Clarion Housing Association Limited (202323260)

Background

1. The resident lived in a property managed by the landlord until 1 October 2023. She made several complaints to the landlord about similar issues in the same period. These have been investigated by the Ombudsman separately in May 2025, June 2025 and November 2025..

What the complaint is about

2. The landlord’s lack of investment in the resident’s estate.
3. The landlord’s complaint handling.

Our decision (determination)

4. There was no maladministration in the landlord’s:
   1. response to the resident’s complaint about the lack of investment in the resident’s estate.
   2. complaint handling.

We have not made orders for the landlord to put things right.

Summary of reasons

5. The landlord was not required to do improvement works on the resident’s estate.
6. The landlord‘s failure to respond to the resident’s complaint within its policy timescale did not change the outcome of her complaint, and it gave her other opportunities to have influence on its management of the estate.

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

What we found and why

The circumstances of this complaint are well known by the parties involved, so it is not necessary to detail everything that’s happened or comment on all the information we’ve reviewed. We’ve only included the key information that forms the basis of our decision of whether the landlord is responsible for maladministration.

7. The resident complained that the landlord had not invested in her estate. She provided evidence that she had requested additional planting, and a bike shed on several occasions since 2019. In the interests of fairness, this investigation is focused on events from July 2022 onwards. This was 12 months before the resident complained to the landlord. In this time, we did not see evidence that the resident had asked the landlord to consider specific improvements to the estate, outside of the complaints process.
8. The landlord is required to maintain and repair communal areas of its estate. However, apart from any legislative changes it is not required to do improvement works to communal areas.
9. The landlord has an estate management policy. The policy says the landlord allocates budgets for neighbourhood improvements by area. The budgets can be used for a wide range improvements, including extra planting, improved security lighting, play equipment, or improvement to bin or bicycle storage. It will consider resident priorities when deciding how these are spent, but the decision on how to allocate the budget is at its discretion.
10. When the resident complained that it was not investing in the external areas of the estate, the landlord should have contacted her to discuss this. It would have been reasonable for it to outline its estate management policy, take details of any specific improvements she wanted, and tell her about any planned investment on her estate.
11. In this case, there was a misunderstanding about the resident’s complaint, discussed below, and the landlord did not respond to the resident’s email dated 4 July 2023. While this will have been frustrating for the resident, it did not affect the outcome of the complaint. This is because:
    1. Improvement works offer benefit to residents, but they are not requirements.
    2. The landlord’s failure to respond to the resident’s emails did not change the outcome of the case as the landlord was not required to do the works.
    3. The resident moved from the estate within 3 months of the complaint, so any impact was of short duration.
    4. In its responses to the resident’s complaints, the landlord offered her the opportunity to send it evidence of her concerns.
    5. The landlord gave the resident opportunities to raise concerns and have input into its management of her estate. These included an in-person meeting, the offer to become a ‘community champion’, to do a joint estate inspection with the landlord, and of regular contact with a named person to discuss her concerns. While the resident did not accept the landlord’s offers, they were positive steps by the landlord to engage with the resident.
12. For these reasons there was no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of this matter.

13. The landlord’s complaints policy at the time of the complaint complies with the definition of a complaint in the Code (April 2024). The timescales in the landlord’s complaint procedure complied with the Code. 
14. The landlord did not respond to the resident’s complaint within its policy timescales. In this case the landlord received several similar but separate complaints from the resident in a short period, and there was a misunderstanding about the complaint definition.
15. It took 10 months for the landlord to respond to the resident. This was because, based on information it had, the landlord believed it had responded to the complaint already. While the landlord should have responded to the resident more quickly, overall, it gave the resident opportunities to raise concerns and input into its management of the estate in the 3 months before she moved away.
16. There was no maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Learning

17. It was not always clear from the landlord’s communication what its position was on the complaint. If the landlord wants to not investigate a complaint it should state this clearly, to avoid confusion.
18. It was positive that the landlord offered the resident opportunities to feed back on its management of the estate outside of the complaints process, including regular contact with a named person.
19. When landlords receive a lot of correspondence from residents, it is important they consider how best to manage this, so that they keep track of all correspondence from residents and manage expectations. In this case we saw evidence the landlord did this, but it could have done so sooner.