Slough Borough Council (202217555)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202217555

Slough Borough Council

30 September 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 response to service charge queries.
2. We have also assessed the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

3. The resident was a leaseholder of a flat (the property) from January 2018 to August 2020. The landlord is the freeholder.
4. In August 2020 the resident assigned the lease to a bank as part of a mortgage arrangement. The bank granted him a sub-lease so he could continue to occupy the property. It was required to assign the lease back to him once he repaid the loan. In the interim, the resident retained a beneficial interest in the property that increased proportionally each time he made mortgage payments.
5. During 2021 the resident decided to re-mortgage the property to a new lender. The new lender asked for confirmation there was no outstanding service charge debt on the property. The landlord indicated that there was. The resident asked it to provide him with more information about this and to clarify:
   1. How much of the debt he was responsible for and how much belonged to the estate of the leaseholder before him who had passed away.
   2. Why it had not raised the outstanding debt as an issue when he assigned the lease to the bank in August 2020.
6. The landlord did not respond to the resident’s queries. He continued to ask it to respond, as did his solicitor and an elected representative, during 2022. They emphasised that the resident would lose out on the new mortgage deal if it did not provide the information. The landlord did not respond.
7. We do not know what date the resident formally complained to the landlord. However, on 21 October 2022 he emailed the landlord and referred to a complaint he had submitted about its failure to respond to his queries. He said as a result he had been was unable to complete the re-mortgage as the new lender’s offer had expired. He explained he was unable to secure another comparable deal as interest rates had significantly increased in recent months.
8. The landlord sent the resident a holding response to his complaint that same day (21 October 2022). It said it was not yet in a position to respond as the situation was “complicated by the fact that [the resident] may not currently be the legal owner of the lease”. It said it was reviewing ownership of the lease.
9. The landlord issued further holding responses to the complaint on 22 December 2022 and 20 January 2023. With our intervention, it issued its stage 1 response on 5 July 2023. It said:
   1. There was an outstanding service charge balance of £2,059. It included a table in the response showing the invoices this debt related to. It identified that £918 was owed by the resident for service charges between January 2018 and August 2020 when he was the leaseholder. The remaining £1,141 was debt belonging to the estate of the previous leaseholder.
   2. The resident’s attempts to re-mortgage was a matter between him and the new lender.
   3. It was correct to say during the re-mortgage process that the service charge account was not clear, given there was an outstanding balance.
   4. It was sorry it had taken an “extended length of time” to issue the stage 1 response. It offered him a “goodwill gesture” of £250 for this.
10. The resident escalated his complaint on 8 July 2023. He asked the landlord to:
    1. Explain why it had taken “nearly two years” to provide the breakdown of the service charge debt contained in the stage 1 response.
    2. Respond to his initial query about why it did not raise the outstanding debt as an issue when he assigned the lease to the bank in 2020.
    3. Compensate him for financial loss due to the re-mortgage not completing.
11. With our intervention, the landlord issued its stage 2 response to the complaint on 15 December 2023. It said:
    1. The service charge account had not at any stage been cleared. It was satisfied the debt remained outstanding as outlined in its stage 1 response.
    2. It was satisfied it had responded to all the issues the resident raised.
    3. It accepted the resident had a “prolonged wait” before it responded to his complaint. It apologised and increased its “goodwill gesture” to “reflect the delay” from £250 to £1,000.
12. The resident was unhappy with the response and asked us to investigate. He said he wanted the landlord to fully respond to the queries he raised during the complaints process and to compensate him for financial loss.

