The Housing Ombudsman Annual Complaints Review
The Housing Ombudsman has released its Annual Complaints Review for 2022-23, providing key insights into the social housing complaints landscape. The review reveals a sharp increase of severe maladministration findings, with individual performance reports published for 163 landlords where the Ombudsman made most findings. The report highlights that social housing complaints have seen a huge spike due to poor property conditions, legislative changes, media attention, and the inquest into the death of Awaab Ishak.
The Annual Complaints Review provides a comprehensive assessment of complaints in social housing, including that the Ombudsman received over 5,000 complaints for the first time last year, a 28% increase on the previous year. The report also shows that more than half of the findings were upheld for the first time, with an increase in maladministration findings where service requests were not handled reasonably.
In many of these cases, landlords are making the same mistakes over and over again. This shows that with just a little bit of sharp focus on the important issues the Ombudsman highlights, the sector can get to grips with the problem.
The Ombudsman has again written to Chief Executives of landlords who have a maladministration rate of over 50% to bring urgent attention to the figures. However, this year the Ombudsman is also writing to five landlords who had no findings upheld, recognising their positive complaint handling approach. The review also looks at Complaint Handling Failure Orders (CHFOs) and key issues for the first time, with the Ombudsman issuing 146 CHFOs last year.
The Annual Complaints Review provides key insights and information into the performance of landlords managing complaints. Alongside this publication the Ombudsman are also hosting training and events to keep up to date with the latest policies and best practice.
Read the resident-facing review here.
To access the Housing Ombudsman Training and Events click here
