GovWire

How to complain

• If a resident is not satisfied with the services of their landlord, they should initially raise a complaint with their landlord. All landlords have a responsibility to deliver a quality service to their residents and must have complaints processes that are easy to use, fair and designed to put things right.

• If a resident is unhappy with the way their landlord has dealt with their complaint, they can contact a designated person who can help find a solution. The designated person can be an MP, a local councillor or a Tenant Panel. The designated persons role is to help resolve disputes between tenants and their landlords. If the designated person cannot help, they can refer a complaint to the Ombudsman. This process is known as the democratic filter.

• Currently, if a resident decides not to contact a designated person, they must wait eight weeks after their landlord has given their final response to the complaint before they can make a complaint directly to the Ombudsman. Residents can:

  • Fill out the online form

  • Call 0300 111 3000 during working hours

Summary

• The Housing Ombudsman is focused on helping to resolve individual complaints made by tenants, shared owners and leaseholders about their landlords. They can consider complaints and disputes and may help mediate to find a resolution.

• The Regulator of Social Housing is focused on ensuring that the landlord meets the standards set for social housing providers. This includes that the landlord is well-managed and financially viable, provides tenants with quality accommodation, choice and protection, and that its tenants can hold their landlords to account.

What the Housing Ombudsman Service and Regulator of Social Housing do

• The Housing Ombudsman Service (the Ombudsman) and the Regulator of Social Housing (the Regulator/RSH) each have a role in dealing with social housing landlords. The organisations work closely together but have different roles. These roles are intended to be complementary, ensuring landlords meet expected levels of service delivery to tenants, and organisational levels respectively.

• Both bodies are independent decision makers, required to act fairly, impartially and proportionately. Government Ministers cannot be involved in their decision making. The RSH and the Ombudsman can be asked to report to Parliament.

• Following changes made as part of the Social Housing White Paper, the Ombudsman can now look beyond individual disputes and consider the wider and potentially systemic issues responsible for generating complaints. The Ombudsman seeks to address those issues through a range of interventions including recommendations to individual landlords, sharing learning with all landlords through publications, publishing data and casework and, where appropriate, referring issues to the appropriate regulatory body, usually the Regulator of Social Housing to take further action.

• The Regulator cannot help to resolve individual tenant complaints but can consider whether individual complaints are evidence of systemic failings by the landlord. As noted above, this is supported by its close working with the Ombudsman, who can refer issues to the Regulator when it finds evidence to suggest individual cases are indicative of wider failings.

The Housing Ombudsman

• The Housing Ombudsman resolves disputes involving the tenants, shared owners and leaseholders of its member landlords:

  • social landlords (housing associations and local authorities, for whom membership is compulsory);
  • voluntary members (private landlords and letting agents who are committed to good service for their tenants).

• The Ombudsman encourages landlords and residents to resolve complaints locally at the earliest possible opportunity through its Complaint Handling Code and dispute support service.

• Tenants, shared owners and leaseholders do not have to pay to use the Housing Ombudsman Service. The service is independent and impartial. The service is paid for by landlords, and all social landlords must be members.

• The Ombudsman investigates complaints that it receives by requesting evidence from the resident and landlord, and determining what is fair in all the circumstances of the case. When investigating complaints, the Ombudsman will consider whether the landlord failed to comply with relevant legal obligations or codes of practice; failed to apply its own policies and/or procedures; delayed unreasonably in dealing with the matter; behaved unfairly, unreasonably or incompetently; treated the complainant personally in a heavy-handed, unsympathetic or inappropriate manner.

• The Ombudsman may consider the substantive issue giving rise to the complaint as well as the complaint handling itself.

• The Ombudsman can find maladministration or not; decide whether the landlord has already provided reasonable redress; and make orders or recommendations to landlords depending on findings.

  • Orders aim to put things right for the individual complainant and landlords are obliged to comply. Orders can include requiring the landlord to apologise or pay compensation to the complainant or to undertake repairs.

  • Recommendations are made where the Ombudsman considers that wider changes for example to staff training or record keeping - could improve the landlords housing services for the benefit of other residents.

What has been changed by the Social Housing White Paper

• As part of the Social Housing White Paper reform programme, the government:

  • has expanded the capacity of Housing Ombudsman Service, to enable it to reduce its decision times
  • has increased the Ombudsmans powers to take action against landlords where needed and drive improvements for residents
  • has widened the Ombudsmans powers to investigate potentially systemic issues arising through complaints
  • has delivered two waves of a communications campaign to raise residents awareness of and confidence in complaints processes, including the role of the Ombudsman
  • is making it quicker and easier for residents to directly access the Housing Ombudsman Service, by removing the democratic filter through the Building Safety Bill

• Following the changes made as part of the Social Housing White Paper reforms, the Ombudsman:

  • Now publishes the outcomes of all individual decisions, as well as an annual report setting out the number and nature of the complaints made against member landlords
  • Has set out clear expectations of landlords in its Complaints Handling Code, which sets out good practice that will allow landlords to respond to complaints effectively and fairly, and to learn from complaints to improve their services. The Ombudsman can also now issue Complaints Handling Failure Orders where it finds, through its casework or wider investigations, that landlords are not complying with the Code.
  • Is doing more to help both individuals and organisations to learn from its work by publishing reports on its casework which make recommendations about good practice, and running webinars and other training events.
  • Conducting further investigations to establish whether failure in individual cases is indicative of systemic or wider failure and identify where improvements to services are needed. Recent reports have covered complaints relating to heating, hot water and energy, cladding, and issues of damp and mould. If there is evidence of systemic failure by an individual landlord to meet regulatory standards, the Ombudsman may refer the issue to the appropriate regulatory body, usually the Regulator of Social Housing.

• The Social Housing White Paper committed to keep the Housing Ombudsmans powers, and compliance with them, under review, and to consider ways to strengthen them.

• The government is taking steps to remove the democratic filter through the Building Safety Bill. Once the democratic filter has been removed (following Royal Assent of the Building Safety Bill), social housing residents with unresolved complaints will be able to access the Housing Ombudsman directly without having to contact a designated person or wait eight weeks. This reflects the position in most other sectors, where consumers can access an Ombudsman or redress scheme directly.

The Regulator of Social Housing

• The Regulator of Social Housing is an independent body, responsible for setting standards that all registered providers of social housing must meet and holding landlords to account for compliance with these standards.

The Regulators objectives are set out in the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 and will be amended to include transparency and safety objec

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