The Riverside Group Limited (202308420)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202308420

The Riverside Group Limited

27 June 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 the resident’s service charge queries.
  2. We have also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident was an assured tenant of the landlord, a housing association for approximately 3 years until mid-2023. He lived at the property, a 2-bedroom flat in a purpose-built block, with his wife and daughter. The landlord’s records show that there were no vulnerable residents within the property.
  2. Between January and September 2022 the resident raised numerous communal repairs including lift breakdowns, faulty access doors, a broken communal aerial, fly tipping and faulty security lights. On 7 October 2022 the resident made a complaint to the landlord regarding communal issues including:
    1. Faulty lighting
    2. Standard and frequency of communal cleaning
    3. Security doors and car park barrier
    4. External grounds maintenance
  3. The landlord called the resident and raised his complaint. It told the resident that if the work had not been completed in 30 days, he could escalate the complaint to stage 2. The resident did this on 25 November 2022. The landlord responded on 6 December 2022 to say it could not find an open complaint to escalate and opened a new one.
  4. On 6 December 2022 the resident raised several service charge queries with the landlord including communal lighting, communal cleaning, lift maintenance and repair and security door maintenance. He also asked for an explanation of admin fees, estate managing agent fees, balancing charge, and management fees. The resident chased the fee explanation between January and June 2023 and approached the Ombudsman on 12 June 2023 as he did not receive it.
  5. Following contact from this Service on 4 July 2023 the landlord issued a stage 1 complaint response on 17 July 2023. It offered a £100 goodwill payment for distress and inconvenience, provided more information about the items queried by the resident, and confirmed the following service charge adjustments:
    1. A refund of 10 weeks of charges at £0.98 per week for car park maintenance totalling £9.80.
    2. A refund of £9.16 for tree works from 2022 and 2023 as the work was due to commence after the resident’s tenancy ended.
    3. A refund of £1 for a month’s missed window cleaning.
  6. The resident escalated the complaint to stage 2 on 21 July 2023 and said that the refunds were “an insult” as he had queried service charges since 2015 and been promised refunds. The landlord issued a stage 2 complaint response on 1 December 2023. It confirmed that the service charge for the property had increased since April 2023, mainly due to communal electricity. It said that for 2 years it had collected a surplus and so, as a resolution, it offered a refund of this surplus plus the original offer of refunds at stage 1.
  7. It acknowledged that there had been delays in its complaint handling and offered £100 as a goodwill gesture, taking the total payment offered to £119.96. It said that as the resident’s rent account was in arrears it would use £100 compensation towards the arrears and pay the rest to the resident.
  8. The resident left the property in July 2023 but remains unhappy with the landlord’s handling of his service charge queries and has asked the Ombudsman to investigate.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The Ombudsman will not consider the amount of, or increase to, service charges nor whether the amount the landlord charged is reasonable. Such matters fall within the remit of the First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). The Ombudsman can consider the landlord’s communication, including its response to the concerns raised about specific charges and the services provided.
  2. The Ombudsman also notes that the resident has stated that his service charges have been incorrect since 2015. The Scheme limits our consideration of a case to issues that have been raised with both the landlord and us within a reasonable period. As such, we will consider the period of 12 months prior to the resident’s complaint. We will therefore consider the period of October 2022 until December 2023 when the landlord issued its stage 2 complaint response.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s service charge queries

