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Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTV) (202210590)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202210590

Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing

25 July 2023

 

Our approach

The Housing Ombudsman’s approach to investigating and determining complaints is to decide what is fair in all the circumstances of the case. This is set out in the Housing Act 1996 and the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme). The Ombudsman considers the evidence and looks to see if there has been any ‘maladministration’, for example whether the landlord has failed to keep to the law, followed proper procedure, followed good practice or behaved in a reasonable and competent manner.

Both the resident and the landlord have submitted information to the Ombudsman and this has been carefully considered. Their accounts of what has happened are summarised below. This report is not an exhaustive description of all the events that have occurred in relation to this case, but an outline of the key issues as a background to the investigation’s findings.

The complaint

  1. The complaint is about:
    1. the delays in providing a breakdown of service charges and the handling of the resident’s queries.
    2. The landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident is a leaseholder of a 2-bedroom flat in a block owned by the landlord. The lease requires the landlord to provide and the resident to pay for a proportionate part of the repair maintenance improvement renewal and insurance costs of the block (the service charges).
  2. The resident previously made a very similar complaint to this Service where the determination was service failure by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s questions about service charges and the related complaint handling.
  3. The resident received the service charge account for the 12 month period to 31 March 2021 at the end of September 2021, and immediately requested a breakdown under Section 22 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (LTA 1985). She chased a response after the 1 month LTA 1985 deadline and on receipt of the information 3 weeks later, raised several queries and a complaint. She repeatedly chased and finally received a response to her queries on 12 April 2022, and her stage 1 complaint on 26 April 2022. Her complaint was upheld and she was offered £50 compensation.
  4. The resident rejected the compensation offer and on 26 April 2022 raised a stage 2 complaint noting that she had been awarded £350 compensation in her previous complaint to this Service. The 20 working day deadline for a stage 2 response was repeatedly extended by the landlord and the response was finally issued on 4 August 2022. Compensation offered was increased to £350 with a further £75 for her “time and distress”. In addition £150 compensation was offered for poor complaint handling making a total of £575.
  5. In referring the matter to this Service, the resident was concerned that the landlord had not acknowledged the seriousness of its failure to comply with the LTA 1985 and she sought a full and formal apology and assurances that such failures would not recur. She also sought a response to her request for the management fee to be capped.

Assessment and findings

The delays in providing a breakdown of service charges and the handling of the resident’s queries

  1. This Service’s investigation of a previous complaint from the resident in July 2021 concluded that the landlord failed to meet its obligations to answer the resident’s request for a breakdown of her service charges within a month and delayed unreasonably in answering questions about the service charges.
  2. The resident noted that the previous investigation by this Service had recommended the landlord “formulate an action plan to ensure it can provide residents with service charge breakdowns and answers to questions about individual charges in a reasonable timescale in future” and asked the landlord what it had done to address this. The stage 2 response said it was attaching the landlord’s response to this Services recommendation from the previous complaint, which was that “We have put a plan in place to monitor responses to breakdown requests more effectively going forwards. Our short term goal is to track all requests for breakdowns, which is monitored by the management team. We will be monitoring on a weekly basis to ensure information is being gathered and addressed effectively.”
  3. This Service has seen no evidence of this monitoring happening or working, and in this case the landlord again failed to meet its LTA 1985 obligations to provide information within a month and delayed unreasonably in answering questions about the service charges. It also delayed logging and answering the resident’s complaints (see paragraph 17 below).
  4. Leaseholders have the right under S22 LTA 1985 to a breakdown of costs by inspecting documents relating to their service charges. Facilities for inspection must be provided within 1 month of the request. Some landlords, as in this case, fulfil this obligation by providing a detailed breakdown of the costs making up the service charge accounts and then providing copy invoices/answering queries.
  5. The breakdown of costs was 20 days late given the LTA 1985 S22 deadline is 1 month. On receipt the resident raised 13 queries and asked for a complaint to be raised in relation to non-compliance with S22 LTA 1985. The first query questioned a charge which was over the S20 LTA 1985 £250 consultation limit. This item had been capped at £22,000 but her share was £294.80. Apart from a request to review the management fee calculation the other queries all related to the provision of copy invoices or further information on expenditure.
  6. The resident chased both the queries and an update on the complaint6 times before the landlord responded to all the queries on 12 April 2022, nearly 5 months after they had been raised. In relation to the first query the landlord apologised and explained it had intended to cap this expenditure at the £250 S20 LTA 1985 limit as there had been no consultation. The capped limit had been set at £22,000(being £250 x88, the number of flats) but this did not recognise that the apportionment between the flats was not equal. It said her account would be credited with the £44.80 difference and other accounts would be similarly credited.
  7. It is of concern that the resident had to query the overcharge for the S20 LTA 1985 £250 limit due to incorrect apportionment between the flats, especially as this was a repeat of one of the service failures in the previous complaint.
  8. The resident accepted the responses on the same day except for that relating to the management fee. She asked for a new complaint to be raised relating to “the management fee being out of line with the lease agreement and the time taken to respond to the queries.”
  9. The responses, when received, were reasonable but the landlord did not respond to the resident’s follow up request that the management fee be capped at 10%. It should have done so. However, this is ultimately a complaint about the level of service charge which, under paragraph 42(e) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, is outside the jurisdiction of this Service and would be a matter for the First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) to determine.
  10. It should not be necessary for residents to chase responses or point out landlord breaches of the S20 LTA 1985 limits. This and the recurrence of the same issues identified in the previous complaint would have caused frustration to the resident, so it was right that the landlord recognised the failures and at stage 2 offered significant compensation of £575, which seems reasonable for the service issues evident and taking into consideration our remedies guidance. In the Ombudsman’s opinion and considering all of the circumstances of the case therefore, the landlord has offered reasonable redress for the length of time it took to provide information and the issues with its handling of the resident’s queries.

