Peabody Trust (202220102)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202220102

Peabody Trust

27 March 2025

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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
1. Purchase of her property.
2. Concerns regarding its service charge administration.
3. Associated complaints.

Background

The resident’s shared ownership lease began in April 2021.
In April 2022, the resident asked the landlord why it had asked her to pay service charges for the period from before her lease had begun. Over the next 4 months she chased the matter and highlighted the landlord’s lack of response. On 16 August 2022, the landlord told her that it had raised the matter as a stage 1 complaint.
On 22 November 2022, the resident made her own complaint to the landlord about its service charges and delays during the purchase of her property. On 24 November 2022, the landlord issued her a stage 1 complaint response to the complaint that it had raised in August 2022. It explained why it had asked her to pay service charges from before her lease had begun. It apologised for its delayed response. It offered her £50 compensation for her time, trouble, and inconvenience and £40 for its complaint handling. In December 2022, the resident highlighted to the landlord that it had not responded to her November 2022 complaint. It told her that its stage 1 complaint response had covered both complaints.
On 14 February 2023, the resident asked the landlord to escalate her complaint to stage 2. She said that its stage 1 complaint response had not addressed all the points from her November 2022 complaint, which she expanded upon. The following day, the landlord confirmed to her that it would escalate the service charge elements of her complaint to stage 2. It told her that it would respond separately to her concerns about her delayed property purchase, which it did 1 month later.
In April 2023, the resident made a service charge payment to the landlord, which she said she had made under protest. She highlighted its lack of response to her complaint and queries, her further service charge concerns, and how distressing she was finding the overall matter. In July 2023, the landlord sent her an acknowledgement of her stage 2 complaint.
On 7 August 2023, the landlord issued the resident its stage 2 complaint response. It provided a further explanation of why it had asked her to pay service charges from before her lease had begun. It apologised for the delays in its complaint handling. It said that it had increased its compensation offer to £425 made up of £150 compensation for her time, trouble, and inconvenience, and £275 for its “poor complaint handling”.
In January 2024, the resident told us that she had recently received “retention monies” from her solicitor. She asked the Ombudsman to investigate the landlord’s handling of the overall matter.

Assessment and findings

Jurisdiction

What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. This is governed by the Scheme. 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. Paragraph 42. of the Scheme outlines complaint matters which the Ombudsman may not consider.
After carefully considering all the evidence, in accordance with paragraph 42.b. of the Scheme, the following aspect of the complaint is outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction:
1. The landlord’s handling of the resident’s purchase of her property.
Paragraph 42.b. of the Scheme states that the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion “were not brought to the attention of the member as a formal complaint within a reasonable period which would normally be within 12 months of the matters arising” (when the resident made her complaint to the landlord, this period was 6 months but was increased to 12 in 2024).
The resident’s complaint to the landlord on 24 November 2022, raised her concerns with the delays in its handling of her property purchase. She further specified that this related to the landlord’s “lack of communication (…) between August 2019 and December 2020”.
This element of the resident’s complaint therefore concerned the landlord’s actions, or lack thereof, during the period between 23 and 39 months before she made her complaint to it. As such, the Ombudsman rules this element of the complaint outside of our jurisdiction, in line with paragraph 42.b. of the Scheme. However, we have considered the landlord’s overall handling of her complaints in the ‘complaint handling’ assessment below.

Scope of investigation

Where a complaint concerns service charges, it is important to distinguish between the remits of the Ombudsman and the First Tier Property Tribunal (FTT). The FTT is responsible for considering disputes regarding liability and whether a service charge is payable. The Ombudsman may investigate matters including whether the landlord provided key service charge information to the resident on request.
This investigation therefore focused on whether the landlord provided a reasonable response to the resident’s queries and complaints, rather than whether she was liable for the service charge. The resident could seek free and independent advice from the Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE) in relation to how to proceed with a case regarding her liability for the service charge, should she wish to do so.