Assessment and findings

Response to service charge queries

13. The resident told us that when he was seeking to re-mortgage in 2021, he was not aware there was any outstanding service charge debt for the property. He understandably thought the landlord would have raised this as an issue when he assigned the lease to the bank in 2020. He told us that he was willing to pay any debt he owed in order that his re-mortgage could proceed. However, before doing so he reasonably asked the landlord for a breakdown of the charges, given it had not raised this with him previously. He correctly believed that some of the debt belonged to the estate of the previous leaseholder.
14. It took the landlord until it issued its stage 1 response almost 2 years later, in July 2023, before it provided a breakdown of outstanding service charge invoices. This was an unreasonable and excessive delay.
15. The landlord appropriately acknowledged in its complaint responses that it had delayed in responding to the complaint and providing service charge information. It offered the resident £1,000 compensation for the delay. In line with our Remedies Guidance, this was a reasonable level of compensation for the likely distress and inconvenience caused by the delay.
16. However, within its complaint responses the landlord did not explain why it took so long to provide the service charge information. It indicated in previous holding responses to the complaint that its response was delayed as it was investigating title issues. However, based on our review of the evidence, it should have had access to all the information it required to understand the title when the resident first raised his queries in 2021. For example:
    1. It received notification on 13 April 2018 that the lease had been assigned to the resident on 15 January 2018.
    2. It received notification on 18 September 2020 that the lease had been assigned to the bank on 27 August 2020.
    3. The assignment of the leasehold title to the bank was registered in Land Registry on 1 December 2020. From that date the landlord could reasonably have checked the property register and seen that legal title was in the bank’s name.
17. We do not know why, given the landlord had the above information, it needed to carry out any title investigations between 2021 and 2023 before providing the resident with service charge information. It did not explain in its complaint responses why these investigations led to such a significant delay in it providing the information.
18. The landlord also failed in both complaint responses to respond to the resident’s query as to why it had not raised the issue of the outstanding debt sooner. We acknowledge that regardless of the reason, it did not negate that debt was outstanding, the landlord was entitled to try and recover it, and it was obliged to disclose it to the new lender. However, it was unreasonable that at the point it was prepared to disclose the debt in 2021, it was not prepared to provide additional information such as a breakdown of charges to support its claim. It was also unreasonable that it failed to explain why it had not raised the issue sooner, particularly when the resident assigned the lease to the bank in 2020.
19. Overall, we have found there was maladministration in the landlord’s response to the resident’s service charge queries. Through the complaints process it acknowledged its response was delayed and reasonably compensated the resident £1,000 for the distress and inconvenience caused by this. However, it failed to explain the reason for the significant delay within its complaint responses. It demonstrated no self-reflection or learning. It also failed to respond to the resident’s query about why it had not raised the debt as an issue sooner. We have ordered it to explain this to the resident. We have also ordered it, in line with our Remedies Guidance, to pay him an additional £300 compensation for distress and inconvenience due to these failings which were not addressed in its complaint responses.
20. The resident told us he wanted the landlord to pay him £9,367 compensation for financial loss. This was the difference between the cost of his existing mortgage repayments (higher interest rate) and what his repayments to the new lender (lower interest rate) would have been over the 5 year period of the loan.
21. However, we have not made an order for financial loss compensation given the variables involved. We cannot say with certainty the landlord’s delay in providing information led to this loss. For example, there may have been other reasons the re-mortgage would not have proceeded. Or, if it went through, the resident may have decided to re-mortgage again before the 5 year term was up. While mortgage rates went up in 2022, they have also since come down, so we have no way of knowing whether the resident could have mitigated his loss during the 5 year period. If the resident wishes to pursue a claim for financial loss, he may wish to seek independent advice.

Complaint handling

22. The landlord’s complaint policy required it to respond to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days of receipt and stage 2 complaints within 20 working days of the resident making an escalation request. This was in line with our Complaint Handling Code (the Code).
23. The landlord failed to comply with these timeframes at both stages. It issued each response only after we intervened and asked it to respond. It took over a year in total to process the complaint. This was an excessive and unreasonable delay. However, it appropriately acknowledged and apologised for this in its stage 2 response. As outlined above, it reasonably offered him £1,000 compensation for its delay in providing service charge information and responding to the complaint.
24. The Code requires landlords to respond to all aspects of a complaint. As we have outlined in the previous section, the landlord failed to do this. It did not explain why it took so long to provide the service charge information. It did not respond to the resident’s query about why it had not raised the outstanding debt as an issue sooner. This was service failure in its complaint handling. As outlined above, we have ordered it to pay him £300 compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused by this. We have therefore not ordered it to pay him separate compensation for this complaint handling service failure.

Determination

25. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was:
    1. Maladministration in the landlord’s response to service charge queries.
    2. Service failure in the landlord’s complaint handling.

Orders

26. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord should:
    1. Apologise to the resident for the failures identified in this report. The apology should follow the best practice set out in the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance.
    2. Pay the resident £300 for the distress and inconvenience caused by the maladministration in its response to service charge queries. This is in addition to the £1,000 compensation it offered the resident through its complaints process.
    3. Explain to the resident why it did not notify him of the outstanding service charge debt sooner, particularly when he assigned the lease in 2020.