Decision Report 201402498

Summary

Miss C, a tenant of the association, complained that they told her to remove a caravan and a satellite dish from her property. She had been granted permission to site a caravan there, but did not actually do so until several years later. We found that the tenancy agreement said that caravans were not to be parked on association land, and the fact that Miss C was granted permission at the time was clearly an exception to this. In addition, one of the conditions of the permission was that the association had the right to ask Miss C to remove the caravan at any time. She disagreed with the association's reasons for asking her to remove it, but the fact that she disagreed did not mean that the association had done anything wrong.

Miss C said that she applied for permission to install a satellite dish but was refused. At the time, the association's policy was to refuse permission, but they later changed this, to allow satellite dishes to be installed under certain conditions if permission was requested in writing. There was, however, no evidence that Miss C asked for permission in writing after the policy change.

We concluded that the association had acted reasonably in both matters and we did not uphold Miss C's complaints. During our investigation, however, we found that the association's policy on satellite dishes was not clear about a tenant's right to bring a complaint to us and we made a recommendation.

Recommendations

We recommended that the association:

• change the wording of the relevant paragraph of their Policy on Satellite Receivers and External Aerials to make clear that a tenant can bring a complaint to us.