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The Guinness Partnership Limited (202306735)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202306735

The Guinness Partnership Limited

20 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

  1. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s queries about service charges.
  2. The Ombudsman has also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident has been an assured tenant at the property since 17 January 2011. The property is a 2-bedroom house.
  2. On 1 March 2023 the resident completed a general enquiry webform on the landlord’s website. He asked it to explain the service charge notice it had sent him dated 23 February 2023. He said that there were 19 properties on the estate that should be charged the service charge but the costs had only been divided by 6. He said that this meant that either all properties were not paying the same amount, or some were not being charged at all. He also queried the cost of landscaping works as he thought this was too high based on the work carried out.
  3. The landlord responded on 2 March 2023. It said that it had passed the query to its rent and service charge team who would respond within 5 working days. The resident emailed the landlord on 27 March 2023 to chase a response to his enquiry. He received an automated response which said that it had disconnected the email address he had used.
  4. The resident completed a complaint webform on the landlord’s website on 5 May 2023. He said that he had not received a response to his query about the service charges. He also said that the service charge notice seemed to duplicate some charges for example the garden service had 2 entries. The resident received an automated response the same day which said the landlord would contact him within 2 working days.
  5. On 7 May 2023 the landlord emailed the resident. It said that it had logged a service failure with the rent and service charge department and it would respond within 2 working days.
  6. The resident approached us for assistance and we wrote to the landlord on 25 September 2023. We asked the landlord to respond to the resident’s complaint by 13 October 2023.
  7. The landlord provided a stage 1 complaint response on 2 October 2023. It said that:
    1. It had investigated and could confirm that it had incorrectly divided up the service charges and it should have split the costs between all 19 properties.
    2. It had also identified that there had been an “undercharge in surplus” and no double counting of service charge.
    3. It would split the service charges between all 19 properties from 2023-2024.
    4. It had not overcharged the resident but had in fact undercharged him.
    5. It apologised for its poor communication and offered £50 compensation comprising £25 for his time and trouble, and inconvenience and £25 for its poor communication.
    6. It partially upheld the complaint.
  8. The resident asked the landlord to escalate the complaint to stage 2 of the process on 3 October 2023. He said that:
    1. He didn’t understand what the landlord meant by “an undercharge in surplus”.
    2. The surplus/deficit was inaccurate because it was based on the wrong calculations.
    3. While it was good that the service charge would not increase, this only benefitted the properties that had not previously been charged.
    4. He disagreed that the complaint should only partially be upheld.

 

  1. The landlord responded on 25 October 2023. It said that:
    1. It was satisfied that it had addressed the points raised in the stage 1 complaint and had provided suitable explanations.
    2. When it investigated the stage 1 complaint it reviewed the previous 5 years’ service charges and found that during that period it had split the charges between 6 properties instead of 19. However, there were 2 years where the 6 properties received excess surplus and benefited from a negative service charge. This meant that the resident owed the landlord £353.34, however it was not going to recharge him.
    3. The properties that had not been charged service charge would have paid more overall because there were 2 years when the resident and the other 5 properties benefited from a negative service charge which the other properties did not benefit from.
    4. It had failed to log the resident’s complaint on 5 May 2023 and apologised for this and the delay it caused.
    5. It increased the compensation to £200 comprising £50 for time, trouble and inconvenience, £50 for poor communication and £100 for the delay in raising the stage 1 complaint.
    6. It had since changed its process on how it dealt with complaint webforms and senior customer service advisors now dealt with them.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. While we can consider how a landlord responds to service charge queries or provides service charge information, actual disputes about the level of service charges are more appropriately considered by the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). The Tribunal has the function of judging disputes over issues like service charges and can investigate and make orders further than the Ombudsman can. Because of that, in line with the Scheme, this investigation will consider the landlord’s responses to the resident’s queries but will not seek to determine the reasonableness of the service charge costs.

