Guest post: ‘The Housing Ombudsman: Here to help you through the social housing complaints process’

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

I am the Housing Ombudsman, Richard Blakeway, and I want to make sure you know about how the Ombudsman can help if you’re having problems with your social home. But first, let me tell you a short story about a bad situation and what we did to help…

For years the roof leak continued, with mould causing anxiety for the mum who was worried about her children’s health.  Her three-year-old had severe eczema. Another child told the school teachers about the black mould in the kitchen and red-orange mould in the living room. The school raised several concerns including woodlice and a windowpane held in position with sticky tape. The letters went unanswered by the landlord for five months.

After attempting repairs, the landlord promised to monitor the leak. But it left scaffolding outside the home - blocking light for over two years.  Feeling frustrated, the mum reported it to us. After investigating, we ordered the landlord to fix the leak and make repairs within 28 days. We made landlord staff apologise in person to the resident for their severe failings and pay £6,500 in compensation. There was a root and branch review of how things went wrong to prevent them being repeated for other residents.

It is intolerable a mother had to spend six years getting her landlord to respond to serious issues. But she is not alone. Every minute someone contacts us for help, and last year we required landlords to take action 6,500 times to put things right. It shows the difference complaints can make – and that an Ombudsman can make.

So, what is the Housing Ombudsman?  It is a free, independent and impartial dispute resolution service. It is an alternative to court action and it has teeth: where we find fault, landlords have to comply with our orders. We address that imbalance of power between the landlord and resident. So, unlike a court, we gather the evidence to find out what’s gone wrong, rather than wait for the legal teams to present their arguments. This also means our process is less adversarial. Our decisions are based on the law and good practice, and what we consider fair.

These decisions are the backbone of our work. You can read them on our website. Almost half of our work is about repairs, including things like loss of heating, but we can examine most issues involving residents and landlords, from service charges, estate management and anti-social behaviour. We require two things to investigate. Firstly, that your landlord is a member of our scheme. If you live in social housing, your landlord will be a member because it is required by law. Leaseholders, shared owners and social renters can come to us too. Private landlords can volunteer, but not many do, and we want the law strengthened to make their membership mandatory. The second requirement is that the landlord has been given the opportunity to put something right first, and this means a complaint has been made to them and you’ve had a final response. At this point we can investigate, although you can contact us at any point for advice, especially if the landlord is not accepting or progressing your complaint.

The Ombudsman does other things too. We set complaint process rules, to prevent a postcode lottery and support the landlord to resolve the issues earlier. While that doesn’t always happen, we know thousands of cases are resolved successfully because of our code of practice. We also dig deeper where we are seeing things go wrong too often, either with individual landlords or across the sector. This provides important lessons from our casework to improve services. This includes work on damp and mould, noise nuisance and cladding-related complaints.  

While housebuilding and mortgages dominate the headlines, social housing is also under real pressure. Every day, people like the mother with the leak are trying to get problems fixed. So, while social housing can provide security, warmth and affordability, when things go wrong, if the landlord doesn’t fix it, then the Ombudsman is there to help. To learn more visit www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk.

The Government is working with the Housing Ombudsman to help make things right for social housing residents. To learn more about how to resolve issues in your social housing visit gov.uk/social-housing-complaints