NPH apologises to resident for ‘inconvenience’ of garage redevelopment after complaint is upheld

The resident complained that Northampton Borough Council, through its property company NPH, had failed to provide alternative parking before it began demolition and construction works as promised; had failed to deal with his complaint appropriately; and had failed to ensure the person removing asbestos from the roof followed health and safety practices.

The complaint was upheld by the Local Government Ombudsman, who ordered NPH to apologise.

The council began consulting on redeveloping several garage sites in March 2018. The exact location has not been mentioned in the report so as to protect the gentlemen in question.

The resident said that when the council consulted on works which affected his garage, it said it would provide alternative parking spaces close to his property and failed to do so.

The ombudsman found: “In its response to my enquiry the council confirmed NPH identified five sites to construct 13 new off-road parking spaces for general residents use. It, therefore, seems there was a commitment to provide alternative parking areas for residents. I have seen no evidence the council or NPH made any such provision until after September 2019.

“While I understand this was due to delays outside the council’s control I would have expected it to tell residents about the reason for those delays given it had told residents it would provide off-street parking areas. Failure to do that is fault.”

The ombudsman however found it was likely the outcome would have been the same even if the council had kept residents informed. They, therefore, found the injustice was ‘limited’ and that nothing more than an apology would be necessary.

Although the ombudsman believed that NPH’s first response to the complaint was satisfactory, they found that they did not follow procedure after that point. An NPH officer who was handling the case declined to take the complaint to a second stage, but the decision should have been taken by the head of service.

The ombudsman did however say he could not reach a safe conclusion that health and safety practices were not followed during asbestos removal. He did find fault however that NPH declined to inform the resident by letter that they had inspected the work taking place and had found no issues.

Helen Town, assistant director of asset management and development at NPH, said: “We are genuinely sorry for the inconvenience our resident experienced as a result of the garage redevelopment in his neighbourhood. Despite providing alternative parking arrangements, we failed to confirm this in writing.

“We understand the importance of regular and accurate communication during development projects, and on this occasion we have not met the standard our residents should expect from us. We regularly review resident feedback to ensure that we learn from situations like this.”