The country’s second largest housing association has apologised to an unnamed woman after it was found to have overcharged her for maintenance costs over a period of three years. The area concerned was “a tiny verge of grass and a few bushes”.
In 2013, the fee was £5 per week but this increased in 2021 to £25, then jumped dramatically just a year later to £42 per week.
Despite her complaints, Clarion Housing Group did nothing about the charges until the woman contacted a phone-in radio programme, the JVS show, on BBC Radio. The radio show aims to assist people with consumer rights issues.
Following her contact with JVS, the woman received a full refund and £800 on top as a goodwill gesture.
The woman is quoted as saying that she lived in a “tiny six-house cul-de-sac with a tiny verge of grass and a few bushes” and that the grounds were mainly concrete and required very little maintenance. The fee was to cover communal lighting, pest control and grounds maintenance. She originally raised a complaint in 2021 when the charge increased to £25 per week.
A spokesman for Clarion Housing Group apologised and said that the group had been “working hard to provide a recalculated service charge”. He said that the woman and her five affected neighbours had been issued with refunds and were now being charged the reduced amount of £4.99 per week. £1.98 of this charge is allocated to grounds maintenance.
Clarion Housing also faced criticism in February, when it was reported that the Housing Ombudsman had ordered Clarion Housing to pay £10,800 in compensation after finding four cases of severe maladministration across three cases.
The failings included a failure to fix leaks despite five years of complaints from the tenant, an improper response to mould and damp complaints, and a lack of consideration over noise complaints made by a vulnerable resident that had led to nine months of suffering.