Voluntary membership policy

1. Our vision states Housing matters: Fairness matters. We believe housing is important to people’s lives and that we should help improve landlord and resident relationships when things go wrong. We do not limit this vision to social housing.

2. Our starting point is, therefore, that we welcome all landlords who wish to be voluntary members of our Scheme.

3. The Scheme imposes certain conditions on membership (see Annex 1) and these need to be confirmed as met or as agreed to be met within an agreed timescale for a voluntary membership application to be accepted. Where conditions are agreed to be met, we will follow up to ensure compliance by the date agreed or consider withdrawing membership.

4. As the Scheme is largely funded by statutory members, we also need to confirm there is no risk of a disproportionate impact on our resources from accepting a voluntary member through completion of due diligence checks.

5. To align with our vision, we would ordinarily expect voluntary membership to cover all housing units. Partial membership requests will be subject to approval by the Housing Ombudsman. N.B. Some partial requests may be as the remaining units are covered by mandatory membership provisions.

6. The Housing Ombudsman Service may impose additional undertakings as a condition of membership on a case-by-case basis.

7. All applications will be approved by the Housing Ombudsman, or the Director of Finance & Corporate Performance and a Director of Dispute Resolution.

8. Membership fees due in the first year will be calculated pro-rata.

9. A voluntary member may withdraw at any time. Where this is the case, we should seek an explanation.

10. Membership fees will be refunded pro-rata.

11. Voluntary membership may be ended by the Ombudsman in any of the following circumstances:

• failure to comply with the Scheme
• failure to comply with any additional undertakings given as a condition of membership
• failure to pay membership fees by the due date