  1. The landlord’s service charge policy states that it will:
    1. Adopt a transparent approach to the calculation, allocation and recovery of service charges.
    2. Ensure that service charges are reasonably incurred, the provision of services and works are of a fair and reasonable standard and provide value for money.
  2. The landlord has confirmed to the Ombudsman that the property is subject to a variable service charge. This means any under or over payments are rectified by way of a balancing charge or credit against the service charge element in future years.
  3. The resident had questions about several service charges. In its complaint responses of 17 July and 1 December 2023 the landlord appropriately explained the necessity of each service to the resident. It also addressed any outstanding concerns the resident had, confirmed the scope of works for each item and escalated issues of which it was not previously aware. It confirmed that it received evidence of the cleaner’s attendance and had completed quality checks.
  4. During the complaint process the landlord gave refunds for window cleaning, tree work and car park maintenance charges. The landlord has provided a copy of its window cleaning schedule to the Ombudsman. This shows that the landlord attended the block monthly throughout the period investigated, except for May and June 2024. This conflicts with the stage 1 complaint response which stated that it did not attend in April 2023 and offered a service charge refund. Although the records are inconsistent, there is no evidence of detriment for the resident as the tenancy ended in 2023.
  5. The landlord explained the need for the tree work and the specification of works. It was appropriate for the landlord to refund the charges considering the resident’s tenancy was due to end before the work commenced.
  6. The landlord acted reasonably in refunding service charges, where appropriate, and addressing the concerns raised by the resident.

Complaint handling

  1. The landlord has a 2-stage complaints policy. It promises to respond within 10 working days at stage 1, and 20 working days at stage 2. Residents must escalate their complaint to stage 2 within 30 days of the stage 1 response if they are unhappy with the resolution.
  2. There is no evidence of a formal stage 1 response to the complaint made on 7 October 2022. The landlord’s advice for the resident to escalate his complaint if repairs were not completed was not in line with its policy. When the resident tried to follow this advice, the landlord informed him that there was no open complaint. It is reasonable to conclude that the complaint made on 7 October 2022 was not raised by the landlord correctly.
  3. After the resident had approached the Ombudsman, it raised a new complaint and issued a stage 1 response within the policy timescales. It offered compensation of £119.96 which comprised of a few service charge refunds and £100 for distress and inconvenience.
  4. The stage 2 response, however, came 95 working days after the resident’s escalation request. This is significantly longer than its policy timescale of 30 working days. That was not appropriate.
  5. We can see that the landlord addressed the issues raised by the resident in his complaint, through us, in July 2023 except for his concerns about its gardening services. The resident had brought up this issue, so he had a right to expect the landlord to respond to it. By not investigating this concern, the landlord missed a chance to identify and fix issues at an earlier stage.
  6. The landlord told us that it had appointed a new garden maintenance provider in 2023 after work had not been completed to the required standard. This appears to corroborate the resident’s concerns, however, there is no evidence the landlord considered a service charge refund for gardening services. We have made an order for the landlord to consider doing so now and write to the resident and us with the outcome.
  7. It offered additional compensation of £100 in recognition of its complaint handling delays at stage 2. However, it used this £100 to offset rent arrears which remained at the end of the tenancy so the amount to be paid to the resident was £19.96. Although we recognise that this may be frustrating for the resident, this approach is consistent with its compensation policy which states that where money is owed, the amount should be deducted from any amount owing.
  8. Where there are failings by a landlord, as is the case here, this Service will consider whether the redress offered by the landlord (apology and compensation) put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this, this Service considers whether the landlord’s offer of redress was in line with the dispute resolution principles, be fair, put things right and learn from outcomes.
  9. Overall, the complaint process was disjointed. It did not log the resident’s original complaint correctly which led to a 9-month delay in registering the complaint. The landlord only registered the complaint after contact from this Service. It did not provide any acknowledgement or redress for its failure to correctly follow the complaint process in October 2022 and it failed to address all the complaint issues.
  10. For the reasons above, the Ombudsman finds that there was service failure in the landlord’s complaint handling. While the landlord did offer redress it did not proportionately reflect the level of time, trouble and inconvenience experienced by the resident during the period investigated.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s service charge queries.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of this report the landlord must:
    1. Apologise to the resident for the failings identified in this report. The apology should be in the format preferred by the resident and a copy should be provided to the Ombudsman.
    2. Pay the resident £200 compensation for distress, time, trouble and inconvenience associated with the landlord’s complaint handling. This is inclusive of the £100 offered in the complaints process, which can be deducted if it has already been paid. The payment should be made directly to the resident and not paid towards any arrears unless the resident specifically requests this.
    3. Consider a service charge refund for gardening services for the resident and write to him and us with the outcome.