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Great Places Housing Association (202302611)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202302611

Great Places Housing Association

18 April 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:
    1. the landlord’s handling of rent increases to the resident’s garage.
    2. The landlord’s handling of repairs to the garage.

Determination (jurisdictional decision)

  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. After carefully considering all the evidence, we have determined that this complaint, as set out above, is not within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.

Reasons

  1. The resident holds an assured tenancy for the residential property. The tenancy commenced in October 2003.
  2. The resident was granted use of the garage in August 2011 and signed a license agreement for the use of the garage in March 2015. The garage did not form part of the residential property, as allocated, and an additional weekly rent amount was paid for the garage.
  3. The resident complained to the landlord in March 2022 following notification of a rent increase to the garage. The resident was dissatisfied that the landlord was increasing the rent when repairs had not been carried out as discussed in 2017. The landlord issued its final response on 10 May 2022 and the resident escalated the matter to this Service in March 2023.
  4. Paragraph 42 (g) of the Scheme states that the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, concern the terms and operation of contractual relationships not connected with the complainant’s occupation of a property for residential purposes.
  5. From the information this Service has seen, the license agreement for the garage is operated separately to the tenancy agreement for the resident’s property. The garage was not rented as part of the residential tenancy and any issue affecting the garage would not affect that tenancy.
  6. For this reason, this complaint cannot be considered under the Scheme.
  7. As the resident has exhausted the landlord’s internal complaints process, he may wish to seek legal advice to determine the appropriate next steps should he wish to pursue the matter.