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The Guinness Partnership Limited (202119305)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202119305

The Guinness Partnership Limited

28 June 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 the landlord’s handling of the resident’s repayment of court fees.

Jurisdiction

  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. Paragraph 41(c) of the Scheme states the Ombudsman cannot consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion:
    1. Concern matters that are the subject of court proceedings or where the subject of court proceedings where judgement on the merits was given.
  3. The resident’s case was the subject of court proceedings. While the resident cleared the rent account arrears, she was still required to pay the landlord’s costs as per the court order. As her case was subject to court proceedings and judgement was given on the matter of the costs owed to the landlord, the resident’s complaint is outside of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction as set out within the Scheme.

Background and summary of events

  1. On 3 February 2022, the resident complained to the landlord about its handling of her rent account. She stated the court costs account had a different reference number to her rent account and she previously received a court order dated 1 October 2018 confirming the arrears were cleared. She believed the amount should be written off.
  2. On 11 February 2022 the landlord provided its stage 1 response. It explained:
    1. The court cost account was set up to record the outstanding court costs the resident owed the landlord, following several legal proceedings it took against her between 18 May 2015 and 6 December 2018.
    2. In 2018 the landlord applied for a warrant of eviction due to unpaid rent and a breached possession order. Before it could execute the warrant, the resident cleared the arrears on her rent account. It applied the cost of the warrant to the court cost account.
    3. It acknowledged it should have removed the warrant charge from the court cost account and apologised.
    4. It explained the court costs account was separate to her rent account where she cleared the arrears. The court costs account was still in arrears and the resident was responsible to repay this as ordered by the court.
    5. It removed the charge and offered £50 compensation. It also took learning, provided feedback to its customer accounts team, and would provide further training to ensure it did not occur in the future.
    6. The resident built up credit on her rent account. The credit was used to pay some of the debt owed on the court costs account. The resident still owed £367.22.
  3. On 9 November 2022 the resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 as she disagreed with the landlord’s position the money was owed.
  4. On 8 December 2022 the landlord provided its stage 2 response. It explained:
    1. It had previously acknowledged service failure for incorrectly applying a warrant fee of £121 to the resident’s court costs account which it did not execute. It had previously amended the account and removed the fee.
    2. While the resident provided documentation stating the court cost account was not her account, it confirmed again the reason the court cost account was set up separately. It also confirmed the resident was liable to pay the outstanding amount of £367.22 as ordered by the court.
    3. It recognised the distress caused to the resident by its error adding the warrant fee to her court cost account initially. It therefore increased its offer of compensation to £75.

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 41(c) of the Scheme, the resident’s complaint is outside of jurisdiction.

Reasons

  1. The resident’s complaint relates to matters which have already been considered by the court.