In 2024, there was a significant decline in the quality of cleaning and caretaking across the estate. This was because there was not a full rota of cleaning and caretaking staff. However, residents were still being charged for a full cleaning and caretaking service, as part of their service charge. Sunny Vadher, Head of Estate Services (North East London), committed to issuing a refund for the cleaning portion of the service charge to Pembury Estate residents, in recognition that we did not receive a full service. That refund should have been issued to all residents in April 2024. It was not.

In January 2025 we filed a complaint about this delay. You can find a copy here.

Peabody were due to respond by 13 February 2025, but failed to do so. Their “Stage 1 Response” only arrived on 17 April 2025. The response failed to engage with the complaint,, or to commit to any improvements in future. You can find a copy here.

Today, 18 April 2025, the Residents’ Association has lodged a Stage 2 complaint escalation. A copy is below.

CAS-1329294-L7G9X1 Escalation to Stage 2

I write to request the escalation to Stage 2 of complaint CAS-1329294-L7G9X1. The Stage 1 Response was sent on 17 April 2025. This escalation is lodged on 18 April 2025. Do not call me about this response. I want all correspondence to be done in writing over email via chair@pemburyestate.com.

Failure to set out timescales correctly

The Stage 1 Response gives a “logged” date of 30 January 2025.

However, the complaint was initially filed with Peabody on 2 December 2024, from the above email address. I did not receive an acknowledgement of the complaint, so I sent a chaser email to Customer.Experienceteam@peabody.org.uk on 10 December 2024. On the same day I received a reply email stating:

“Good afternoon,

Thank you for contacting Peabody and I hope you are well.

I’m sorry to hear of the issues regarding service charge refunds from the Pembury Estate and I apologise for any distress or inconvenience this has caused for all those involved. In order for me to get this raised and investigated, we would need signed authority from those wish to be apart of this group complaint. We ask that they provide their full name, address and signed authority for this to be raised on their behalf.

Once we have received this, we can then get this raised over to the relevant teams.”

Also on 10 December 2024 I replied:

“I write in response to your email below blocking this complaint from proceeding without signed authorities.

Contrary to your message, you do not require a signed authority from all residents of the Pembury Estate. In this regard, Peabody’s complaints policy states in particular as follows:

“2.1 This policy applies to […] any individual or group affected by the services Peabody provides.”

“3.1 We define a complaint as an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions, or lack of action by the organisation, our employees or those acting on our behalf. This could affect an individual or a group of residents.”

“4.1 We accept complaints from anyone who is affected by a service we provide, or a decision taken by us including:[…]

A representative of any of the people above who is authorised by them to make a complaint on their behalf.

In most cases, we will ask a resident for written authority. In instances where the resident is not capable of providing this, we should be able to audit how we obtained authority – maybe through a visit or telephone call. There may be circumstances where we know the resident well enough to take their word and make a sensible judgement. Either way, we must be satisfied that a representative has legitimate authority.”

I am the democratically elected Joint Chair of Peabody’s recognised Residents’ Association for all residents of the Pembury Estate. I am making this group complaint on behalf of the large number of people affected. It would not be reasonable of Peabody to expect me to approach each and every resident of the Pembury Estate individually to obtain written authority from them. Indeed, Peabody making a request for this appears to be Peabody intentionally placing an obstacle in the way of the making of this complaint. Peabody are perfectly able to make a sensible judgment to proceed to deal with the complaint, as the policy provides for Peabody to do. If any issues arise as to the capacity to make a “sensible judgment”, then please contact the Neighbourhood Managers for the Pembury Estate to advise you on your ability to make such a sensible judgment.

In any event, nothing stops you from forwarding this complaint forthwith to the relevant team to start work on dealing with it.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Elizabeth Houghton

Joint Chair, Pembury Estate Residents’ Association”

I did not receive a response. I chased a response on 19 December 2024. I wrote:

“Dear Complaints Team,

It has been 7 working days and I have not received a response or acknowledgement to the below. I have copied in Ben Siegret, Peabody’s Head of Neighbourhoods (North East London), who is happy to confirm that, in line with Peabody’s policy, I have legitimate authority as a residents’ representative to make complaints on their behalf.

If I do not receive acknowledgement of this email, and if the original complaint is further delayed, I will be making a complaint about the handing of this complaint.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Elizabeth Houghton

Joint Chair, Pembury Estate Residents’ Association.”

That refusal to accept the complaint, in defiance of Peabody’s own policy, is unacceptable. It forms part of my complaint CAS-1320720-W8B7P8.

I received no further response from the Contact Centre. On 22 January 2025 I wrote to
Ian McDermott to complain about the handling of my complaint and the fact that the substantive issue of the service charge refund had still not been resolved. I received a reply from the Customer Experience Team on 30 January 2025, when my complaint was finally acknowledged and given the reference number CAS-1329294-L7G9X1. That delay in even acknowledging the complaint, and the steps I had to undertake the get the complaint acknowledged, is unacceptable.

Assuming that the date of acknowledgment is then taken for producing a latest date for a Stage 1 Response in line with Peabody’s Complaints Policy, that gave a deadline of 13 February 2025. That deadline was not complied with. The latest date for an extended deadline for the Stage 1 Response pursuant to the Complaints Policy was 27 February 2025. That deadline was also not complied with. Instead, a Stage 1 Response was overdue by 49 days.

