Notting Hill Genesis (202334327)

Decision
Case ID	202334327
Decision type	Investigation
Landlord	Notting Hill Genesis
Landlord type	Housing Association
Occupancy	Shared Ownership
Date	24 November 2025

Background

The resident purchased the lease for the property in February 2022. The property is a flat within a tower block. The landlord holds a head lease for the block. The resident pays a service charge to the landlord. This is composed of costs incurred directly by the landlord in managing the internal communal areas of the block. It also includes costs charged to the landlord by the freeholders managing agent, which are passed onto residents.

What the complaint is about

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s service charge queries and concerns.
We have also assessed the landlord’s complaint handling.

Our decision (determination)

There was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s service charge queries and concerns
The landlord has made a reasonable offer of redress to the resident for its complaint handling.

We have made orders for the landlord to put things right.

Summary of reasons

The landlord delayed unreasonably in providing the resident with finalised service charge accounts. It has not shown that it appropriately escalated its approach to gathering the required information from the managing agent
The landlord acknowledged and apologised for its delays at both stages of the complaints process. It made a reasonable offer of compensation to the resident within its complaint responses.

Putting things right

Where we find service failure, maladministration or severe maladministration we can make orders for the landlord to put things right. We have the discretion to make recommendations in all other cases within our jurisdiction.

Orders

Landlords must comply with our orders in the manner and timescales we specify. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of compliance with our orders by the due date set.

Order	What the landlord must do	Due date
1	Apology order The landlord must apologise in writing to the resident for the failures identified in this report. The landlord must ensure: The apology is specific to the failures identified in this decision, meaningful and empathetic. It has due regard to our apologies guidance.	No later than 22 December 2025
2	Compensation order The landlord must pay the resident £350 to recognise the distress and inconvenience caused by the handling of her service charge queries. This must be paid directly to the resident by the due date. The landlord must provide documentary evidence of payment by the due date.	No later than 22 December 2025
3	Provide outcome of review If it has not done so already, the landlord should provide the resident with the findings of any review it carried out in 2023 as to the “impact on affordability for both current residents and the ability for sale” caused by its “variance between the initial budgeted costs at the point of sale and the current budgeted costs” – as referenced in its stage 2 complaint response.	No later than 22 December 2025

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

Date	What happened
7 March 2023	The resident made a complaint to the landlord. She said that: There was confusion over how it was calculating service charges for the block. It had provided several differing figures for the forthcoming budget year. The landlord’s service charge budget for 2023/2024 calculated her contribution towards block costs as 0.52%. However, on previous accounts this had been set at 0.35%. Her service charge was set to increase by 33%, despite the spend for the 2021/2022 budget year coming in below the estimate. She wanted the landlord to provide a detailed explanation for these issues before it enacted any service charge increase.
27 March 2023	The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response. It said that: In the 2021/22 budget year, it had incorrectly applied the managing agents charges for the block to the entire estate. It had now corrected this. When setting service charge estimate, it considered the previous budget year’s spend but also applied an uplift to this. This was to try and avoid a deficit in the end of year accounts. Following queries from residents, it had made several changes to its service charge estimate for 2023/2024. Details of this had been sent out to residents. It had also held a meeting with residents on 20 March 2023 to discuss the service charges. It planned to follow this up with a further meeting once the new charges were applied. It had agreed to offer residents a 50% reimbursement of its management fees for the 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 financial years in recognition of the poor service it had provided. It was also offering the resident £50 compensation for the delay in its stage 1 complaint response
13 April 2023	The resident asked to escalate her complaint to stage 2. She said: The landlord’s stage 1 response had been “inaccurate” and full of “general vague information”. The landlord’s error in its initial calculation of the service charge had misrepresented the costs during her purchase. This had caused “substantial financial burden” for her, including affecting the property’s value. The landlord had not provided any documentation to enable her to assess the reasonableness of her service charge or the recent increase. The landlord’s explanations for the service charge costs were “poor” and “subjective” with residents “receiving a different explanation every time a cost is questioned”.
18 July 2023	The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response. It said that: It felt it had responded to her original complaint appropriately and offered the correct level of compensation. The block costs had previously been shared between the resident’s tower and a neighbouring block. It had separated these to provide “better transparency and maintain consistency”. This had led to the higher apportionment of 0.52%. It had served residents with a section 20b notice at the end of each financial year, which gave an indication of costs incurred. There was no specific timescale for it to provide the final accounts and therefore this was “not a direct service failure”. However, it recognised the concern caused by its inability to provide this documentation. It had given additional “focus and scrutiny” to the service charge for the block. This had “highlighted issues that were not previously identified” – in particular with the allocation of charges from the managing agent. The managing agents charges made up the largest portion of the resident’s service charge. It was obligated to ensure the reasonableness of these and was working to ensure the accuracy of the accounts before finalising and issuing these. This had led to unplanned delays. The increase in service charge was driven by a rise in insurance and staffing costs, as well as “most of the contract costs”. It had carried forwards the budget from the 2021/2022 financial year into 2022/23. The increase for 2023/2024 therefore reflected rising costs over the cost of 2 years, such as “large energy cost increases”. It recognised that the increase in service charge since the point of sale “does potentially have an impact on affordability for both current residents and the ability for sale”. It was reviewing this and planned to communicate its findings to residents in August 2023. Its offer of a 50% reduction in management fees was appropriate redress for its service charge handling, and it would not be offering any further compensation.
Referral to the Ombudsman	The resident referred her complaint to us on 3 January 2024. She said that she had still not received any service charge accounts or supporting information since moving into the property. She said she wished to apply to the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) regarding the landlord’s misrepresentation of the service charge during her purchase of the property but was unable to do so without this.
20 November 2025	The landlord told us that it had provided the service charge accounts for financial years 2020/2021, 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 to the resident on or around 23 October 2025.

