Housing Ombudsman welcomes new information rights for social housing tenants

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “We welcome these new measures. It’s an important right for tenants to access information about how their home is managed. These measures create fair access to information for all social housing residents.

“We know information sharing appears in many complaints we handle. Complaints could have been prevented if tenants had better access to information.

The government has given us an important new role in STAIRs. Tenants can come directly to us if they’re unhappy with how their private registered providers has handled the disclosure of information. We’ll investigate these cases and decide on whether the landlord has acted appropriately or needs to put things right.

“We’ll be consulting shortly on changes to our Scheme which will set out in more detail our role. We look forward to engaging with tenants and landlords on how we will handle complaints in this area.

“We also look forward to working closely with the Regulator of Social Housing. The Regulator oversees private registered providers’ compliance with regulatory standards to ensure effective implementation of these new transparency requirements.”