| Publishing organisation: | Housing Ombudsman Service |
| Topic: | Tenant rent and service charges, Complaint handling, Home ownership and leasehold |
| Determination: | No maladministration |
| Tenure: | Leasehold |
| Country of relevance: | England |
Mr G was a leaseholder. He complained about his landlord’s decision to add a 10% administration charge to all works over £500. He also complained about its decision not to collect a service charge on its untenanted warden’s flat for a period of 18 months.
Mr G provided details of the existing arrangements for the administration charge and some examples of possible financial consequences based on a 10% charge. He also confirmed that the ARHM had already reviewed the issue of the charge. Mr G also claimed that by not collecting the service charge from itself whilst the property was empty the sinking fund was diminished. We could not comment on this, but there was no evidence that there was any direct adverse affect on Mr G.
Determination
The Ombudsman determined that neither of his complaints were within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. On the evidence provided by Mr G his first complaint was about the level of his service charge and paragraph 16 (c) of the Ombudsman Scheme therefore applied. This states that the Ombudsman will not consider matters which:"concern the level and amount of rent or service charge increases".
Mr G was given details of the Residential Property Tribunal Service (RPTS) as the body responsible for adjudicating service charge disputes and LEASE which provides advice and guidance to leaseholders. Paragraph 13 of the Scheme states:"The Ombudsman will consider complaints about the actions or omissions of a member landlord. The person complaining or on whose behalf a complaint is made must have been adversely affected by those actions or omissions, in respect of their occupation of property, or the delivery of services to them, or in the course of any transaction with the member landlord." Accordingly paragraph 13 applied to the second complaint.
Mr G asked us to review our decision and sent further documentation regarding the service charges. We accepted, on the basis of the information provided by Mr G that the consequence of the landlord not collecting the full service charge on the warden’s flat was that other service charge payees were required to pay a higher service charge. Paragraph 13 did not therefore apply. However in accepting his point, by definition the second complaint was essentially about the level of service charge and therefore paragraph 16c applied, as in his original first complaint. We suggested that if he took his first complaint to the RPTS he may also ask it to review this issue at the same time.