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Stonewater Limited (202343131)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202343131

Stonewater Limited

29 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 complaint is about the landlord’s handling of a parking issue and associated neighbour dispute.
  2. We have also investigated the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Background

  1. The resident held an assured shorthold tenancy with the landlord at the property from 20 March 2023 to 22 September 2024. It was an 18-month fixed term rent-to-buy tenancy. The property is a 4-bedroom house. One of the resident’s children has a diagnosis of cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and learning difficulties.
  2. On 4 August 2023 and 25 August 2023, the resident told the landlord that her neighbour and their partner had been verbally abusive towards her because they did not like her parking on the road in front of the property. She said that she had called the police who attended and told her to stay away from the neighbours.
  3. On 19 September 2023 the landlord wrote to the resident. It said that when she moved in her driveway was unfinished with only one of the2 parking spaces available. It had therefore given her permission to park in front of the property temporarily. However, now that the driveway was finished, she should no longer park in front of the property. This was because the road was privately owned by it, and it did not give permission to park there.
  4. The resident complained to the landlord on 27 September 2024. She said that:
    1. Her neighbours had bullied and threatened her so much that she had called the police.
    2. This was mostly over where she parked her car, which was registered for use by her disabled daughter.
    3. The landlord had told her when she moved in that she could park in front of the property as her driveway was not finished.
    4. The neighbour had complained that they could not get past the car but this was not true as the bin lorry and delivery drivers got past with no issue.
    5. She had found out that her neighbour was employed by the landlord and they had threatened her by saying that they could stop her parking there because they knew someone who worked for it.
    6. The neighbour’s friend, who was also employed by the landlord, parked in front of the properties when she visited. It seemed that there was “one rule for her and another for everyone else”.
    7. The landlord had only informed her that it owned the road in front of the properties and that no-one was allowed to park on it in a letter which she received the previous week.
    8. She had a child with a disability and the situation was starting to affect her mental health.
  5. The landlord acknowledged receipt of the complaint on 2 October 2023 and provided a stage 1 complaint response on 14 November 2023. It said that:
    1. She had told it verbally that she did not feel that the neighbours had harassed her. However, they did not have a positive relationship.
    2. The road the property was situated on was subject to a legal agreement with the local authority, which stated that no on road parking was allowed. It gave her temporary permission to park there when she first moved in because the driveway to her home wasn’t yet finished. It was not, however, able to extend this permission now she had a full working driveway and access to parking spaces.
    3. If the allocated parking spaces behind her home were no longer accessible, it recommended that she contacted the local authority to arrange an occupational therapist (OT) assessment. This would help it to understand what the best reasonable adjustments for her parking should be. It offered support with this and asked her to let it know if she was happy for it to make a referral to its tenancy sustainment team.
    4. The neighbours had denied being abusive and said they wanted the parking issues to be resolved.
    5. It offered mediation between the resident and the neighbours.
    6. It had been unable to find any examples of colleagues parking in the road but would remind anyone visiting the road to use the appropriate parking spaces.
    7. It apologised for its handling of her complaint and said it should have handled her request for assistance with the neighbours differently initially. It therefore offered £350 compensation in recognition of the impact of the delay and the confusion caused.
  6. On 4 December 2023 the resident asked the landlord to escalate the complaint to stage 2 of the complaints process. She said that:
    1. She did not tell the landlord that the neighbours had not harassed her. They had made her feel very uncomfortable in her home.
    2. She did not think mediation was an option.
    3. She had called the local authority about parking in front of her property and they had said that there should not be an issue with her parking there.
    4. She felt that because the neighbour was employed by the landlord, it just wanted to “brush this situation under the carpet”.
  7. The landlord acknowledged receipt of the escalation request on 18 December 2023 and provided a stage 2 complaint response on 11 January 2024. It said that:
    1. It would respond to her complaint fairly and reassured her on its complaint handling approach. However, it could not comment on the circumstances of her neighbours.
    2. It could not give permission for her to park on the road and she should stop doing so with immediate effect. This was due to the legal transfer agreement with the local authority which was in place before the development started.
    3. It strongly urged her to seek an OT’s opinion. The OT could assess her daughter’s needs and help it to identify reasonable adjustments. It re-offered support with this.
    4. The neighbour had denied the allegations and the police had confirmed that they would take no action. Therefore, because the issue was mainly linked to the parking issue no further action was appropriate under its antisocial behaviour (ASB) policy.
    5. It understood her concerns about mediation but it would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further as it had found it effective in other cases. It reassured her that the mediator would be independent from the landlord.
    6. It apologised for the delay in its stage 2 complaint response and offered a revised compensation offer of £450 comprising £350 for inconvenience associated with complaint handling and £100 for complaint handling service failure.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The resident has told the landlord about the impact the ongoing issue had on her and her partners health. The Ombudsman does not dispute this. However, we are unable to decide about the causal link between the landlord’s handling of the issue and the residents’ health. We will consider the overall distress and inconvenience that the issues in this case have caused. A determination relating to damages caused to the residents’ health is more appropriate for the courts and she may wish to pursue this in a legal setting.

