Notting Hill Genesis (202304483)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202304483

Notting Hill Genesis (NHG)

14 March 2025

Amended 25 April 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 concerns about:
   1. Errors in the billing of service charges.
   2. The level of service charges.
2. We have also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

3. The resident is the leaseholder of a property which is owned by the landlord. The property is a flat in a block which is one of several owned by the landlord in the area. The landlord manages these blocks on behalf of residents and it charges for this service (the charges).
4. The landlord sends leaseholders an estimate of the charges for the coming year in March each year. This contains calculations supporting the estimate. It then requires them to pay one 12th of the estimated figure each month from May onwards. Each year in September, it sends a statement of the amount services actually cost the previous year. If this is more than the estimate for that year, it will add the shortfall to the next year’s charge. If it has spent less than the estimate, it will reduce the next year’s charge accordingly.
5. On 6 March 2023 the landlord wrote to the resident informing him that the estimated charge for the 2023/4 financial year was £2868.05 or £239.16 per month. On 4 April 2023 the resident wrote to the landlord saying that this was too high and that he had found errors in its calculations. He said, for example, that it had charged him for garden maintenance when the block had no garden. He challenged various other elements of the charge and asked it to recalculate. He also complained formally about the discrepancies.
6. The landlord corresponded with the resident over the next 2 months. It checked its figures and agreed that it had made errors. It set a new monthly repayment figure of £226.71 per month. On 13 June 2023 the landlord issued a stage 1 response in which it accepted that it had made errors and failed to rectify the problem quickly enough. It offered £75 compensation.
7. The resident escalated his complaint on 21 June 2023, saying there were further errors and the charge was still too high. In the landlord’s stage 2 response of 3 August 2023 it again accepted that it had made errors in the calculation of the estimate and increased its offer of compensation to £150. It rejected the resident’s claim that the level of the charge was too high.
8. In his referral to us the resident said that the landlord had not explained why the charges were so high and had not fully adjusted the figure to take account of the errors he found. He later said that the charges were excessive and he wished to challenge the entire charge and the calculations behind it.

Assessment and findings

The level of service charges

9. The resident has challenged the level of the charges and the calculations which underlie those charges. However, in accordance with paragraph 42.d of the Scheme we may not consider complaints which concern the level of service charges or the amount of a service charge increase. These matters are better dealt with by the First Tier Tribunal, which can interrogate the accounts and make a binding decision on what is payable. The resident may wish to consider taking legal advice if he wishes to pursue this part of his complaint further.

The level of service charges

10. The landlord sent the resident a detailed letter setting out the level of service charges in March 2023, including a schedule setting out the charges for services such as gardening and for the television aerial and licence. The resident explained in his response that there was no garden at his block and each resident obtained their own television licence. These errors understandably undermined the resident’s confidence in the rest of the figures and lead him to question the overall level of the charge.
11. The landlord’s leasehold customer guide says that, where a resident disputes the charge, they should contact the officer in charge who will answer any questions “efficient and timely” (sic). It says, if the dispute is ongoing after 3 months, the resident can go to the First Tier Tribunal.
12. The resident first raised his concerns in April 2023 and the matter was not settled until October 2023, when re remained unhappy with the calculations. Over this period, the landlord investigated the resident’s concerns, as was appropriate, but it took too long to do so. It acknowledged its error in its stage 1 response of mid-June 2023, apologised and offered £75 compensation.
13. The landlord’s compensation policy says that in cases such as this, where its failures have led to distress or inconvenience for a resident, it should offer compensation. Offers for failures which have had a “low impact” should be £50 or less. Offers for “medium impact” cases should be up to £125 and for “high impact” cases, up to £250.Therefore, the landlord’s offer provided adequate recompense for its failures up to that point.
14. However, the landlord did not issue its stage 2 response until August 2023. Given the further delay, the landlord increased its compensation offer at stage 2 to £150. This was, again, a suitable recognition of the continued delay and the additional impact it caused.
15. The landlord also explained in the stage 2 response that, while the resident might have to pay higher monthly instalments if there were still errors that increased the charge left on the estimate, he would not ultimately lose out as it would calculate the actual expenditure and any overpayment would be refunded to him. This was a helpful statement which should have gone some way to setting the resident’s mind at rest.
16. However, the resident continued to dispute the charge and the landlord later credited his account with a further £165.57 in October 2023 in recognition of the continuing delays in reaching agreement on the charge. This brought the total award to £315.57. This was in recognition of sums he had overpaid due to the failure to recalculate the charge sooner.
17. Overall, the landlord openly acknowledged that there had been failings, but went on to provide fair recompense according to both its policy and our own remedies guidance. It has, therefore, responded to the complaint in a way that adequately ‘put things right’ for the resident (in line with our Dispute Resolution Principles). As a result, we make a finding of reasonable redress with no additional action required.

Complaint handling

18. The landlord’s complaint procedure says it should respond to stage 1 complaints within 8 working days and stage 2 complaints within 20 working days. In this case, the landlord responded at stage 1 after 46 working days and at stage 2 after 31 working days, both clearly outside the policy timeframes. The stage 1 response took more than 4 times as long as the landlord says it will take. During this period, the resident continued to be concerned about the charges. The landlord corresponded regularly with the landlord throughout this period which was good customer service. Nonetheless, it should have been mindful of the timescales set out in its complaints policy.
19. Further, when the landlord delivered the complaint response, it contained no acknowledgment of or apology for the delay in doing so. This was a further failure in complaint handling.
20. These failures were sufficient to justify a finding of maladministration. Our guidance on remedies says that compensation payments where we find maladministration should usually be between £100 and £1,000 with awards for complaint handling falling at the lower end of this scale. For that reason, we have ordered the landlord to pay the resident £100 compensation.

Determination

21. In accordance with paragraph 42.d of the Scheme, the resident’s complaint about the level of service charges is outside our jurisdiction.
22. In accordance with paragraph 53.b of the Scheme, the landlord has made an offer of reasonable redress for its handling of the resident’s concerns about errors in the billing of service charges.
23. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders and recommendations

Orders

24. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord must provide evidence to us that it has:
    1. Apologised in writing to the resident for the failures identified in this report.
    2. Paid the resident £100 compensation in recognition of those errors.

Recommendation

25. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord is recommended to:
    1.  pay the resident the £315.57 it previously offered, if it has not already done so. This sum recognised genuine elements of service failure and we made the reasonable redress finding on that basis.
    2. To increase confidence in its charge estimates, reviewed its procedure for calculating the charge to ensure that, in future, it does not apply elements of the charge to blocks to which they do not apply.