Service charge administration

The landlord’s service charge policy referred to its complaint policy for “more information on raising disputes on service charges”. It provided us a separate document that listed the “expected response timeline” for each of its teams. The document did not appear to be a formal policy and included no other details. It stated that the expected response times for its accounts and leasehold (collection) teams were 30 and 15 working days respectively.
On 29 April 2022, the resident told the landlord that the service charge payment request that it had sent her concerned the period from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021. She highlighted that this was before she had had any “connection with the flat”, and her belief that she was therefore not liable for the charge. The landlord replied to her 2 working days later. It said that her query had been passed to its accounts team. It asked that she allow “10 to 15 working days for an update”.
It was therefore unreasonable that the resident found it necessary to chase the landlord, 20 and 21 working days later (she had also chased it 13 working days later). She highlighted its lack of response and that, in the period in between, its leasehold (collection) team had sent her a further separate payment request. She emphasised her readiness to pay anything that she owed from the start of her lease in April 2021, and how worrying she was finding the matter.
We have not seen any evidence of the landlord’s call to the resident on 1 June 2022. However, its leasehold team referred to it in its email to her on 16 June 2022. It advised her to speak to her solicitor, who may have had retention fees that would cover the cost of the service charge for the year before her lease began.
It was unreasonable that the resident had needed to wait 31 working days, after her original enquiry, to receive this response from the landlord. This was beyond the timeframes of the ‘response timeline’ document it provided us. It is further noted that the 30 working day timeframe stated in its document, could leave residents waiting an unreasonable amount of time for a response. The Ombudsman has recommended that the landlord consider the appropriateness of this document and whether it should be incorporated into a formal service standard policy or similar.
Furthermore, the landlord’s delayed response made little effort to explain to the resident why it considered her liable for the charge from the year before her lease began. The response also came from the landlord’s leasehold team, rather than its accounts team, to whom she had been advised that her query had been passed.
The significance of this became apparent when the resident replied to the landlord’s leasehold team, on 21 June 2022. It was clear from her response that she still believed that it had been an error to send her the payment request for the year before her lease had begun, and that she was awaiting confirmation of this from its accounts team. This was further evident, on 27 June 2022, when the landlord apologised to her that its accounts team had still not responded to her original query from April 2022.
The landlord’s leasehold team did respond to the resident on 4 July 2022. However, its response did little to further clarify the matter, beyond again referring her to her solicitor. The resident’s growing anxiety and frustration with the landlord’s lack of response to her original query was evident when she emailed it, on 10 August 2022. She expressed her assumption that the matter was being “looked into internally by probably both teams together”. She stated that this was taking “too long now and the level of stress is too high for me”.
It was therefore wholly unreasonable that it was not until the landlord issued the resident its stage 1 complaint response, on 24 November 2022, that it provided her with a somewhat fuller answer to her original query. Given that this was almost 7 months after she had first made the query, it would have been appropriate for it to also offer to discuss the matter with her or otherwise confirm her understanding of its explanation.
The landlord’s failure to do so, and the resident’s ongoing uncertainty, were evident in her contacts with it in December 2022. She referred to the considerable effort that she had put into trying to resolve the matter with it. She described how “let down and helpless” she felt. She told it that “it is hard to describe the levels of stress and anxiety”.
The landlord’s leasehold team did contact the resident again during January 2023. However, it was clear that the resident remained uncertain and unhappy about why she was being charged for the period before her lease began. In February 2023, she asked for her complaint to be escalated. The landlord’s complaint handling has been separately considered below. However, it was not until the landlord issued the resident its stage 2 complaint response some 7 months later, in August 2023, that it offered her a comprehensive explanation to her original April 2022 service charge query.
When the resident made her original service charge query, it would have been appropriate for the landlord to provide her a timely and clear response. Even if she had disagreed with its response, this would have allowed her to make an informed decision on how she wished to proceed. The landlord instead took several weeks to respond to the resident and almost 7 months to answer her actual query. It further failed to confirm her understanding of its response or respond in a timely manner to her continued uncertainty.
It was appropriate for the landlord to apologise and offer the resident compensation for the “time, trouble, and inconvenience” caused by its failings. However, it is the view of the Ombudsman that its offer was not proportionate to the duration of its failings, nor the distress experienced by the resident in that time.
The Ombudsman has therefore found maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns regarding its service charge administration. The landlord is ordered to pay the resident £250 compensation, in addition to the £150 it awarded her at stage 2. This is in line with our remedies guidance’s recommendation of awards in this range where there has been a failure that adversely affected the resident over a significant period.

