Clarion Housing Association Limited (202323256)

Background

1. The resident changed her car and asked the landlord for an updated car parking permit. The landlord referred this to the parking management company.

What the complaint is about

2. The complaint is about the landlord’s:
   1. Response to the resident’s concerns about updating her parking permit.
   2. Handling of the complaint.

Our decision (determination)

3. There was reasonable redress in the landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns about updating her parking permit.
4. There was no maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Summary of reasons

5. The landlord appropriately acknowledged that its communications about the parking permit had caused confusion for the resident. It apologised and offered compensation which was proportionate to its failings and satisfactorily resolved the complaint.
6. The landlord responded to the complaint in line with its complaints policy and the Ombudsman’s complaint handling code (the Code) which was in place at the time.

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.

Recommendations

Our recommendations are not binding, and a landlord may decide not to follow them.

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. There is nothing in the resident’s tenancy agreement which says that she has the use of a parking space at the property. However, it is not in dispute that she had a parking permit, which was issued by a third-party parking management company.
8. The resident told the landlord in November 2022 that she had a new car and needed to update the details on her parking permit. The landlord appropriate contacted the parking management company on 1 December 2022 and provided the resident’s updated vehicle details. The landlord subsequently told the resident that the parking management company would update her permit. The landlord said that, in the meantime, she could still use her current permit until the end of February 2023. The resident disagreed with the landlord as her current permit showed the details of her old vehicle.
9. Following further contact from the resident, the landlord told her on 9 January 2023 that she would need to request a new permit from the parking management company. It apologised for the confusion and that it had not told her this initially.
10. The landlord subsequently spoke to the parking managed company and found it had not received the landlord’s previous correspondence about the resident’s updated details. It apologised to the resident for this and resent her information to the parking management company.
11. Within it stage 1 response, the landlord apologised for the conflicting information it had given to the resident and for the time she had spent chasing the matter. It offered £100 compensation to acknowledge this.
12. The landlord did not consider the matter at stage 2. We have investigated this separately in the complaint handling section below.
13. When failures are identified, as in this case, our role is to consider whether the redress offered by the landlord put things right and resolved the complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this, we take into account whether the landlord’s offer of redress was in line with our Dispute Resolution Principles: Be Fair, Put Things Right and Learn from Outcomes as well as our own guidance on remedies.
14. The failures identified by the landlord were its conflicting information about whether it or the parking management company was responsible for updating the permit. It also acknowledged the time the resident had spent chasing the matter. Our investigation has not identified any other failures.
15. The £100 compensation offered by the landlord was within a range we would recommend where there were failures which adversely affected the resident. In this case, the miscommunication caused frustration. However, the landlord had told her that she could continue to use her current permit whilst she was updating the details. Although the resident did not agree with this, the landlord had taken steps to reassure her that it would still be valid during this time.
16. Our investigation has found that the frustration caused to the resident was appropriately acknowledged by the landlord and the compensation offered was in line with our remedies guidance. In our opinion the landlord’s offer of compensation was proportionate.

17. The resident made her complaint to the landlord on 10 January 2023. The landlord initially advised that the resident needed to make the complaint to the parking management company. The resident explained on 16 January 2023 that her complaint was about the landlord’s handling of her request for an updated permit. The landlord apologised for misunderstanding and confirmed it would respond to her complaint.
18. The landlord responded to the complaint at stage 1 on 30 January 2023. This was 14 working days after the resident made her complaint. This was in line with the landlord’s complaints policy at the time which said it had 20 working days to respond at stage 1.
19. The landlord’s stage 1 response set out that if the resident was dissatisfied with its response, she could escalate the matter to stage 2 within 20 working days. The resident did not escalate the complaint until 9 November 2023, over 9 months later. She did not provide a reason for this delay.
20. The landlord advised that it did not consider the complaint issue to be ongoing as she had moved out of the property. In addition, due to the delay in the resident escalating the matter, it could not consider her complaint at stage 2. It signposted the resident to the Ombudsman.
21. Our complaint handling code that was in place at the time of the resident’s complaint said that landlords must escalate a complaint to stage 2 of its complaints process unless an exclusion applies. Our Code set out an example of a valid exclusion being where the issue giving rise to the complaint occurred over six months ago.
22. The landlord’s complaints procedure that was in place at the time reflected our Code. It said that it would not consider complaints that had been closed over six months ago unless it was related to an ongoing issue.
23. As such, the landlord’s decision not to escalate the complaint to stage 2 was in line with its complaints policy and our Code. As such, there was no maladministration in its complaint handling.

Learning

24. Our investigation has not identified any learning points for the landlord.

Knowledge information management (record keeping)

25. We have not identified any issues with the landlord’s record keeping.

Communication

We have not identified any issues with the landlord’s communication.