Clarion Housing Association Limited (202407044)

Decision
Case ID	202407044
Decision type	Investigation
Landlord	Clarion Housing Association Limited
Landlord type	Housing Association
Occupancy	Assured Tenancy
Date	28 November 2025

Background

1. The resident first reported concerns about a retaining fence in the property’s garden in August 2022. The landlord inspected it and agreed that works needed to be done. However, works were delayed. She complained to the landlord on 21 May 2024 about a lack of progress. It apologised and paid her compensation. However, it still did not carry out the repairs. She complained to us in October 2024. The landlord carried out works on the fence in July 2025.

What the complaint is about

2. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of repairs required to a retaining fence in the garden.
3. We have also considered the landlord’s complaint handling.

Our decision (determination)

4. There was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of repairs required to a retaining fence in the garden.
5. The landlord has offered reasonable redress for its complaint handling failure.

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

Summary of reasons

Resident’s reports of repairs required to a garden wall.

6. The landlord delayed for several years in carrying out works to the retaining fence. It has offered compensation of £650 in recognition of delay up to August 2024. However, the delay then continued until July 2025.

 

Complaint handling

7. The landlord delayed significantly in providing a stage 1 response to the resident’s complaint. However, it offered her £50 and an apology for this delay which is sufficient to redress the inconvenience and distress this failure caused.

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 09 January 2026
2	Compensation order The landlord must pay the resident £950 for the distress, inconvenience, time and trouble caused by its handling of the resident’s reports of repairs required to a retaining fence in the garden. This must be paid directly to the resident, and the landlord must provide documentary evidence of payment by the due date. The landlord may deduct from the total figure any payments it has already paid.	No later than 09 January 2026

 

 

Recommendations

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

Our recommendations
The landlord is recommended to pay the resident the £50 it offered in its stage 1 response if it has not already done so. This payment recognised genuine elements of service failure, and the reasonable redress finding is made on that basis.

Our investigation

The complaint procedure

Date	What happened
20 August 2022	The resident reports her concerns about a retaining wall at the property to the landlord.
Between 6 September 2022 and 2 September 2024	The resident raised the issue of the retaining fence with the landlord on numerous occasions. It sent people out to inspect on several occasions but took no action as it did not know if it was responsible for maintaining it.
21 April 2024	The resident complained to the landlord about its handling of her reports that her boundary fence (the fence) was dangerously in need of repair. She pointed out that she was registered blind and so found the danger posed by the fence particularly worrying.
18 July 2024	The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response. It: Apologised for the late complaint response. Apologised for the delay in carrying out the necessary works. Said it had scheduled several appointments to investigate and to carry out works. There had, however, been a delay in finding out who had the responsibility for maintaining the fencing. It had now verified that it was responsible. Said it would therefore visit the site in August 2024 to survey the area and work out a solution. Apologised for the inconvenience its inaction had caused. Offered the resident £350 in compensation comprising: £300 for the inconvenience caused by the delay in addressing the issue. £50 for its delayed complaint response.
20 July 2024	The resident asked to escalate her complaint to stage 2 of the landlord’s internal complaint process.
21 August 2024	The landlord issued its stage 2 complaint response. It said the resident: Said that the landlord had failed to carry out the works for 3 years. Wanted greater compensation. Wanted the works completed within a reasonable timeframe. It said it would increase its compensation offer to £700 in total and would carry out works as soon as possible.
25 October 2024	The resident asked us to investigate. She said her back garden was unsafe so she could not use it. She said the landlord had failed to address the problem adequately for over 3 years. She said she wanted us to order the landlord to carry out the necessary works.

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	The resident’s reports of repairs required to a garden boundary wall.
Finding	Maladministration

8. The property has a garden which is surrounded by other gardens and a car park which are several feet higher than it. When it was built, a retaining fence made of wooden sleepers set in concrete was erected. This worked well until August 2022 when the resident noticed that some of the sleepers were rotten. She notified the landlord. She said she was worried about the wall collapsing. She said that she was sight-impaired and so she had to be careful of hazards.
9. The resident continued to ask for progress reports and to report further concerns regularly over the next 3 years. She says that the landlord’s communication with her was poor. It failed to respond to her calls or inform her as to what actions it was taking.
10. The landlord has accepted that its communications were poor and apologised for this. It did visit the property on several occasions between 2022 and 2024, but no works took place and the fence continued to rot. The resident became increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress and concerned about her safety.
11. The primary cause for the delay was that the landlord did not know whether it was responsible for the repair of the fence. It first stated that it needed to discover whose responsibility this was in an email of 6 September 2022. It did not discover that the responsibility was its own until July 2024. This was a lengthy delay which left the resident with no idea whether the landlord would ever repair the fence. However, even after the landlord accepted responsibility for the repairs, it took a further year until July 2025 before the works were completed to the landlord’s satisfaction.
12. The resident does not accept that the works are complete. She says that the landlord has failed to adequately buttress the front section of the fence, and she believes that this is likely to lead to a collapse which will endanger her safety and her property. However, the landlord has relied on expert opinion in reaching its view that the works are complete and the property is safe.
13. Therefore, in our view, it is justified in refusing to carry out further works. While we recognise that this is upsetting for the resident, we cannot require a landlord to carry out works which, in its surveyor’s view, are unnecessary. Nonetheless, the resident can always report any further concerns to the landlord. If she is unhappy with its response, she can complain again.
14. We accept, of course, that these works were complex and that they were bound to take some time. Nonetheless, the delay overall was unacceptable. The landlord offered the resident £700 in compensation in the stage 2 complaint response of 21 August 2024. The amount of £650 of this was compensation for the delays to the works and the frustration this caused her, particularly given her disability.
15. This was an appropriate sum to compensate the resident for the landlord’s failure to progress repairs up until August 2024. It was in line with its and our guidance on remedies. However, as the delay continued for a further year, there was maladministration. We have ordered it to pay a further £300 in recognition of the additional frustration and inconvenience she suffered.

Complaint	The handling of the complaint
Finding	Reasonable redress

16. The Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code) sets out when and how a landlord should respond to complaints. The landlord’s published complaints policy complies with the Code in respect of timescales which says that landlords should provide a stage 1 complaint response within 10 working days of a complaint. It must provide a stage 2 response within working 20 days of a request for a stage 2 review. It can ask for a maximum of 20 extra working days to deal with complex complaints which require further investigation.
17. The resident complained to the landlord on 21 May 2024. The landlord provided a stage 1 response on 18 July 2024, 42 working days later. The landlord apologised for this delay and paid the resident £50 for this failure and any distress and inconvenience caused.
18. The resident asked to escalate her complaint on 20 July 2024. The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 21 August 2024, 22 days later. While this response was slightly outside the requirements of the Code, there is no evidence that this caused her any undue distress or inconvenience.
19. In our view, the landlord provided an appropriate level of compensation and provided reasonable redress for its complaint handling failure.

Learning

20. It took more than 2 years for the landlord’s legal department to communicate relevant information about the fence to the relevant repairs department. The landlord should consider ways of preventing this from happening again.

Knowledge information management (record keeping)

21. The landlord seems not to have kept a record of its ownership of and responsibility to repair a garden fence at one of its properties. It should consider checking its records to ensure that it contains important information like this to prevent similar delays in future.

 

Communication

22. The landlord has accepted that there were periods when it failed to communicate adequately.  The resident found communication with the landlord confusing and frustrating as she had to explain the problem every time she spoke to a new operative.