Complaint handling

The landlord’s complaint policy defined a complaint as “an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action.”. It gave examples of matters that were excluded from its complaint process. This included where the issue that had given rise to the complaint had occurred over 6 months ago, unless there were “exceptional circumstances”.
The policy stated that the landlord operated a 2- stage process. It said that stage 1 complaints would be logged and responded to within 5 and 10 working days respectively. It said that where a resident requested for their complaint to be escalated, it would issue its stage 2 response within 20 working days of their request being received.
The above elements of the landlord’s policy were in line with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code), which was in effect at the time of the resident’s complaint.
The Code stated that:
1. The landlord’s complaint acknowledgement to the resident must clarify and set out its understanding of their complaint.
2. Its stage 1 and 2 responses must confirm to residents what stage their complaint is at and how to escalate it if they remain dissatisfied.
3. If the resident raised additional complaints during the investigation, but after the stage 1 response had been issued, “the complaint should be logged as a new complaint”.
4. “If all or part of the complaint is not resolved to the resident’s satisfaction at stage 1 it must be progressed to stage 2”, unless an exclusion applied.
On 31 May 2022, the resident expressed her unhappiness with the landlord’s lack of response to her service charge query. As the landlord identified in its stage 2 response to her 15 months later, it was a failing that it did not recognise and handle this as a complaint, in line with its policy and the Code.
The resident continued to chase the landlord for a response over the following months. Through this time, she made clear to it how stressful and worrying she was finding the matter. It was therefore unreasonable that it took the landlord 77 working days, from when the resident had expressed her unhappiness at the end of May 2022, to recognise her contacts as a complaint, on 16 August 2022.
Having logged a complaint on the resident’s behalf, the landlord should have confirmed its understanding of it with her, in line with the Code. As the resident later highlighted, the landlord’s failure to do this left her uncertain what specifically the landlord considered her complaint to be and caused confusion in its handling. Her continued distress and uncertainty were evident when she made her own complaint to it, on 22 November 2022.
On 24 November 2022, the landlord issued the resident its stage 1 response to the complaint it had logged in August 2022. This was a wholly unreasonable 61 working days longer than the timeframe of the Code and its own policy. The landlord was aware of how worried the resident was by the overall matter. Its significant complaint handling delay would have added to her time, trouble, and distress.
The landlord’s stage 1 response to the resident appropriately apologised to her for the delays in its complaint handling and offered her compensation (further considered below). On the same day that it issued her its stage 1 response, it sent her a separate acknowledgement of the complaint that she had made 2 days earlier. While its acknowledgement did refer to her other complaint, the further uncertainty and distress that this caused the resident was evident in her contacts to it over the following 3 weeks.
During the first half of December 2022, the resident contacted the landlord several times to query the status of her complaints and express her unhappiness with its stage 1 response. Their exchange concluded with the landlord’s explanation that its stage 1 response had covered both her August and November 2022 complaints. As the resident had expressed her unhappiness with its response, it would have been appropriate for it to handle this as a stage 2 escalation request, in line with the Code.
It was therefore a further failing that the resident found it necessary to ask the landlord to escalate her complaint 2 months later, on 14 February 2023. Her request included her unhappiness that its stage 1 response had not responded to the property purchase delay issues that she had raised in her November 2022 complaint.
As above, this element of the resident’s complaint concerned the landlord’s lack of communications to her between August 2019 and December 2020. It would therefore have been reasonable for the landlord to explain to her that this was well beyond the 6 month exclusion criteria of its policy at that time, as well as our Scheme and the Code. If it considered that this element of her complaint represented “exceptional circumstances”, it would have been appropriate for it to handle it as a separate complaint, again in line with its policy and the Code. It was unreasonable that the landlord did neither.
On 13 March 2023, the landlord emailed the resident regarding her concerns about property purchase delays. Its email did not explain the exclusion criteria of its policy. It also did not state that that it represented a further stage 1 response, nor included a complaint reference. It also failed to advise her how she could escalate the matter if she remained dissatisfied. Particularly given its confused complaint handling up to this point, this would have added to the resident’s distress and left her unclear of the status of her complaints.
The landlord then took a wholly unreasonable 104 working days, from when it had advised the resident that her service charge complaint would be escalated, to send her its stage 2 acknowledgement, on 17 July 2023. The resident replied to it 1 week later. She highlighted its failure to respond to her ‘payment under protest’ correspondence from March 2023, and asked that it add this to her complaint.
The landlord issued the resident its stage 2 response on 7 August 2023. It told her that it had not considered the element of her complaint that she had asked to be added, as this had occurred since its stage 1 response to her. This was in line with the Code. However, while it did acknowledge her payment under protest, we have seen no evidence that it logged the matter as a new formal complaint, which was not in line with the Code.
The landlord’s stage 2 response was otherwise appropriately comprehensive and apologised for its complaint handling failures. It stated that it had increased its £40 stage 1 compensation offer to her for this, to £275.
As above, the resident experienced time, trouble, and distress from the landlord’s handling of the matters her complaint was about. Her complaint to it represented an opportunity to put this right. Its poor, and severely delayed, complaint handling not only failed to do this but would have significantly worsened the resident’s experience. As such, it is the view of the Ombudsman that its offer of compensation was again not proportionate to the extent and impact of its complaint handling failures over the near 15 months that they occurred.
The Ombudsman has therefore made a further finding of maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaints. The landlord is ordered to pay the resident £250 compensation, in addition to the £275 it awarded her at stage 2. This amount is in line with our remedies guidance stated above. The landlord is also ordered to issue a further apology to the resident. Its apology should set out its learning from the failings identified in this report.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 42.b. of the Scheme, the complaint about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s purchase of her property is outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.
In accordance with paragraph 52. of the Scheme, there was maladministration in respect of the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
1. Concerns regarding its service charge administration.
2. Associated complaints.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

The Ombudsman orders that, within 4 weeks, the landlord:
1. Writes to the resident to apologise for the further failings identified in this report, setting out its learning. A copy must be provided to the Ombudsman.
2. Pays the resident £500 total further compensation made up of:
  1. £250 for the time, trouble, and distress caused by the failings identified in its handling of the service charge administration concerns.
  2. £250 for the time, trouble, and distress caused by the failings identified in its complaint handling.
3. Ensures it pays the compensation previously offered of £425 if it has not already done so.
4. Compensation awarded by the Ombudsman should be paid directly to the resident and not offset against arrears where they exist.
The landlord must evidence its compliance with the orders to the Ombudsman within 4 weeks.

Recommendations

The Ombudsman recommends that the landlord reviews the appropriateness of its “expected response timeline” document and considers whether it should be incorporated into a formal service standards policy, if it has not already done so.