Industry News


Ombudsman produces three-year plan to deal with huge demand for its complaints service


T


he social housing sector’s Ombudsman has published a three-year corporate plan setting out how it is going to respond to


an enormous increase in its workload as growing numbers of tenants complain about their landlords. Te Ombudsman says it intends to work with


landlords across the sector to promote fairness through its investigations, strengthen local complaint handling and encourage learning to improve services. Te plan reinforces the changing role and


importance of complaint handling and comes at a period of significant change for the social housing sector and the service. It has seen casework volumes more than doubling compared to the same period in 2020/21. Te past year has seen an increased profile


for the Ombudsman service with ITV news giving greater exposure to tenants complaining


about long-standing grievances, mainly to do with terrible living conditions and unresponsive repairs services. To pay for its work, the Ombudsman has


increased its membership fee to £4.60 per unit in 2022/23 and subsequent rises will be consulted on as part of the process to agree annual business plans. Te fee will be capped at £5.30 over the duration of the plan. Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said:


“We are experiencing a demand for our service that is unprecedented in our 25-year history. In addition, future policy changes to improve access to complaints and the impact of building safety are likely to sustain higher volumes of casework. “We have set out an ambitious plan to grow and


improve our service. At its heart is our casework and investigations. An Ombudsman’s investigation can have profound impact, both putting something


right for the resident if it has gone wrong and encouraging organisational learning by the landlord to improve services and prevent future failure.” “We will also build on the positive impact


of our Complaint Handling Code to create a centre that champions learning among social landlords to improve services and potentially prevent complaints. “Social housing is a unique sector deserving an


independent, proactive and visible Ombudsman to support it. We believe our values-driven plan delivers that.” Te Social Housing White Paper has seen


increased resident awareness of their right to complain, and since our Complaint Handling Code was implemented, complaints have been coming through landlords’ complaints processes more quickly in line with the timescales set out in the Code.


Ombudsman tells landlords to improve their culture and performance after upholding two thirds of cases about complaint handling


Te Housing Ombudsman is urging social landlords to ‘up their game’ and improve their internal culture and performance in dealing with tenants’ complaints, aſter completing its first annual review of complaints. Te review found that two thirds of its


investigations into complaint handling were upheld and prompted the ombudsman to warn its members that poor complaint handling can considerably affect the trust residents have in their landlords to put things right. Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said:


“Creating and embedding a culture that values complaints and gives them the appropriate level of priority requires strong leadership and management. “Our analysis strongly suggests both


complaint handling and service delivery need to be improved across our membership. Te uphold rate of 66 per cent on complaint handling sends a stark message that this is inadequate across our membership. “I hope complaint handlers will find our analysis


and the accompanying landlord reports of interest, but I strongly encourage senior leaders and governing bodies to use it to facilitate a wider discussion about their organisation’s success in handling complaints and how it can develop its approach.”


Based on the analysis, the annual review


identifies the strategic and operational challenges for the social housing sector to overcome including:


• Not all landlords have adopted a positive complaint handling culture;


• Te need to increase trust among residents that complaining will make a difference;


• Procedural failings with high uphold rates in complaint handling;


• Inadequate records with poor record keeping being a common finding;


• Missed or unproductive appointments; and • Poor communication and lack of follow up.


Our review also looked at the most common areas for complaint – repairs, anti-social behaviour and complaint handling – and provides the first analysis of the sector’s performance by type and size of landlord. Te review covers April 2020 to March 2021 and draws insight from:


• Te annual landlord performance reports, published for the second time


• New annual surveys of the Ombudsman’s 600-member strong Resident Panel and landlords


• Complaint Handling Failure Orders issued in the final quarter of the year.


14 | HMMApril/May 2022 | www.housingmmonline.co.uk


Te individual landlord reports show a correlation between the number of complaints and a landlord’s size. For complaints about property condition (the highest category of complaint) medium sized landlords have the largest rate at 34 per cent compared to 32 for large landlords and 24 for small landlords. However, their upheld rate is the lowest at 39 per cent. On complaints about complaint handling that


account for 19 per cent of all complaints determined and have a high overall uphold rate of 66, the rate for medium sized landlords is noticeably lower at 39 per cent compared to 73 for small landlords and 67 for large landlords. In the first survey of the ombudsman’s Resident


Panel, members scored access to the complaints process well with 68 per cent rating it as acceptable or above. However, 70 per cent felt more could be done by landlords to improve their complaint handling and the same proportion felt landlords could do more to raise awareness. More than 77 per cent of residents felt


landlords could do more to learn from the complaints they receive. Landlords were surveyed about the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, which sets out good practice on effective complaint handling, with 94 per cent saying it was easy to understand and 88 that it was easy to apply.


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