Notting Hill Genesis (202219004)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202219004

Notting Hill Genesis

30 September 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 resident’s complaint is about the landlord’s:
   1. Provision of audited service charge accounts.
   2. Handling of her associated complaint.

Background

2. The resident is the shared ownership leaseholder of the property. She purchased the lease in September 2020 when the property was newly built. The property is a 2-bedroom fifth floor flat in a mixed-use building with commercial premises on the ground floor. The landlord holds a head lease with the building’s freeholder for the flats and internal communal areas. The landlord manages these directly.
3. Under the terms of her lease, the resident must pay a monthly service charge to the landlord. The landlord estimates the service charge for the forthcoming accounting year each April, based upon expected expenditure. This includes costs it is charged by the freeholder’s managing agent associated with the building and wider estate.
4. The lease says that “as soon as practicable” after the end of each accounting year, the landlord will “determine and certify” the amount by which actual expenditure has exceeded or fallen below the estimate. If actual expenditure is above the estimate, the resident must pay the deficit. If it is below the estimate, the surplus is credited to the resident’s account.
5. Section 20b of the Landlord and Tenant Act states that a landlord cannot recover service charge costs incurred more than 18 months before it demands them. The exception to this is if the landlord serves a notice on leaseholders informing them it has incurred the costs and intends to demand them in due course. This is referred to as a ‘section 20b notice’.
6. On 3 May 2022, the resident wrote to the landlord. She asked it to provide her with a written summary of service charge costs incurred during 2020 and 2021. The landlord responded the following day. It said that it had served a section 20b notice in September 2021 as it was still in the process of auditing the accounts.
7. On 21 November 2022, the resident contacted us for assistance. She said that the landlord had still failed to provide copies of the audited service charge accounts. She said it had recently significantly increased service charges and there was a lack of transparency around this.
8. We contacted the landlord on the resident’s behalf on 17 January 2023 and asked it to log a complaint. The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 6 February 2023. It said that:
   1. The 2020-2021 accounts had been audited in September 2022. However, it had not yet issued them.
   2. It was “currently working to issue these accounts” and would provide a further update on when residents would receive them.
   3. It had served a section 20b notice for the 2021-2022 accounts. These would be audited during “the summer” and then issued.
9. The resident asked to escalate her complaint to stage 2 of the landlord’s process on 5 June 2023. She expressed dissatisfaction that the landlord had still not provided the audited accounts for 2020-2021 or 2021-2022. Or “a satisfactory timeline as to when to expect them”.
10. The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 21 July 2023. It said that:
    1. It acknowledged that there had been “a lack of communication of when the final accounts would be served”.
    2. It was currently working towards issuing the accounts for all years – including 2022-2023, in September 2023.
    3. It had made a commitment to “reduce the management fee of all residents by 25% in relation to the general issues and service failures, including service charge handling”.
    4. It offered the resident £150 for the “communication issues”.
    5. It apologised for the delay in its stage 2 complaint response. It offered the resident a further £100 compensation for this.
11. The resident asked us to investigate her complaint on 14 January 2024. She said that she had still not received the audited accounts for all years. She said whenever she chased these up the landlord set a new deadline which it failed to meet.
12. In April 2024, the landlord informed residents that it had “received certificates for 2020-2021, 2021-2022 & 2022-2023 audited accounts in late February”. It said it was currently drafting “narratives” to accompany these before sending them to residents.
13. On 24 September 2025, the resident told us she had still not received the audited accounts. On 29 September 2025, the landlord told us it was due to send residents the historical accounts letters and certificates “this week”. It said following this the surpluses/deficits would be added to their accounts.