Parking issue and neighbour dispute

  1. The landlord’s ASB policy says that behaviour that it does not consider to be ASB includes parking disputes.
  2. The resident told the landlord that the neighbours had been abusive to her and that this mainly related to where she was parking her car. We have seen evidence that the landlord spoke to the neighbour and that they gave their version of events. This was an appropriate action to take. It was also appropriate to not divulge the details of these discussions to the resident.
  3. However, we have seen no evidence that the landlord initially reassured the resident that it was taking her concerns seriously. Despite the ASB policy not covering parking, it would have been appropriate for the landlord to feedback in writing to the resident that the conversation with the neighbour had taken place and what action it could or could not take regarding her reports. However, we have seen no evidence that it did so. This failure caused the resident distress because she felt that the landlord was not taking action because the neighbour was its employee. It also cost her time and trouble making a complaint.
  4. The land transfer document for the land on which the property is located says that the landlord must not allow vehicles to be parked on any part of the property or estate other than on appropriately constructed hardstanding designated parking spaces.
  5. It would have been appropriate therefore for the landlord to inform the resident of this before she decided to take the tenancy. However, we have seen no written evidence that it did so initially. The resident has also advised us that there were no signs to inform residents of this. The resident told us that she found the property via a letting agent, rather than directly from the landlord, and that the letting agent did not tell her that she could not park in front of the property. There is written evidence that she accepted the property before one of her allocated car parking spaces were complete. However, this does not mention that it had only given temporary permission for the resident to park in front of the property because this was normally not allowed.
  6. The landlord was aware from the resident’s application form for the property that she had a daughter with medical conditions which affected her mobility. Therefore, it was particularly important that they made her aware that the only parking available was at the rear of the property. However, we have seen no evidence that it did so. This communication failure led to the parking dispute which caused the resident distress and inconvenience.
  7. The landlord offered independent mediation between the resident and the neighbour which was an appropriate action to take in the circumstances.
  8. The landlord acted appropriately by advising the resident to gain the support of an OT to assess her daughters needs and whether parking was required in front of the property. It also offered support in obtaining this. The resident provided letters following the stage 2 response and there is evidence that the landlord was considering reasonable adjustments to provide parking closer to the property which was an appropriate action to take. However, the resident then gave notice to terminate the tenancy.
  9. In summary, the landlord did not reassure the resident that it was taking her reports seriously, it also did not communicate effectively about the use of the road in front of the property. Therefore, there was maladministration in its handling of a parking issue and associated neighbour dispute. We have ordered it to pay the resident £200 to reflect the time, trouble, distress, and inconvenience this caused.

Complaint handling

  1. The landlord’s complaints policy says that it will respond to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days and stage 2 complaints within 20 working days of acknowledgement. This is in line with the Housing Ombudsman’s complaint handling code (the Code).
  2. In this case the landlord took 32 days to respond to the stage 1 complaint and a further 26 working days in total to respond to the stage 2 complaint. This delay and failure to follow its policy and the Code, meant that the resident was waiting longer for a resolution which caused her distress and inconvenience. It also delayed her access to an investigation by this Service.
  3. However, the landlord apologised for the delays in its complaints responses and explained the changes it had made to ensure that it had learned from its errors. It also offered the resident £450 compensation to reflect the inconvenience caused by the delays and its service failure. We consider that this is reasonable redress in the circumstances. We have made a recommendation for the landlord to pay this sum if it has not already done so.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of a parking issue and associated neighbour dispute.
  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 its handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report the landlord must apologise in writing to the resident for the failings identified in this investigation.
  2. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report the landlord must pay the resident directly £200 to reflect the time, trouble, distress, and inconvenience caused by its handling of the parking issue and associated neighbour dispute.
  3. Within 8 weeks of the date of this report the landlord must undertake a review of this case and provide a report to us regarding the findings. This should include the following and provide a timed implementation plan for any identified improvements:
    1. Ensuring that procedures are in place to provide feedback regarding parking disputes.
    2. Ensuring that all new residents of the estate are made aware of the parking restrictions prior to accepting an affected property.
    3. Ensuring that information about disabilities on applications for properties handled by letting agents are considered appropriately.

Recommendation

  1. The landlord should pay the resident the £450 compensation offered at stage 2 for complaint handling failures if it has not already done so.