Decision report 201000624

Summary
Mrs C owns and rents out a house. She and her tenant have a right of access via a garden path. This is a mutual path shared with her neighbour, who is a tenant of WHM. Over a period of time Mrs C experienced problems with access, and the neighbour also blocked pedestrian access to the rear of the property. Mrs C asked WHM to enforce the terms of their tenancy agreement. WHM reminded their tenant that there was a communal right to access and suggested that Mrs C report relevant incidents to the police, which she did. WHM also arranged mediation but this failed when the tenant concerned withdrew from it. Mrs C continued to experience problems with access and at one point the neighbour locked the gate to the back of the property. Meanwhile both she and the neighbour concerned gave different accounts of events and made various allegations about the other. Mrs C eventually complained to us that WHM delayed in handling her complaint, failed to keep her updated and did not take appropriate action to resolve the problem.

We upheld all Mrs C’s complaints. When we investigated we found that, although WHM initially responded quickly to Mrs C’s complaint, delays occurred after the idea of mediation was introduced. Where mediation is agreed to try to resolve a complaint, it should be conducted as soon as practicable. That did not happen here. However, as a result of her complaint Mrs C received an apology from WHM’s chief executive, and an assurance that improvements had been put in place to try to ensure that such delays do not happen again. We therefore made no recommendations about this.

We did, however, recommend that WHM improve their telephone record policy. On keeping Mrs C updated, we found that WHM replied to her concerns and questions when she contacted them. However, we found no evidence that they tried to keep her updated on what was happening while they tried to arrange mediation.

Finally, in terms of the action they took to resolve the problem, we found that WHM’s policy said they should arrange a meeting with the parties concerned within five days of receiving a complaint. Although we found no evidence to suggest WHM did not take Mrs C’s complaints seriously and clearly tried to resolve them, we upheld this complaint as they should have followed their policy of meeting with both parties at an early point. We, therefore, made  recommendations aimed at improving communication and handling complaints about anti social behaviour.

Recommendations
We recommended that Weslo Housing Management:
• take action to improve their record-keeping with proper recording of phone notes and ensure that appropriate guidance is given to staff about timescales of the arrangements for and conduct of mediation;
• review their procedures to ensure that they make provision for suitable prompts about when it is appropriate to send updates; and
• remind their staff of the requirement under the Anti-Social Behaviour or Nuisance Policy to visit within five working days of the complaint being made.