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.

Complaint	Handling of service charge queries.
Finding	Maladministration

What we have not investigated

Section 22 of the Landlord and Tenant Act gives residents the right to inspect documentation associated with their service charge costs. This can include items such as invoices, receipts an contracts. When bringing her complaint to us, the resident said she had made a section 22 request to the landlord in July 2023, which it had failed to comply with.
We have been provided with a copy of this request, which the resident made on 25 July 2023. This was a week after the landlord’s stage 2 response to her complaint. Under the terms of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, we may not consider matters which the landlord has not had the opportunity to address through its own internal complaints procedure. Due to this, we have not investigated this element of the resident’s complaint.
The resident has expressed dissatisfaction that the landlord ‘misrepresented’ the service charge for the property to her during her purchase. The purchase of a property is a legal transaction. Due to this, the matter is more appropriate for consideration by the courts. The resident has indicated her intention to refer the matter to the FTT, and we will not comment upon it further in this investigation.

What we have investigated

The crux of the resident’s complaint is the lack of clarity and transparency in the landlord’s calculation and administration of her service charge. The resident moved into the property in February 2022 and was due to receive the service charge accounts for the 2021/2022 financial year in September 2022.
On 27 September 2022, the landlord served the resident with a section 20b notice. Section 20b of the Landlord and Tenant Act requires the landlord to serve such a notice when it is unable to provide final costs (which a resident is required to contribute towards) within 18 months of them being incurred.
As the landlord said in its stage 2 complaint response, there is no specific time limit after the service of a section 20b notice within which it is required to provide the finalised accounts. The landlord concluded that due to this, its delays in providing the accounts were not a “direct service failure”.
Whilst this may be the case, the landlord acknowledged the “concern” the lack of documentation caused and how this “undermines the confidence we aspire to build in our residents”. The fact that the landlord was unable to provide the resident with any finalised service charge accounts until over 3 years after she purchased the property was a serious concern and has considerably damaged the landlord-resident relationship.
Late provision of service charge accounts causes uncertainty for residents as to any deficit for which they may be liable. It also undermines both their ability to appropriately scrutinise and challenge charges so long after they were incurred. It is our view that the longer the delay to providing this information the greater the possibility of unfairness to the resident.
It is apparent that the delays were due to the landlord having identified issues with the service charges, in particular those elements levied by the freeholder’s managing agent. It was appropriate for the landlord to ‘perform its due diligence’ in challenging and clarifying these elements. However, it is unclear why this took such an unreasonable period of time.
The landlord’s records show that on 2 May 2023, it made a section 22 request of its own to the managing agent. In this it asked to inspect its documents for the 2021/2022 financial year. In a meeting with residents on 5 June 2023 the landlord said it would “follow legal procedure towards bringing this issue before the tier 1 tribunal.”
Our spotlight report on managing agents 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. There is no evidence that the landlord followed this approach or otherwise escalated the matter in response to inadequate engagement from the managing agent.
We acknowledge that the landlord did respond to the resident’s queries about the calculation and increase in her service charge as best it was able to within its complaint responses. It provided reasonable explanations for the significant increase in the 2022/23 service charge and for the change in her contribution level towards block costs. However, as the landlord acknowledged, it was “difficult to satisfy [the resident’s] concerns without that supporting information” in the form of the finalised service charge accounts.
The landlord also attempted to engage with residents and respond to their service charge concerns. This was evidenced by its open consultation with resident’s in December 2022, prior to setting the service charge for 2023/2024 and through meetings held with residents in February, March and June 2023. This was good practice considering the shared nature of the concerns and complicated subject matter.
