Housing Ombudsman’s new Corporate Strategy and Business Plan focuses on service excellence to meet rising demand
3 July 2025
The Housing Ombudsman has published its Corporate Strategy 2025-30 and Business Plan for 2025-26, approved by the Secretary of State.
The Housing Ombudsman has published its Corporate Strategy 2025-30 and Business Plan for 2025-26, approved by the Secretary of State. These outline the strategic objectives and initiatives that will guide our operations for the next 5 years.
These 2 documents have been published following a positive response to our consultation with landlords, residents, and various stakeholders, detailed in our consultation report.
Over the past 2 years, the demand for the Ombudsman’s services has more than doubled. This rise has occurred alongside an expansion of our statutory role. In response, our Corporate Strategy and Business Plan sets out 4 key objectives designed to enhance our service delivery and stakeholder engagement.
- Provide an excellent, person-centred service. Focus on improving customer satisfaction through improved timescales and casework quality.
- Drive positive local complaint handling cultures. Enhance landlord complaint handling by monitoring compliance, raising awareness, and ensuring accountability.
- Support better services through insights, data, and intelligence. Share critical insights with elected representatives, think tanks, and policymakers to inform debate and influence policy.
- Extend our powers and collaborate to close gaps in redress. Engage with partners on new ombudsman initiatives and develop appeals services for housing associations.
To enable these objectives to be met, we want to foster a diverse, learning-oriented organisation with improved governance and efficient technology systems.
The impact of these objectives is significant. We anticipate handling approximately 43,000 cases this year. This follows another record year in 2023-24, marked by:
- 40,876 enquiries and complaints of which 8,176 were accepted for investigation, a 60% increase from the previous year
- 5,465 determinations issued a 107% increase compared to the previous year
- reduction in case duration: 58% reduction in cases pending for over 12 months
- 21,740 remedies provided including £4.9 million in financial compensation, a £1.3 million increase from the previous year
- high rate of findings: 85% of investigated cases identified failings by landlords
- resident satisfaction targets consistently met throughout the year
Corporate Strategy 2025-30 (PDF)
Our fee for 2025-26 will remain unchanged at £8.03 per home. Despite recent fee increases due to rising demand, we are dedicated to maintaining high-quality service. This commitment is for both residents and landlords.
Our focus remains on finding operational efficiencies to minimise future fee increases, ensuring that we keep costs manageable without compromising service quality.
Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “An independent and impartial Ombudsman has a crucial role in supporting the future of a thriving social housing sector.
“Our Corporate Strategy 2025-30 and Business Plan for this year marks our first steps in delivering our longer-term ambitions. We aim to ensure people’s voices are heard to reach to fast and fair decisions. Increasing demands on us mean our tools and technology need to improve.
“This matters due to the scale of the housing emergency. Our daily work involves dealing with its consequence, from the human impact of poor housing or stretched services, to the interdependencies between housing, health, and welfare.
“The new government is developing a long-term plan for housing. This initiative provides a decisive opportunity to build a fairer and stronger housing offer.”