the wet room and the floor.
24. In May 2019 Mrs X contacted the Council again, and said that despite all the repairs, the wet room was still not functioning correctly, which was creating more work for her. She said that she spent more time cleaning the wet room, and had extra towels for laundry after each shower.
25. The Council agreed to visit Mrs X to inspect her wet room. In the same month a senior surveyor and a floor specialist visited Mrs X to agree if the Council needed to make repairs. The senior surveyor found signs of water presence in the floor and travelling up in a part of the wall. They asked the floor specialist to come back and repair the damage.
26. The Council said it offered Mrs X a commode to use while it was doing the repairs but said Mrs X commented it was too low for her. Additionally, the Council said the floor specialist offered her a chemical toilet, but it says Mrs X declined this offer. Mrs X disagreed and said the contractor did not discuss the use of a chemical toilet with her.
27. The Council said that Mrs X’s daughter asked if it would be able to provide Mrs X with respite care, and RAS passed this query to the Council’s adult social services. The Council said it asked Mrs X’s daughter to follow this up with adult social care. Mrs X said that “if it was not for the contractor’s incompetence, she would not have to contact social services”. The Council’s adult social services department said it did not receive a formal request to organise Mrs X’s respite care.
28. In June 2019 the floor specialist returned. After lifting the floor they discovered that a pipe between the waste pipe and the gulley trap had become loose as the pipe was blocked with hair and soap residue. The blockage was causing the water to back fill into the trap and this water was leaking under the floor covering.
29. The floor specialist came back two days later and:
• dried the floor by using a dehumidifier;
• installed new pipes and shower parts; and
• agreed to install a new floor screed and, once the room was dry, a new floor covering.
30. The floor specialist completed the works in July 2019 and took three weeks to carry them out. The Council said that at the time, the floor specialist spoke to Mrs X and showed her how to clean the shower gulley every two to four weeks to prevent any future blockages.
31. The day after the floor specialist finished the repairs, the Council’s team leader carried out an inspection and made sure the floor levels were running away from the door and the water was draining properly.
32. The Council visited Mrs X for the second time in November 2019 after she reported further issues with the wet room. On inspection the Council found the water was not going down the gulley quickly enough which was contradictory to its earlier inspection of the wet room. The inspector found the gulley was blocked with a hair and soap residue. The Council said that it showed Mrs X how to clean the gulley and asked her to do it every two weeks. Mrs X said she was adhering to the Council’s recommendations, and she was cleaning the gulley regularly. Because of the repeated cleaning issues, size of the room and closeness of shower to the wet room door the Council decided to install fixed shower screens to provide an added layer of protection. After considering her options, Mrs X agreed for the Council to fit the screens, which it did in December 2019.
33. Ten days later, Mrs X contacted the Council and said the water was escaping under her wet room door. She asked the Council to return her bathroom to how it was before the Council made DFG adaptations. The Council said it previously explained to her that it could not revert the DFG adaptations, because it made them to meet her needs. It agreed to visit Mrs X’s property again.
34. In January 2020 the Council’s team leader visited Mrs X and noted the water in the wet room was not draining properly. This time, the visible part of the gulley was clean, so the team leader suspected another blockage further along the drainage system. He asked a contractor to visit Mrs X to investigate what was causing the slow drainage of water. The contractor visited Mrs X and checked the water was draining correctly and sent a video showing this to the RAS team.
35. Five months later Mrs X emailed the RAS team, and said she was still experiencing issues with the wet room and asked how it planned to address this.
36. The Council told her that after the most recent blockage was cleared and the water was shown to be draining properly it considered the adaptations were not the cause of the problem, and RAS closed the case. It also told Mrs X that if she experienced any further problems, she should contact the Council’s housing repairs department.
37. Mrs X was not satisfied with this response and in June 2020 she complained to the Council. She said the wet room was never functioning correctly, and despite the floor being removed on three separate occasions, the water was still not draining correctly. She asked the Council to investigate this, as this has been ongoing for the past eight years.
38. The Council did not uphold her complaint against the RAS team. It said the Council found out about Mrs X’s issues in May 2019, and as soon as it did, it investigated her wet room and made all the necessary repairs. The Council said that prior to that, the original contractor attended Mrs X’s property without the Council’s knowledge. After the latest repair the Council was satisfied the issues with drainage were not connected to the adaptations work and closed Mrs X’s case. It also advised Mrs X to contact her housing repairs team if she continued to experience problems with her drainage.
39. Mrs X said that in 2013 she contacted the Council’s housing repairs, who advised her to speak to the contractor who installed the adaptations. She said the Council should have been overseeing the repairs the contractor made to her wet room before 2019.
40. Mrs X said she had no problems with drainage when the bathtub was in place, and the original contractor did not tell her about the need to clean the shower gulley every two weeks. She said the only solution she could see was for the Council to return her bathroom back to what it was in 2013. She also said the Council should compensate her for the stress it caused her.
41. The Council said the size and limited layout alternatives of the wet room made it impossible to prevent the water from escaping under the half height shower doors. It said that it checked the flooring levels in the wet room and the falls were all set correctly to allow the water to drain towards the shower gulley. It also offered to send out contractors to clear any blockages away, but Mrs X turned this offer down.
42. The Council advised Mrs X to pull the curtains fully closed, aim the showerhead away from the shower door and shorten the time of her showers. It also explained that it could not use DFG funding to replace her wet room with a bathtub. During an assessment an occupational therapist identified a wet room as recommended to meet Mrs X’s needs. The Council said that if her medical needs had changed, she could contact the housing repairs service to see if it would install a bath for her.
43. Mrs X disagreed and said that if the Council could not use DFG funding to amend her wet room, it should ask another department to help her with reinstalling a bath. She said she approved the original DFG adaptations without knowing the issues the wet room would cause her.