Service charges

  1. The resident first raised a query about the service charges on 1 March 2023. The landlord failed to respond to this enquiry for 7 months. This unacceptable and lengthy delay cost the resident time, trouble, and inconvenience because he chased a response, complained, and then contacted us for help because the landlord still failed to reply.
  2. The landlord’s service charge policy says that it will apportion costs between homes on an estate. It says that it will ensure that this is reasonable, as required by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and that the “apportioned amount will represent a fair and proper proportion of the cost incurred”.
  3. The landlord did not apportion the costs between all the homes on the estate in this case. It only charged 6 out of 19 properties. When it investigated the resident’s complaint it realised that this was due to an administration error. While errors can occur, the landlord should have checks and processes in place to make sure that it detects this type of issue. This failure to follow its policy cost the resident further time and trouble because he had to contact the landlord several times to resolve the issue.
  4. The landlord told the resident that he owed it £353.34, even though it had divided the service charge between 6 properties instead of 19 for the previous 5 years at least. It said that this was because the surplus he had received via a negative service charge for 2 years was also split between 6 properties instead of 19. A surplus occurs when the amount paid by residents exceeds the amount paid out for services. Therefore, as only 6 properties were paying for services, it seems logical that the surplus should only be reimbursed to those residents. Therefore, it is hard to understand why the resident should owe the landlord an additional amount.
  5. The landlord did not provide a full explanation or reasoning for this calculation. In an internal email it stated that it had completed a calculation sheet but that it should not share this with the resident. However, it should have done so. Its failure to provide evidence of the calculation caused the resident frustration and cost him time, trouble, and inconvenience because he had to escalate the complaint and then contact us.
  6. The resident also queried the level of the service charge, stating that there was only a small strip of grass and communal tree to maintain. The landlord did not fully respond to this and just said that it had not “identified that the resident had been charged double for any of the service charges”. It did not provide any evidence to support this and therefore did not address the resident’s concerns. The landlord also failed to signpost the resident to the First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) who judge disputes over levels of service charges. These errors cost the resident further time and trouble because he escalated the complaint to us.
  7. The landlord offered the resident £100 compensation for this aspect of the complaint. However, this was not proportionate to the inconvenience, time and trouble experienced by the resident because of the landlord’s failings. Therefore, we have ordered the landlord to pay a total of £350 compensation and to provide further explanation regarding the service charge calculations. This is inline with our remedies guidance.
  8. In summary, due to the lengthy delay, the landlord’s failure to provide adequate explanation for its findings, and its failure to signpost the resident appropriately there has been maladministration in its handling of the resident’s queries about service charges.

Complaint handling

  1. The Housing Ombudsman’s complaint handling code (the Code) in place at the time of the complaint said that a complaint was defined as “an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the organisation or its own staff.”
  2. The landlord’s complaints policy says, “if a customer tells us they want to complain, we will always record it as a complaint”.
  3. The resident completed a complaint webform on 5 May 2023. However, the landlord did not log a complaint. It told the resident that it had received the form but provided no response. He had to contact us for help which cost him time and trouble. This meant that it was nearly 5 months before he received a reply. This lengthy delay and failure to follow the Code meant that the resident was waiting longer for a resolution which caused him distress and inconvenience. It also delayed his access to an investigation by this Service.
  4. Due to the landlord’s failure to log the stage 1 complaint, there was service failure in its handling of the resident’s complaint. It apologised for this in its stage 2 complaint response and offered £100 compensation to the resident. It also changed its processes to ensure that the same thing would not happen again. Therefore, we consider that the landlord has offered reasonable redress for its complaint handling failure. We have made a recommendation to pay this sum of compensation if it has not already done so

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s queries about service charges.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 53(b) of the Scheme, the landlord has made an offer of redress to the resident which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, satisfactorily resolves the failure in its complaint handling.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report the landlord must apologise in writing to the resident for the failings identified.
  2. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report the landlord must pay compensation of £450 directly to the resident comprising:
    1. £350 for the inconvenience, time, and trouble caused by its handling of the service charge queries.
    2. £100 for the time, trouble, distress, and inconvenience caused by its complaint handling.
    3. This replaces the landlord’s previous offer of £200. It must pay this amount (less any amount already paid as part of its previous offer) within four weeks of the date of this determination.
  3. Within 6 weeks of the date of this report the landlord must provide the calculations it used to demonstrate how it decided that the resident was not adversely affected by its failure to divide the service charges by 19 instead of 6. Should this calculation show that the resident was adversely affected it must also reimburse any amount owed to him, in addition to the compensation identified above.
  4. Within 6 weeks of the date of this report the landlord must review this case. This is to identify what measures it can put in place to ensure that administration errors do not result in the incorrect allocation of service charges.
  5. The landlord must provide the Ombudsman with evidence of compliance with these orders by the above deadlines.

Recommendations

  1. The landlord should pay the resident the £200 compensation it offered at stage 2 of the complaints process if it has not already done so.