Housing Ombudsman issues 19 complaint handling failure orders
9 February 2022
The Housing Ombudsman issued 19 complaint handling failure orders between October and December 2021, highlighting issues with progressing complaints and meeting its standards.
The Housing Ombudsman issued 19 complaint handling failure orders between October and December 2021, highlighting issues with progressing complaints and meeting its standards. In all cases, landlords complied with the orders.
The purpose of complaint handling failure orders is to ensure that a landlord’s complaint handling process is accessible, consistent and enables the timely progression of complaints for residents. The power to issue them was introduced in the revised Housing Ombudsman Scheme.
Orders were issued to ten councils and nine housing associations over the period. It is the first time the number of complaint handling failure orders has gone down over a quarterly reporting period since we started to issue them in January 2021 and compliance rates have improved. Between July and September, 27 were issued with three cases of non-compliance. For April to June, 23 were issued and there were six cases of non-compliance. Ten were issued between January and March and in two cases landlords did not comply.
Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “These orders help landlords identify where their complaints procedure may need to be strengthened, as well as progressing an individual resident’s complaint.
“It is positive to see that the number of complaint handling failure orders has reduced over this quarter, suggesting that our Complaint Handling Code is starting to embed within landlords. Compliance with our orders has also improved, another positive sign.
“However, we are facing challenges around evidence gathering to support formal investigations with more chasing needed to ensure information is provided by landlords before we get to the point of issuing complaint handling failure orders. This has increased over the year from 50% of cases requiring a prompt to 84% in the most recent quarter.”
The report also highlights our review of the Complaint Handling Code and complaint handling failure orders, a year on from being introduced. The review, based on feedback from landlords and residents and our own analysis, will be published as part of a new annual review of complaints due in March 2022. It will set out some improvements being made to the Code and complaint handling failure orders while retaining the same core principles.