Network Homes Limited (202013531)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202013531

Network Homes Limited

16 August 2021

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

The complaint is about the landlord’s:
1. Handling of parking bay allocations.
2. Complaint handling.

Background and summary of events

Background

The resident is a leaseholder of the landlord and the lease started late 2017. Under the lease the resident was given an allocated parking space within the vicinity of the property. The reservation form which was completed on 21 October 2017 confirmed that the resident had been allocated parking bay 50. The landlord has no vulnerabilities recorded for the resident.
The landlord’s parking policy says that leaseholders who own their bays have exclusive use of an allocated bay.
At the time of the complaint, the landlord had a two-stage complaints procedure. It aimed to respond to 90% of complaints within ten working days at stage one; and within twenty working days at stage two.

Summary of events

On 10 July 2020 the resident told the landlord that someone else had been parking in his parking bay and asked it to confirm that bay number 50 was his.
On 19 July 2020 the landlord issued a stage one complaint response to the resident’s neighbour on the issue of parking bays that had been allocated more than once.
On 18 August 2020 the resident told the landlord that he had contacted the person who had been parking in his bay and they had told him they said they had been allocated the same parking bay. He said this resident had agreed to park elsewhere but he was aware from neighbours that this was an issue for others also.
On the same day the landlord apologised for the delay in getting back to him. It said it was looking into this issue and apologised for any inconvenience caused. The landlord explained it was finalising the parking arrangements at present and would introduce the monitoring of unauthorised parking. It added that, if he was still having problems, to let it know but suggested that he put a note on the windscreen of his car to make clear he was parked in his own bay.
On 29 August 2020 the resident asked for an update and the landlord said its solicitors were looking into the parking arrangements.
On 19 September 2020 the resident asked for another update and said he wanted to make a formal complaint. He referred to the double-allocation issue and said that residents needed urgent access to uncontested parking bays.
On 23 October 2020 the landlord’s solicitors identified four properties where the parking space had been allocated twice. The landlord provided the Ombudsman with evidence of the solicitors’ investigation which showed that the resident’s bay was not one of those spaces and had not been allocated to anyone else.
On 4 November 2020 the resident asked the landlord to escalate his complaint to stage two as he had not had the stage one response which he said was due by 28 September 2020. The acknowledgement was sent to the resident but was addressed to his neighbour.
On 4 January 2021 the landlord wrote to the resident with its final response under its formal complaints procedure. The letter was dated 16 November 2020. This letter was addressed in error to his neighbour (the name on the letter was corrected the same day). The main points of the complaint response were:
1. This was an ongoing issue and all residents needed to be consulted before it could take decisive action, which may take substantial time.
2. The reason for the delay was that it needed to still establish previous owners of bays and needed to follow due diligence to establish who owned what and if there were any free bays. It had sought legal advice and was going through the lengthy process of reviewing all leases in the development to check for any further duplications.
3. Once it had completed its investigation, it would contact the resident to prepare amendments to his lease and advise on the parking bay that would be allocated to him.
4. It could not allocate any empty bays at that point in time as they were “officially allocated”.
5. It had recently written to residents offering to reimburse them if they had had to pay to park elsewhere.
The landlord signposted the resident to the Ombudsman.
On 12 January 2021 the landlord wrote to the resident saying it had carried out checks of all bay allocations and his bay was number 50. It said it would be introducing parking control to manage unauthorised parking.
On 9 February 2021 the landlord confirmed to the resident that bay 50 was allocated to him only; however, it said that it was aware that unauthorised parking was taking place and therefore there might continue to be problems in the short‑term while it introduced parking control.

Assessment and findings

Handling of parking bay allocations

The landlord’s handling of the car park space allocated to the resident was reasonable. The evidence provided to this Service demonstrates that the resident’s parking bay was not allocated to anyone else.
It is evident that someone else parked in his bay and that this resulted in some inconvenience to the resident. However, this was the result of another resident’s actions and not due to any service failure by the landlord in allocating bays in this case.
The landlord has stated it will take steps to stop unauthorised parking in the building. It also offered to reimburse the parking costs incurred when residents were not able to pat in their own bay. These actions by the landlord are proportionate and fair to remedy any financial loss to residents and to stop unauthorised parking occurring in the future.
While this Service recognises the inconvenience caused to the resident by someone else parking in his bay, there is no evidence this was a result of any action by the landlord. The Ombudsman has identified no service failure by the landlord.

Complaint handling

The landlord’s complaint handling was not appropriate. It did not issue a stage one complaint response to the resident in line with its complaints procedure (paragraph 4). Its stage two response was not issued within the timescales set out in its guidance of twenty working days, instead taking twice that time. When it was issued, it was addressed to the neighbour and mis-dated. That was poor customer service and meant that the landlord missed an opportunity to resolve matters earlier and therefore improve the landlord/tenant relationship.
These complaint handling failures amount to service failure.

Determination (decision)

In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was no maladministration by the landlord in respect of its handling of parking bay allocations.
In accordance with paragraph 54 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was service failure by the landlord in respect of its complaint handling.

Reasons

There is no evidence that the landlord had allocated the resident’s parking bay to another resident.
The landlord’s complaint handling was not appropriate as it did not follow its formal complaints procedure. Furthermore, the stage two complaint response was sent out in the resident’s neighbour’s name in error and other correspondence was sent to the resident and addressed to the neighbour.

Orders

The landlord shall take the following action within four weeks of the date of this report:
1. Apologise to the resident for the complaint handling failures identified in this report.
2. Pay the resident £100 for the inconvenience and frustration caused by those complaint handling failures.