Analysis

44. We are not an appeal body, so cannot comment on the merits of judgements and decisions made by councils without fault in the process.
45. Our role is to review the process by which decisions are made, and, where we find fault, to determine what injustice it caused. I have considered whether the Council’s remedial actions between May 2019 and July 2020 were satisfactory.
46. In that time the Council’s contractors visited Mrs X four times. During each visit the Council considered the condition of Mrs X’s wet room and whether it needed any repairs. If repairs were needed, the Council told Mrs X what needed to be done and it instructed its contractors promptly.
47. During the last visit the contractor instructed by the Council recorded a video showing the water was draining correctly.
48. In June 2020 the Council decided it was satisfied the problems Mrs X was reporting were not resulting from the adaptations it had installed. The Council referred Mrs X to the housing repairs department who is responsible for the maintenance of the Council’s social housing stock. We would not be able to investigate the actions of the Council’s housing repairs team as these would be matters for the Housing Ombudsman and I have advised Mrs X accordingly.
49. We do not consider the Council was at fault for how it addressed the issues Mrs X reported to it in 2019. It has followed the process we would expect, and in these circumstances, I cannot say there was fault.
50. Mrs X also complained about the Council leaving her without proper bathroom facilities for six weeks. The Council confirmed the contractor was repairing Mrs X’s wet room between June 2019 and July 2019, which amounted to three weeks.
51. There is conflicting information about what alternatives the Council presented to Mrs X before the works started. The Council says it offered her a commode but Mrs X turned this offer down as she said it would be too low for her to use. The Council also told us that the contractor repairing Mrs X’s wet room floor offered her a chemical toilet, but Mrs X said this is not true. There is no documentary record of what the contractor offered Mrs X and as I was not there I cannot resolve the different views of events.
52. Mrs X’s daughter said that she wanted the Council to put her mother in respite care for the duration of the works. If this was the case, Mrs X or her daughter could have approached the Council’s social services department to ask if Mrs X was eligible for this service, but the Council said she did not do this. I do not consider the Council acted with fault when it did not arrange respite care for Mrs X during the latest repairs. The Council told me that it would normally not relocate Council tenants during repairs to their properties when they last under 12 months. The Council can relocate its tenants in an emergency such as fire or flood, which was not the case here. Mrs X’s repairs took three weeks, and the Council offered her the use of a commode, which she turned down. I understand Mrs X’s concern about the height of the commode but taking into account that she is visited by a carer who could have assisted her I consider this to be an acceptable temporary solution.
53. While investigating Mrs X’s complaint, I identified that the Council’s policy says that it would not consider “extensions, garage conversions, and outbuildings under a DFG, unless under exceptional circumstances to meet the needs of a child, where there is no possibility of converting the existing accommodation in the original footprint of the property”. This suggests the Council would not consider such adaptations for a disabled adult, which is not in line with the current guidance and therefore fault. Although this has no bearing on Mrs X’s complaint, we considered it could cause injustice to other members of the public.
54. In response to my enquiries the Council said it did not want to suggest that it would exclude disabled adults from considering extensions, garage conversions, and outbuildings under a DFG. Instead, it wanted to clarify that it would firstly attempt to make such adaptations within the footprint of the property to keep the adaptations cost under the £30k DFG limit. The Council accepted the policy, worded as it is now, may be misunderstood and it agreed to rewrite the paragraph in question. We consider this to be a suitable remedy.

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Agreed action

55. The Council will within one month from the date of my final decision, amend the wording of its RAS policy to clarify that disabled adults are not excluded from considerations for extensions, garage conversions, and outbuildings under a DFG.

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Final decision

56. The Council was not at fault for how it acted after Mrs X reported problems with her wet room. However, we found the Council’s DFG policy was misleading about who the Council would consider eligible for extensions, garage conversions, and outbuildings under a DFG. The Council agreed to amend the wording of the policy and my investigation is now complete.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

57. I have not investigated the Council’s actions when it installed Mrs X’s wet room in 2013, because this happened more than 12 months from when Mrs X brought her complaint to the Ombudsman’s attention. Mrs X did not provide me with a good reason for the delay in bringing her complaint to us. Because of this, I decided not to exercise my discretion to investigate Council’s actions from 2013 as I consider that part of the complaint to be late.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman