One Housing Group Limited (202210259)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202210259

One Housing Group Limited

14 February 2023

 

Our approach

What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction and is governed by the Housing Ombudsman Scheme. The Ombudsman must determine whether a complaint comes within their jurisdiction. The Ombudsman seeks to resolve disputes wherever possible but cannot investigate complaints that fall outside of this. 

In deciding whether a complaint falls within their jurisdiction, the Ombudsman will carefully consider all the evidence provided by the parties and the circumstances of the case.

The complaint

  1. The complaint is about:
    1. The response provided on the resident’s request for copies of invoices and receipts from service charges for financial year 20/21.
    2. The response provided on the resident’s queries relating to actual spend reported for service charges in the 19/20 and 20/21 financial year.
    3. The way in which service charges have been estimated.

Determination (jurisdictional decision)

  1. When a complaint is brought to the Ombudsman, we must consider all the circumstances of the case as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
  2. After carefully considering all the evidence, I have determined that the complaint, as set out above, is not within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.

Summary of events

  1. The resident is the owner of the property which is a house in an estate development with freehold houses and leasehold flats. He has an absolute title to the property, jointly with another party. The properties on the estate are managed by a member of the Scheme, which would be referred to throughout this report as the ‘management company’.
  2. The documents provided to this Service indicate that resident made a formal complaint to the management company on several issues, broadly with respect to the maintenance of the communal grounds and facilities. He also raised several issues regarding the administration of service charges for the communal services, including parking. These issues have been the subject of his complaints since November 2020.
  3. In requesting a review, in October 2021, the resident again raised several concerns including that receipts and year end accounts had been delayed. He wanted clarity on the charges levied and also disputed the amount charged for some items. He was dissatisfied as there were differing service charges between houses.
  4. In its final decision of November 2021, the management company addressed the points raised by the resident with respect to the communal issues. It also stated that that it was “working through” the service charge accounts for 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 and would update the resident when this was concluded. It explained that all the houses were charged evenly but the flats had a varying arrangement. It offered the resident £50 in compensation for its delays in dealing with a communal maintenance issue which he had reported and providing the service charges accounts documents.

Reasons

  1. Paragraph 25 of the Scheme states that:

“The following people can make complaints to the Ombudsman about members: (a) a person who is or has been in a landlord/tenant relationship with a member. This includes people who have a lease, tenancy, licence to occupy, service agreement or other arrangement to occupy premises owned or managed by a member. If the complaint is made by an ex-occupier, they must have had a legal relationship with the member at the time that the matter complained of arose.”

  1. The documents provided to this Service, as stated above, indicate that the resident is the owner of the property as he holds an absolute title jointly with another individual. As he is a freeholder, this Service is unable to investigate the resident’s complaint.
  2. This Service appreciates that this information should have been provided to the resident at the time he referred his complaint to this Service for investigation and apologises that this did not happen. It was assumed at the time that he had a leasehold agreement for the property and the freehold situation was not discovered until the documents provided on the case began to be assessed in commencement of our investigation.
  3. It is noted that the resident pays service charges to the management company for the maintenance of the communal facilities and parking. This means that he has a contractual relationship with the management company for the provision of these services, but the management company is not his landlord as he owns the property. The paragraph of the Scheme outlined above (paragraph 25(a)) is a mandatory ground for accepting complaints within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. In the absence of a landlord/tenant relationship, the Ombudsman lacks the mandatory complainant condition to consider the complaint. The complaint, as defined above, is therefore not within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction and will not be investigated here.
  4. The resident may wish to consider contacting the First Tier Tribunal (Property) Chamber which may be able to provide him with advice on his possible next steps. Their contact details are as below:
  • Tel: 0207 446 7700
  • Email: London.Rap@justice.gov.uk