Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTV) (202310749)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202310749

Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTV)

13 May 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:
1. the resident’s concerns about the level of service charges;
2. communications with the resident about the service charge accounts.
The Ombudsman has also considered the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

The resident is a shared owner. Her underlease with the landlord commenced on 29 July 2014. The landlord is the head leaseholder and there is a superior landlord. The superior landlord appointed a management agent which levies a service charge to the landlord.
The property is described as a 1-bedroom flat.
On 13 March 2020, the landlord queried the service charges levied by the managing agent for the financial year 2018 to 2019. Around April 2020, the resident association agreed a standstill agreement with the superior landlord and developer regarding costs for cladding removal.
During December 2020, the superior landlord made an application to the First Tier Tribunal (FTT). A dispensation was agreed for a consultation regarding the cladding works.
The superior landlord changed the managing agents in 2021.
On 3 April 2023, the resident complained that the service charges had been in dispute since 2019. The resident said:
1. A full and transparent breakdown of the service charge had not been provided.
2. Fire safety related charges were included but she was not responsible for payment.
3. The landlord had not confirmed if the charges were payable and had made excuses for this.
4. Over 4 years, the service charge had increased to £735 per month. The increase was affecting her mental health as she remained trapped in the property.
5. Her preferred outcome was for the landlord to provide the service charges payable from 2017. It should guarantee she was not liable for any fire safety related charges.
The landlord provided its initial complaint response on 12 May 2023. It said:
1. It experienced difficulty obtaining information from the new managing agents. The delays were the subject of a complaint.
2. Its leasehold and service charge team should have kept the resident updated. It apologised for its communication failures.
3. It sent an update on 26 April 2023 regarding the complaint made to the managing agent. The complaint was about the correct apportionment of the service charges, including the fire safety related costs.
4. A further progress report would be sent on 12 May 2023.
5. Collection of the estimated 2023-24 service charge would remain withheld.
6. A reconciliation of the service charges for the outstanding periods would start once it was satisfied with the information provided by the managing agent.
7. The complaint was upheld. It offered compensation of £120, broken down as £50 for service failure, £60 for time and trouble and £10 for poor complaint handling. It would offset this against arrears on the rent account.
Following contact from the resident, we wrote to the landlord on 17 August 2023, advising that she wanted to escalate her complaint.
The landlord provided its final complaint response on 22 September 2023. It said:
1. It was sorry that the stage 1 complaint handler did not respond to her escalation request. The rent account was not in arrears so it should have paid the stage 1 compensation direct to her.
2. It could not explain why the service charge team had not responded to her concerns. It apologised and set out the background to the ongoing service charge dispute.
3. A new managing agent was appointed in early 2023 and a formal complaint was made to them. It agreed for the managing agent to respond to the complaint by 14 September 2023 but they did not do so.
4. Discussion was underway with its legal team about requesting a formal review by the FTT on the reasonableness of the service charge.
5. Payment collection had been withheld for all service charge accounts and all estimated service charges until the dispute was resolved. It would not reconcile the service charges until the investigation ended or the FTT made a decision.
6. Since August 2023, residents received monthly updates. The update sent on 24 August 2023 was included and it advised that the next update was scheduled for September 2023. The service charge officer would act as a point of contact to answer any concerns.
7. It had not received sufficient information from the managing agents to fully answer the resident’s concerns.
8. It upheld the complaint and offered £800 additional compensation. This was made up of £150 for poor complaint handling, £150 for communication failures, £250 for time and trouble and £250 for the lack of information provided regarding the service charge dispute.
After the complaint process ended, the following events occurred:
1. On 28 September 2023, the landlord responded directly to the concerns raised by the resident. It also provided regular updates on the disputed service charges.
2. The landlord’s legal team was instructed on 8 February 2024 to commence the FTT pre-action protocol on grounds of reasonableness of the service charge.
The resident remained dissatisfied and escalated her complaint to this Service. She said the investigation was unnecessarily long, payment had been requested despite what the landlord said and it gave the managing agent unreasonable extensions. She asked the Ombudsman to negotiate a final service charge payment and said she wanted the landlord to buy back the shared ownership of the property.
The landlord informed the Ombudsman this month that it raised a new complaint with the managing agent in May 2024, met with them in July 2024 and started to receive information from them. It was therefore able to start a service charge review that was due to end on 9 May 2025. It also said that a solicitor for its safer buildings team would make enquiries about the defective cladding removal works.

