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Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTV) (202316123)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202316123

Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTV)

18 December 2024


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:
    1. The landlord’s handling of a service charge dispute.
    2. The landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Background

  1. The resident is a leaseholder of two properties in the same block.
  2. The resident raised a dispute with the landlord in October 2022, following receipt of the service charge summary for 2021-2022. This Service has not had sight of the initial dispute from the resident.
  3. The resident chased a response to the dispute on 15 February 2023 and requested all details of the charges that were applied to the properties, along with copies of the relevant invoices. The next day, the landlord issued revised service charge summaries for both properties and later provided copies of invoices for the charges relevant to the properties.
  4. The resident raised a stage 1 complaint on 18 April 2023 regarding the landlord’s handling of the service charge dispute. The complaint referenced previous errors and further specific questions around some of the charges, including the annual increase and the overall value for money.  
  5. The landlord provided a stage 1 response on 12 May 2023 and said that the service charge disputes would not be dealt with as a complaint as per its complaint policy. It said that it was satisfied with the communication that had been provided throughout the service charge dispute but acknowledged that there had been a delay in providing a response to the complaint. It offered a £25 compensation payment for the delay.
  6. On 12 May 2023, the resident escalated the complaint as she had not received the stage 1 response. After reading the stage 1 response, she responded that the communication around the service charge dispute had not been satisfactory. The resident accepted that some of the disputed charges had been corrected. However, there were references to further, individual, service charge disputes and questions around the liability for certain charges and where these were mentioned in the lease.
  7. The landlord provided a stage 2 response on 14 June 2023 and upheld the resident’s complaint. Within the response, it acknowledged that some of the correspondence linked to the service charge disputes was not responded to in line with its policy. It said that the Service Charge Manager would provide a separate response about the charges within 10 working days. The landlord acknowledged service failings in its responses and increased the compensation offer to £100.
  8. On 23 June 2023, the Service Charge Manager provided a response to the resident’s questions around particular charges and the liability for those charges. It added that any further dispute would need to be escalated through the First Tier Tribunal service.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. What the Ombudsman can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. This is governed by the Scheme. When a complaint is brought to this Service, the Ombudsman must consider all the circumstances of the case, as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
  2. Within the complaint submission, there were concerns raised around the reasonableness and value attached to some of the service charges. In accordance with paragraph 42(d) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, this Service cannot consider complaints which concern the level of service charges or service charge increases. Any such concerns would have to be raised through the First Tier Tribunal service, independently of this investigation.

The landlord’s handling of a service charge dispute

  1. The resident said that she first raised a service charge dispute in October 2022. The landlord’s service charge dispute policy says that it will acknowledge a dispute within 10 working days and try to resolve it within 4 weeks. It says that it will contact the resident if the dispute will take longer than that to resolve.
  2. Emails show that the landlord maintained some contact with the resident between November 2022 and February 2023. However, failed to provide responses to emails and questions around the service charge billing in line with the timeframes set out in its policy on several occasions. This is a service failing on the part of the landlord which likely caused the resident distress and inconvenience.    
  3. It is evident that after investigating the resident’s dispute, the landlord acknowledged an error and amended the billing of the accounts. On 22 February 2023, it provided a revised summary of charges for both of the properties, along with all relevant invoices and a breakdown of those invoices and the associated charges.
  4. Having reviewed the information provided, it is the view of the Ombudsman that this provided a clear breakdown of the service charges that had been applied to each property. However, it is accepted that these amounts were still open to further questions and dispute from the resident.
  5. When the resident raised a stage 1 complaint on 18 April 2023, part of this was based on further questions around the billing of the service charge account. This demonstrates that the landlord had not addressed all of the resident’s concerns on this matter.
  6. This Service has not had sight of any unanswered correspondence between 22 February 2023 and 18 April 2023. However, the resident said within the stage 2 escalation that the Service Charge team had failed to respond to further correspondence and she was waiting on an explanation of other charges.
  7. It is evident that on 23 June 2023, the landlord provided an explanation of the charges the resident had questioned during the complaint process. This included charges for the communal aerial, fire prevention systems, door intercom systems and break glass devices. Within this explanation, it also highlighted a further error in the charges and said that this would be credited to the account.
  8. The resident remained unhappy with the landlord’s responses and continued to chase further answers to questions linked to the service charges. However, it is clear that these particular questions were around liability for the charges and whether they were reasonable. As indicated above, the Ombudsman cannot provide a determination around this element of the complaint. The challenges that have been raised since would need to be investigated by the First Tier Tribunal service. In view of this, it was reasonable that the landlord directed the resident to contact that service in order to raise those disputes.  
  9. Ultimately, the landlord failed to provide timely communication with the resident when they raised concerns and questions around the service charges applied to their accounts. Although it did provide the required information and revised the charges following its investigation of them, it left further questions outstanding. The landlord has not shown that it responded to those additional questions and this led to the resident raising a complaint around its management of the situation.
  10. Although the resident continues to dispute the charges applied to the accounts, the landlord has advised that those disputes would need to be directed to the First Tier Tribunal service instead. Given the failings identified, the Ombudsman makes a finding of service failure in the landlord’s handling of a service charge dispute.

The landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint

  1. The landlord failed to provide responses in line with its complaint policy throughout the complaint process. Its stage 1 response should have been issued within 10 working days and the stage 2 within 20 working days. The landlord took 17 working days to provide its stage 1 response and 23 working days to provide its stage 2 response.
  2. Within the stage 1 response, the landlord failed to identify that there had been delays in responses to the resident’s correspondence by the Service Charge team. These were later acknowledged in the stage 2 response. This shows that the landlord did not investigate the communication delays adequately at stage 1 of the process. This is another service failing by the landlord.
  3. It is evident that within the stage 2 response, the landlord identified its service failings in both the overall complaint handling and during the service charge dispute. It offered a compensation payment of £100 for those failings. It is the view of the Ombudsman that this was a reasonable offer for its complaint handling failings as it is within a range that the Ombudsman would recommend where there has been a failure over a short-term duration.
  4. There were service failings in both the initial stage 1 investigation and overall handling of the resident’s complaint across both stages. However, the landlord did identify these failings in the stage 2 response, it followed up with the information that it agreed to provide and offered an apology and a proportionate compensation payment of £100 in recognition of those failings. Having considered its management of the complaint, the Ombudsman makes a finding of reasonable redress.

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the service charge dispute.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 53b of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was reasonable redress in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders

  1. Within 28 days of this report, the landlord is required to provide a written apology to the resident for the failures identified in this report.
  2. Within 28 days of this report, the landlord is ordered to make a compensation payment of £50 to the resident for the time and trouble caused to her by the failings in its handling of the service charge dispute.
  3. The landlord must reply to this Service with evidence of compliance with these orders within the timescales set out above.

Recommendations

  1. If it has not already done so, the landlord should pay the resident the compensation of £100 it offered through the complaints process. The Ombudsman’s reasonable redress decision is made on the basis that this amount is paid.