The landlord’s complaint handling

  1. This Service’s investigation of a previous complaint from the resident in July 2021 identified similar service issues responding to service charge queries, and also concluded that the landlord delayed in logging and answering the resident’s complaints.
  2. The resident first raised a formal complaint on 18 November 2021, which was not acknowledged despite being chased 6 times alongside the service cost queries. The landlord then did not provide a stage 1 response until 26 April 2022, over 5 months after the complaint was raised. It apologised for the delays which were “due to an unprecedented amount of work” and asserted that the resident “had now been contacted, provided with the service charge breakdown and queries responded to.” The complaint was upheld and £50 was offered, comprising £30 for service failure and £20 for time and trouble. The resident requested to escalate the complaint, which the landlord acknowledged the same day, and there were then 5 extensions by the landlord of its 20 working day target for a stage 2 response which was finally issued on 4 August 2022, 48 days late. The stage 2 response upheld the complaint “on the basis of delays to the final response being provided, alongside the service failure of the over payment on the management fee.”
  3. The landlord appropriately acknowledged delays responding to the queries, and provided some compensation in recognition of the complaint delays. However, in the Ombudsman’s view it did not satisfactorily address the delay in the complaint response or the resident chasing 6 times, or identify specific learning about what it would do to avoid such issues in future.
  4. The landlord did not acknowledge an issue with staff informing the resident that they were “unable to open a complaint …. as a Service Charge officer” and that she needed to “contact our customer service centre notifying them”. The landlord’s complaints policy says “a complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction, however made.” This and the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code obligates the landlord to take steps to log a complaint however it is made, and so it was not appropriate or customer focused to require the resident to contact another department to restate a complaint she had already made.
  5. There was a lack of attentiveness to the complaint on some occasions. The landlord’s stage 1 response inappropriately suggested that the complaint had been raised on 13 April 2022 rather than 18 November 2021. The responses made no reference to the management fee issue or the resident’s request for a further complaint to be raised (see paragraph 14 above). The stage 2 response upheld the complaint “on the basis of delays to the final response being provided, alongside the service failure of the over payment on the management fee.” There had not been any overpayment of management fee and this would appear to be a reference to the refund in relation to the lack of consultation on S20 LTA level expenditure. The stage 2 response made reference to an attachment it was attaching, which had to be requested by the resident as it was omitted. This Service has seen no evidence that the missed attachment was sent to the resident.
  6. Overall, the landlord’s stage 1 and stage 2 responses were well outside the landlord’s timescales and that of the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code. There was a failure to learn lessons from the previous complaint. The resident should not have had to chase the complaint multiple times or had the onus put on her to raise the complaint with another department. These unacknowledged issues will have caused some additional frustration to the resident, and led her to feel that the landlord had not fully acknowledged her customer journey and the issues she had experienced specifically with its complaint handling. These lead this Service to find service failure in the landlord’s complaint handling, which would have been a finding of maladministration had the landlord not take some steps to put things right by offering some compensation for this aspect.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was reasonable redress in relation to the delays in providing a breakdown of service charges and the handling of the resident’s queries.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in relation to the landlord’s complaints handling.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. The landlord to, within 4 weeks, apologise to the resident for the failures identified in this report.
  2. The landlord to, within 4 weeks, pay the resident £625 which should be paid directly to the resident and not offset against any arrears. This comprises:
    1. the £575 previously offered to the resident, if not already paid.
    2. £50 for the frustration and inconvenience to the resident caused by its complaint handling failures.
  3. The landlord to, within 4 weeks, review the issues identified and formulate an action plan to improve its complaint handling, to ensure that complaints are logged however they are made, and to ensure that complaints are responded to in a timely manner.
  4. The landlord should provide evidence of compliance with the above orders within 4 weeks.

Recommendations

  1. The landlord to review the case, and formulate an action plan for how the provision of service charge information and the responses to questions on service charges will be improved.
  2. The landlord to review the apportionment of costs for capped S20 LTA 1985 expenditure, and consider ways to avoid repeating this error in future.