Jurisdiction

What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. The Housing Ombudsman Scheme governs this. 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(d) of the Scheme says the Ombudsman may not investigate complaints which concern the level of rent or service charge or the amount of the rent or service charge increase.
One of the resident’s primary complaints is that she has been overcharged for various services and she asked for the Ombudsman to negotiate a final service charge payment.
As the head leaseholder, the landlord is in dispute with the managing agents appointed by the superior landlord about the service charges levied since 2014. The landlord has said that the managing agents have not correctly calculated the charges payable by the underleases. It raised a complaint with the managing agent with the intention of progression to the FTT (Property Chamber).
While the Ombudsman can consider whether a landlord’s response to a complaint was fair and reasonable, the FTT is the appropriate recourse for disputes about the level of service charges. The Ombudsman understands that an application was previously made to them regarding fire safety related costs. It is not in our remit to decide the level of a final service charge amount.
After carefully considering the evidence, we have determined that the complaint about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns about the level of service charges is outside our jurisdiction.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

The resident has asked us to help her get the landlord to agree to purchase her lease. As the resident’s request did not from part of the formal complaint to the landlord, this is not something we can investigate at this stage. The landlord needs to be provided with the opportunity to investigate and respond to this request. We have made a recommendation about this below.
The Housing Ombudsman Scheme outlines that we may not consider complaints about matters that have not exhausted a landlord’s complaints process. This complaint exhausted the landlord’s complaints process in September 2023. We can consider events after this to establish whether a landlord put right earlier failings as it proposed through the complaints process but we have not investigated in detail new events that occurred after September 2023.

Communication regarding service charges

Landlords have a legal duty to make information about service charges available to residents. The Ombudsman expects a landlord to respond in a timely manner to information requests about service charges. It should provide information it is reasonably expected to make available upon request and investigate any reports about poor levels of service provision.
When investigating a complaint, the Ombudsman applies its Dispute Resolution Principles. These are:
1. Be fair – treat people fairly and follow fair processes.
2. Put things right.
3. Learn from outcomes.
It is accepted that the resolution of the resident’s concerns about the service charges was not entirely within the landlord’s control. It required information from the managing agent in order to assure itself, and the resident, of the accuracy of service charges. However, as head leaseholder and the resident’s landlord, it is not disputed that it was obliged to offer clear and accurate information on the charges being passed on to her.
It is evident that the landlord experienced difficulty obtaining accurate service charge information from the managing agent. This related to the correct apportionment of the service charge and fire safety related charges. The landlord said that it suspected there was over-charging and began investigations in 2019. It attempted engagement with the managing agent at least as early as January 2020.
The landlord’s September 2023 final complaint response said that the pandemic and a change of managing agent affected its ability to pursue the service charge. However, the landlord was aware of a managing agent change in late 2021 and there is very little evidence of the landlord progressing the matter with them during 2022. The landlord has not offered any reasons for its inability to chase the service charge account information during that period. This likely caused an unnecessary delay in the landlord, and resident, obtaining a resolution.
The resident association took legal action regarding the disputed fire related service charge. The evidence shows the landlord relied on the resident association to provide updates to other residents even though it remained responsible for this. It is noted that the resident association said there was a gap in communication with residents between 2021 and October 2022 because there was nothing to report. It is unreasonable that the landlord was not pro-active during this period.
The landlord accepted that its communications were poor. It failed to transparently explain to the resident how it intended to pursue the managing agent even once it re-commenced this in the first part of 2023. Had the landlord explained the difficulties it experienced and set out a clear action plan of how it intended to identify the correct service charges, this would have gone some way to reassure the resident that her concerns were being taken seriously.
The resident was clearly concerned at the increased level of service charges she was billed for during this period. It will inevitably have been alarming for her that there was such little explanation, or justification, for those charges. In mitigation, the landlord did advise her in 2023 that it would not enforce collection of the disputed charges. It was fair of the landlord to offer this reassurance but the resident will still have experienced uncertainty about what the final charge was likely to be and how she would pay this.
It is reasonable that the landlord acknowledged its earlier communication failures and apologised for these through the 2023 complaint investigations. The landlord accepted it had not effectively communicated with the resident.
The landlord offered £110 compensation in May 2023 and increased that award in September 2023. This was to reflect communication failings, the lack of response from the service charge team, and time and trouble. It said that part of its £250 time and trouble compensation was related to the service charge team communications (and part was for complaint handling). If that amount is equally split, the landlord’s total compensation offer was £635.
This amount is within a range that the Ombudsman would recommend where there was a severe failure that had a significant (physical and/or emotional) impact on the resident. It was positive that the landlord awarded substantial compensation given the extended period of uncertainty caused to the resident.
Through the final complaint response, the landlord also said that it had raised a formal complaint with the managing agent, failed to get their engagement and discussed the matter with its legal team. It said that it was preparing to ask the FTT to review all charges and that it would update residents on a monthly basis. It also gave the resident a point of contact for any individual concerns. This explanation was more thorough than it previously offered and it was reasonable for it to set expectations on how it would communicate with the resident in future.
The landlord demonstrated it had learnt from the complaint by keeping to the commitments it made in its final complaint response. It sent regular updates from February 2024 to 15 August 2024. The landlord acknowledged an update had not been sent in January 2024 about the proposed legal action, confirmed that the service charges remained in dispute and gave a timescale for when the next update would be provided. These actions were in accordance with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles.
The landlord informed us that it worked with the managing agents from May 2024 to date and wanted to do so amicably and avoid FTT costs that would be passed on to residents. Although the final service charge review is not due to be completed until this month, the landlord did maintain improved communications as it said it would. These improvements alongside the proportionate compensation and apologies were sufficient given the circumstances of the case.