In its stage 2 complaint response, the landlord said it was reviewing the impact on residents of its miscalculation of the service charges during sale of properties. It said it planned to communicate its findings to resident’s in August 2023. The landlord has not provided us with any evidence that it did so, as such we have made an order regarding this above.
In its complaint responses, the landlord pointed to the fact that it had offered redress to residents by granting a 50% reduction of its management fee for financial years 2020/2021 to 2022/2023. Whilst it has not provided us with the exact figures for this, we note that its management fee for the 2024/2025 financial year was £257.40 for the resident’s property.
This offer was made by the landlord for numerous failures in its management of the building, rather than just the service charges. As such, we do not consider this to offer reasonable redress for the distress and inconvenience caused to the resident by being unable to scrutinise and challenge her rising service charge costs over such an extended period. Nor for the time and trouble she took in pursuing the matter with the landlord.
Due to this, we make a finding of maladministration and order the landlord to pay the resident compensation of £350. As we understand the landlord has now provided the finalised accounts for the period subject to this investigation, we have made no further orders in that regard.
In an email of 25 September 2025, the landlord told residents that “a dedicated team is now in place to focus on clearing the backlog [in service charge accounts], and we’ve introduced a new finance system designed to improve accuracy and efficiency going forward”. This will hopefully enable it to provide its finalised accounts in a timely manner and give residents clarity and confidence of the charges.

Complaint	Handling of the complaint
Finding	Reasonable redress

The landlord’s complaints policy says that it will:
1. Acknowledge a complaint within 2 working days.
2. Provide its stage 1 response to a complaint within 10 working days.
3. Provide its stage 2 response within 20 working days of a resident asking to escalate their complaint.
4. Extend the timeframes for its stage 1 and 2 complaint responses “in exceptional circumstances”. In these cases, it will agree a new timeframe for response with the resident.
The resident made her complaint to the landlord on 7 March 2023. The landlord has not provided us with any evidence that it acknowledged this complaint, as its policy requires.
The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 27 March 2023. This was 14 working days after the resident made her complaint and outside of its policy’s timeframe. The landlord acknowledged this delay in the response and offered the resident £50 compensation for it. This was in keeping with the landlord’s compensation policy which says it may offer compensation “up to £50” for low impact service failures.
The resident contacted the landlord on 13 April 2023 and asked to escalate her complaint to stage 2. The landlord responded to her on 17 April 2023 and confirmed it would escalate her complaint. However, it failed to provide its stage 2 complaint response until 18 July 2023 – 65 working days after her request.
The only evidence we have seen of the landlord contacting the resident during this period was an email of 11 July 2023. Within this it apologised for the “severely extended delay” in responding to her escalation request and said it would address this within its stage 2 response. The landlord advised the resident it aimed to provide its response by 17 July 2023.
In its stage 2 response, the landlord again acknowledged and apologised for the “extended and significant delay”. It offered the resident £200 compensation. This represented £100 for its failure to “follow up” with her since her escalation request and £100 for the delay in providing its response.
This offer was in keeping with its compensation policy, which says it may offer “up to £125” for a medium impact failure. The policy defines this as where it has “markedly failed to meet service standards” and caused a resident “distress and inconvenience”. This represents a reasonable offer of redress for its handling of the resident’s stage 2 complaint.

Learning

Knowledge information management (record keeping)

We have not identified any record keeping issues in this case.

Communication

The landlord showed good practice in holding open dialogue with residents about their service charges through meetings and group email updates. This appears to have continued since the period examined here.
The landlord also appropriately responded to contact from the resident within a reasonable timeframe.