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Clarion Housing Association Limited (202305040)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202305040

Clarion Housing Association Limited

31 January 2025


Our approach

What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction and is governed by the Housing Ombudsman Scheme. The Ombudsman must determine whether a complaint comes within their jurisdiction. The Ombudsman seeks to resolve disputes wherever possible but cannot investigate complaints that fall outside of this. 

In deciding whether a complaint falls within their jurisdiction, the Ombudsman will carefully consider all the evidence provided by the parties and the circumstances of the case.

The complaint

  1. The complaint is about the landlord’s management of parking on the resident’s estate.

Determination (jurisdictional decision)

  1. When a complaint is brought to the Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.

 

  1. After carefully considering all the evidence, I have determined that the complaint, as set out above, is not within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.

Summary of events

  1. The resident is a tenant of the leaseholder. The leaseholder is a third party. The resident reported the parking issues to the housing association, which will be referred to as ‘the landlord’ in this report.

 

  1. The resident submitted a complaint to the landlord in June 2023 about its handling of illegal parking within the private car park of the estate. He stated that the issue was a serious health and safety hazard and had been ongoing for 3 years.

 

  1. The landlord issued a stage 1 complaint response on 12 June 2023. It said that CCTV had been installed in the car park, but that following consultation, the majority of residents did not agree for the cameras to be in operation and so the CCTV was switched off.

 

  1. The resident escalated his complaint on 14 June 2023 and stated that residents did not agree for the cameras to be turned on because the landlord had asked all residents to pay an extra £30 charge. The resident said the issue was that illegally parked cars were blocking emergency vehicle access and that the cameras should be turned on in order to solve the problem.

 

  1. The landlord issued a stage 2 complaint response on 28 July 2023. It stated that while residents had not agreed to pay for a permit to have their bay monitored, it had installed and switched on CCTV to prevent unauthorised parking outside of the bays and at emergency access points. The landlord apologised that it did not confirm this at stage 1. It concluded that there was no service failure as it had carried out a consultation on the parking management arrangements, followed the results provided by the residents and implemented parking enforcement to manage parking in unauthorised areas.

 

  1. The resident remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response and referred his complaint to the Ombudsman.

 

  1. The Ombudsman accepted the complaint for investigation and the landlord provided further information, including details of the occupancy arrangement, in June 2024.

Reasons

  1. Paragraph 41(a) of the Scheme states that the Ombudsman cannot consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion were not referred to the Ombudsman by one of the people who can use the Scheme under paragraph 25.

 

  1. Paragraph 25(a) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme) states that a person who is or has been in a landlord/tenant relationship with a member can make a complaint. This includes people who have a lease, tenancy, licence to occupy, service agreement or other arrangement to occupy premises owned or managed by a member.

 

  1. The current leaseholder of the property is not the resident but a third party. As such, it is the third party, and not the resident, that has the landlord/tenant relationship with the housing association. The resident therefore does not have a legal relationship with the landlord.

 

  1. Therefore, the complaint is outside the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman, as the resident was not in a landlord/tenant relationship with the housing association at the time of the complaint. 
  2. The Ombudsman recognises that this information should have been provided to the resident sooner and apologises that this did not happen. Due to the volume of cases, we are currently considering, we are unable to begin investigating complaints as soon as they are referred to us. It is only at the point of investigation that the evidence is considered in detail, and, in this case, the jurisdictional limitations of the occupancy arrangement were identified upon allocation.