Complaint handling

The landlord’s complaint procedure says it will respond to complaints within 10 working days at its first stage and within 20 working days at its final stage.
The resident made a complaint to the landlord on 3 April 2023. The landlord acknowledged the complaint on 13 April 2023, 7 working days later. This was just outside its complaint policy and the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code which says acknowledgements should be done within 5 working days.
The landlord took a further 19 working days to provide its initial complaint response on 12 May 2023. This was not reasonable as it exceeded the 10-day timescale outlined in its complaints policy.
In its stage 2 response, the landlord acknowledged that the resident expressed continued dissatisfaction on 12 May 2023 and that it should have escalated the complaint sooner. It was unreasonable that its delay meant the resident had to bring her concerns to the Ombudsman before the landlord escalated the complaint.
The landlord also identified it had made a mistake in its initial response regarding the resident’s rent account. It acknowledged the rent account was not in arrears so its £120 compensation award should have been paid direct to her rather than being offset against the rent account. This was a failing that caused inconvenience and upset to the resident.
For these failings, the landlord apologised and made an additional compensation award of £150 for complaint handling (on top of the £10 paid at stage 1). It also said that part of its £250 award for the resident’s time and trouble was related to complaint handling. If this amount is equally split between the service charge communications and complaint handling failings, the total award for complaint handling was £285.
This amount is within a range that the Ombudsman would recommend for failings that adversely affected a resident but did not have a permanent impact. Given the total delays of around 4 months and the inaccuracy in the stage 1 resolution, the Ombudsman is of the view that this compensation offered sufficient redress alongside the landlord’s apologies.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 42(d) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the complaint about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns about the level of service charges is outside our jurisdiction.
In accordance with paragraph 53(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has offered redress to the resident prior to investigation which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves the complaint about its communication regarding service charges satisfactorily.
In accordance with paragraph 53(b) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord has offered redress to the resident prior to investigation which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves its complaint handling failings satisfactorily.

Recommendations

The above findings that the landlord has offered reasonable redress are dependent on the £920 compensation payment being paid direct to the resident. If it has not already done so, the landlord should pay the resident that amount within 4 weeks of the date of this report.
Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord should write to the resident to advise whether it is willing to use its discretion to ‘buy back’ her shared ownership of the property. It should fully explain to her any decision it makes.
If it has not already done so, the landlord is to write to the resident within 4 weeks of the date of this report, confirming the outcome of the disputed service charges review that was due to complete this month. This should give an indication of when the estimated service charges will be issued and any payment arrangement available to her.
The landlord should reply to this Service within 4 weeks of this report to confirm its intentions in regard to the above recommendations.