Processing of documents
21. Our Principles say that public organisations should deal with people promptly and within reasonable timescales.
22. Homes England received the documents it needed to progress Ms L’s re-mortgaging process on 9 February 2021. It completed its work on 21 April, 49 working days later.
23. In response to Ms L’s complaint, Homes England said that in line with its service level agreement, it should have processed the property documents within 30 working days, not 49. This did not happen because of human error. Homes England upheld the complaint.
24. Homes England subsequently told us that it does not have a service level agreement or policy relating to timeframes, but rather, it tries to complete its work within 30 working days. It says this is not always possible as the volume of work it needs to carry out fluctuates. However, that is not relevant here. What is relevant is that Homes England overlooked the request. It was not that it could not process it due to other work.
25. Still, Homes England appears to be operating on the basis that it will complete its work within 30 working days, and its comments suggest this would have happened, but for the oversight. Our Principles state that public organisations should follow their own policy and procedural guidance, whether published or internal. And while Homes England says it does not have published guidance around timescales, it does seem to be working internally towards a 30-working day target. We expect organisations to work within reasonable timescales and their own time limits. The evidence we have seen suggests this did not happen. This is a service failing so we have considered the impact this had on Ms L.
26. If Homes England acted correctly and processed Ms L’s mortgage documents within 30 working days, the latest it should have completed its work by was 22 March. It then would have been up to the other organisations involved in the process to carry out their respective work.
27. In reality, Homes England completed its work on 21 April. The re-mortgaging process was completed on 20 May, 29 days later. We can only assume the process would have taken the same time if Homes England acted correctly and completed its work by 22 March. This is because there is no guarantee other organisations involved in the re-mortgaging process would have acted quicker, just because Homes England should have.
28. Taking that into account, the re-mortgaging process should have been completed by 20 April, a month earlier than it was. So, in any event, Ms L would not have re-mortgaged before her fixed rate was due to end on 1 March. That is not a fault on Homes England’s part.
29. That said, the process should have been completed a month sooner than it was. So Ms L was affected financially by Homes England’s failing. However, any impact is limited to that one-month period.
30. At this point, it is key to explain that irrespective of when the re-mortgage process was completed, Ms L still had to pay her mortgage each month. The only difference is whether this would be on the higher interest rate mortgage, as opposed to the lower interest rate mortgage she eventually re-mortgaged to. Based on the evidence we have seen, it appears Ms L was on the higher interest rate mortgage for one month longer than she should have been. Her mortgage payment was £227.09 higher at that rate as opposed to the lower interest rate. This means Ms L has experienced financial loss of that amount. We have made recommendations for Homes England to put this financial loss right.
Communication
31. Ms L complains that Homes England ignored her when she contacted it repeatedly during the re-mortgaging process. Homes England’s involvement in this process was between 9 February and 21 April.
32. Our Principles state that organisations should communicate with people effectively and do what they say they are going to do. If they make a commitment to doing something, they should keep to it but if that is not possible, they should explain why.
33. We do not wish to dismiss what Ms L told us, but there is no independent evidence of her contacting Homes England during its involvement in the re-mortgaging process. As such, we cannot see that it acted incorrectly. We can see that Ms L contacted a different organisation involved in the process repeatedly, but we are not considering that organisation’s actions.
34. Ms L also complains that Homes England ignored her when she contacted it during the complaints process. The process lasted between 17 August and 11 November.
35. Homes England acknowledged Ms L’s initial complaint the day after she raised it. It then took action to summarise her key concerns and explained that it would provide an update in 20 working days.
36. We can see that Homes England did attempt to do this on 16 September but the email did not send as a member of staff sent it from their own email address, rather than Homes England’s centralised one. This simple mistake meant Homes England’s system did not send the email.
37. Ms L contacted Homes England for an update on 1 October and it responded promptly. It also explained the situation with the email that was not sent and said it was still investigating her complaint. Homes England reiterated this to Ms L on 14 October and said it would contact her again once it had a substantive response to her complaint.
38. Ms L emailed Homes England for an update on her complaint on 2 and 9 November. On 11 November, Homes England provided a substantive response to the complaint.
39. Based on the available evidence, we are satisfied that Homes England did not intentionally ignore Ms L. We can see that it made a simple mistake where it did not send an email with an update that it had agreed to provide. While this is not in line with our Principles around keeping to commitments, we do not consider that this fell so far short of what should have happened that it amounted to service failure. We are pleased to see that Homes England accepted and apologised for this error and overall, our view is that Homes England communicated effectively with Ms L, in line with our Principles.