I chased a response on 16 February 2025, 25 February 2025, 18 March 2025, and 28 March 2025. This delay is already unacceptable, but the response I did receive added insult to injury as it is obvious that the case handler has not engaged with the substantive points of the complaint at all, and has instead provided standard ‘lines to take’.

Failure to engage with the complaint

At the outset, I must make clear that I take issue with the length, and by extension effort put into, the Stage 1 complaint. In my complaint I highlighted three issues:

“Letters of explanation: a letter explaining that residents would be credited with a service charge refund was meant to be sent to all residents on the estate. However, many residents did not receive this letter. This means that they were unaware that they were meant to be receiving a refund.”

This fact is not dealt with in the complaint response and remains unexplained. I assume it has not been investigated, which is a failure to engage with the complaint. I cannot argue any further on this point, as there is nothing to argue against in the Stage 1 response. This omission is unacceptable.

“Delay in issuing refund: some residents received the refund in April 2024. However, many did not. After much chasing by the Residents’ Association, some residents received the refund in October 2024, and some received it in November 2024. Some residents have still not received their refund.”

The response states that “refunds for cleaning and caretaking costs have been issued to all residents and can be viewed on their online Peabody portal”. However, the case handler than states: “Unfortunately, I’m unable to contact each resident individually, but if anyone checks their accounts and doesn’t see the adjustment, they should contact our customer care line so I can look into it further.”

First, if Peabody cannot contact all residents on the estate, all of whom they should have up-to-date contact details for, why do they believe that I as a private individual, or the Residents’ Association as a voluntary organisation, would be able to? Is Peabody unable to send an email to its residents to explain the refund and the steps needed to check it has been received, or do they expect me to go door-to-door? Peabody regularly emails residents, for various reasons, so why can this not be done for this reason? How is Peabody able to state with confidence that all residents have had this refund issued if they are unable to contact them? How would residents know they need to check for a refund if, as above, Peabody did not write to all of them? Is the complaint handler not able to request that the accounts team check refunds have been issued to all residents?

It is clear this has not been properly investigated at all.

“Inaccurate record keeping: we have been told that the reason residents did not receive the letter or refund is that Peabody did not have an accurate record of who was living on the estate.”

I stated clearly how I would like the complaint to be resolved:

1. Peabody to ensure that any outstanding service charge refunds are issued by the end of February 2025.

2. Peabody to provide an explanation of why it did not have accurate records.

3. Peabody to provide an explanation of how it has addressed the issue of record keeping, so this does not happen again.

4. Peabody to write to all residents of the Pembury Estate explaining:

a. Why a service charge refund has been issued.

b. Why there was a delay in issuing that refund to certain residents.

c. What residents should do if they still have not received their refund.

None of these remedies are acknowledged or dealt with in the Stage 1 response.

I have no faith that the substantive issue of the complaint is actually resolved.

Lack of learning

The Stage 1 response states, in entirety, that the learning from this complaint is:

We value all complaints as an opportunity to learn from the experiences of our residents so that we can take steps to improve the services that we offer. As a result of your complaint, we are continuing to review our processes, ways to improve our communication and to provide a better service.

These are obviously copied and pasted lines from a standard ‘lines to take’ pack or template. It is obvious that no learning has come from this complaint, that processes have not been reviewed as a result of it, communications have not been improved, and that Peabody continues to provide a woeful service – otherwise it would have been dealt with more substantively. It is an insult to my time chasing the complaint that so little effort has gone into investigating, responding or seeking to learn from it.

Failure to apply compensation policy

Apology

The complaint does acknowledge that “the standard of service that you have received from Peabody on this occasion has been below that which we expect to provide”. An apology is then given for that.

Notably, this fails to even accept that poor service was in fact delivered through the administration of the service charge refund to residents. What is being accepted, and apologised for, is that my complaint should have been dealt with sooner.

Complaint handling

Peabody has failed to apply its policy on compensation for complaint handling.

Peabody’s Compensation and Remedies Policy provides as follows:

“4.24 Any resident pursuing a complaint with us will inevitably incur a certain amount of time, trouble and minor costs (such as phone calls). We do not compensate residents for reasonable time and trouble in making a complaint. We will consider payments when the time and trouble in pursuing a complaint is more than would reasonably be expected. This could be due to us not following our complaints procedure, unreasonably delaying in recording, responding to or escalating a complaint, not responding to reasonable communication and demonstrating overall poor complaint handling. We assess compensation remedies based on the following scales:

In the present case, as we set out above, Peabody failed to comply with its Complaints Policy. Indeed, this failure is an extensive failure to follow the policy, even setting inside the absolute failure in the complaint response to investigate the complaint correctly. This has caused significant further inconvenience to me individually. It has been necessary to chase the complaint constantly for four months – something I will have to continue to do, as it has not been dealt with in any level of appropriate detail.

Appropriate compensation under “Serious Failure” should have been paid in the Stage 1 Response.

Conclusion

In conclusion, none of my complaint has actually been dealt with. I require the Stage 2 complaint handler to review the entirety of the complaint from the outset, and provide the full set of remedies we initially sought. I also require the Stage 2 complaint handler to allocate appropriate compensation for the failure to deal with this complaint properly. Finally, I expect this matter to be escalated to the CEO’s office and be placed in front of the Board.

Dr. Elizabeth Houghton