Assessment and findings

Service charge accounts

14. It is not disputed that the landlord has failed to provide audited service charge accounts to the resident since she purchased the property. The landlord has said that “There were several issues that hindered our ability to carry out a detailed review of the accounts to ensure they are accurate as possible. These issues include (but are not limited to) lack of information from the managing agent regarding queries on the yearly budgets and final accounts and several management changes (property management officer/ property manager replacements) on the scheme.”
15. In March 2022, we published our Spotlight report on “landlords’ engagement with private freeholders and managing agents”. Within this we acknowledged that service charges can be “an area of particular challenge” when landlords are reliant on managing agents or freeholders who may “not provide transparent and properly audited accounts, or fail to produce them in a timely manner”.
16. However, we established that we believe it reasonable to expect “landlords to demonstrate proactive engagement and, if needs be, chasing service charge account information so that this can be considered in a timely manner”. We recommended that landlords adopted this approach, ensuring they communicated “regularly and transparently” with residents about any delays.
17. The landlord has not provided any evidence that it followed this approach. The records provided by the landlord for this investigation are limited to correspondence between it and the resident. It has failed to supply any records of its contact with the managing agent about a lack of information or queries of the information it had provided.
18. Our report also recommended that landlords be clear in their approach to performance concerns with managing agents, including escalating concerns to the freeholder directly and even considering legal enforcement of contract or lease terms. Again, the landlord has not provided any evidence that it adopted or even considered such escalation. This would have been appropriate considering the length of the delays and number of leaseholders affected.
19. Late provision of service charge information causes uncertainty for residents as to charges for which they may be liable. It also undermines both their and the landlord’s ability to appropriately scrutinise and challenge the method used to calculate the charges so long after the event. It is our opinion that the longer the delay to providing this information the greater the possibility of unfairness to the resident. The landlord has not evidenced that it took reasonable steps to limit this delay.
20. The landlord has told us that “communication has been upheld with all residents including newsletters, bulk communications, and residents’ meetings to provide the same updates to all”. However, it also said that “Unfortunately, due to the staff changes, we do not hold all the direct communication with [the resident]”.
21. While we have seen evidence of the newsletters, bulk communications and meetings the landlord referred to, none of these predate the resident’s stage 2 complaint response. By the time of this response the resident had been pursuing the landlord for the accounts for over a year. During that period, we have seen no evidence of the landlord proactively providing any updates to the resident on the matter.
22. In its responses to the resident, the landlord failed to appropriately manage her expectations as to when it would provide the accounts. It repeatedly set deadlines of when it expected to do this. These passed with the resident not receiving either the accounts or any form of update or explanation as to why they had not been sent.
23. When asking us to investigate her complaint, the resident said that the landlord “replaces the property manager every 3 months, so there is no continuity or traction in addressing resident issues”. The landlord has acknowledged that these staff changes have contributed to the delays in it providing the accounts.
24. Staff leaving its employment, or changing roles internally, is something that is beyond the landlord’s control. However, it would reasonably be expected to have appropriate handover processes in place. These ensure continuity of service for residents and avoid the landlord losing sight of ongoing unresolved issues. The landlord’s statement above, that it did not hold records of all direct communication with the resident “due to staff changes”, indicates poor record keeping and failings in its handover procedures.
25. The landlord has told us that in September 2023 it changed how it manages the estate. It said it now provided “a holistic and tenure-blind approach with an Estate Operations Manager who is responsible for communal repairs and the service charges across the scheme”. Based on the evidence provided by the landlord, this appears to have improved its communication with residents. With the aforementioned newsletters, meetings and bulk updates being introduced.
26. We note that the landlord also agreed to reduce its management fee for all residents as a form in recognition of “general issues and service failures, including service charge handling”. This was a positive gesture to provide some redress and attempt to rebuild the landlord-resident relationship.
27. However, over 2 years after the resident’s complaint completed its internal complaints procedure, the landlord has still not provided the resident with audited service charge accounts for any period of her 5-year occupancy of the property. This is despite it stating it had received the audited accounts for 2020-2021 in February 2023 and for all outstanding years in April 2024.
28. In its stage 2 complaint response, the landlord offered the resident £150 compensation for its “communication issues”. It is our view that this offer does not reasonably represent the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident by:
    1. Being unable to fully scrutinise actual service charge costs incurred by the landlord since she purchased the property. Particularly in the context of increases in her annual estimated charges.
    2. Being unable to adequately financially plan for several years’ worth of potential service charge deficits.
    3. Repeatedly pursuing the landlord for updates on the service charge accounts.
    4. The landlord repeatedly failing to meet its own deadlines for providing the accounts, and to update the resident as to why it had been unable to do so.

Due to this we make a finding of maladministration.

Complaint handling

29. At the time of this complaint, the landlord’s complaints policy allowed it to resolve a complaint as a ‘quick fix’. To do this, it had to be able to resolve the issues raised, to the resident’s satisfaction, within 5 days.
30. The resident made a complaint to the landlord on 9 October 2022 about its failure to provide her service charge accounts. The landlord responded the following day advising that the accounts were due in November. It closed the complaint as a ‘quick fix’ but informed the resident she was able to reopen this later if she wished. This was a reasonable approach in keeping with its policy. We have seen no evidence that the resident asked to reopen the complaint prior to her contacting us on 21 November 2022.
31. We then contacted the landlord on 17 January 2023 and asked it to log a stage 1 complaint about the matter. The landlord acknowledged this, and told us it had raised a new complaint, the following day.
32. The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 6 February 2023. This was 13 working days after it had logged the complaint. Whilst this exceeded the 10 working days its policy allows, we do not consider this relatively brief delay to have caused significant detriment to the resident.
33. The resident asked the landlord to escalate her complaint to stage 2 on 5 June 2023. On 13 June 2023, she emailed the landlord again asking for confirmation it had done this. The landlord has provided no evidence that it responded to either of these contacts.
34. This led the resident to contact us for assistance again. We wrote to the landlord on 12 July 2023 and asked it to provide its stage 2 complaint response. The landlord then provided this to the resident on 21 July 2023. This was 34 working days after she had escalated her complaint and significantly exceeded the 20 working days the landlord’s policy allows.
35. In its stage 2 complaint response, the landlord acknowledged that it had delayed in escalating the resident’s complaint and providing its stage 2 complaint response. It apologised for this and offered £100 compensation. This amount is in keeping with our remedies guidance for instances of service failure. It also falls within the landlord’s compensation policy’s bracket for instances where it has “markedly failed to meet service standards”. Due to this, we consider the landlord’s offer to be reasonable redress for its failings.

Determination

36. There was maladministration by the landlord in its provision of audited service charge accounts.
37. The landlord has offered the resident reasonable redress for its handling of her complaint.

Orders

38. We order the landlord to:
    1. Pay the resident £600 compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused to her by its provision of service charge accounts. The landlord may deduct the £150 compensation offered in its stage 2 complaint response from this figure, if already paid.
    2. Write to the resident:
       1. Apologising for its maladministration identified by this report.
       2. Outlining steps it intends to take to ensure it can provide future end of year service charge accounts in a timely manner.
    3. Confirm to us:
       1. Whether it has provided the resident with the audited accounts as scheduled.
       2. That it has considered the payment terms it will offer the resident for any deficits due to be added to her account, giving due regard to the fact that these have been accrued over several accounting years.
39. The landlord should provide us with evidence of its compliance with these orders by 28 October 2025

 Recommendations

40. We recommend that, if it has not done so already, the landlord pays the resident the £100 compensation offered in its stage 2 response for its complaint handling. The finding of reasonable redress is dependent upon this.