Housing Ombudsman’s Annual Complaints Review finds landlords resolving more issues before they escalate

We’ve published our Annual Complaints Review for 2025-26. It shows more residents are coming to us with their complaints, and more landlords are resolving issues appropriately before they reach us.  

We investigated thousands more cases than last year. At the same time, we upheld a lower proportion of complaints, and findings of no maladministration and reasonable redress both rose. This shows real progress: residents know they have somewhere to turn, and more landlords are catching problems and fixing them early. We believe it’s a sign our Complaint Handling Code is continuing to bed in.  

Severe maladministration findings also fell sharply, but these still represent things going seriously wrong for hundreds of households, most often in repairs cases. 

The headline figures 

• 8,783 determinations made this year 
• 62% of complaints upheld, down from 71% the year before 
• no maladministration findings rose to 17% (from 13%); reasonable redress rose to 20% (from 13%) 
• severe maladministration findings fell to 470 (2% of findings), down from 714 (5%) last year 
• £4.8 million ordered in compensation; average per upheld case fell to £703 (from £947) 
• 99% of our orders were complied with on time 

Some of this year’s fall in our complaint uphold rate reflects a change we made in the year. We now look at how a landlord handled the formal complaint in every case we fully investigate, not just when a resident raised it. However, even without this change, the uphold rate would still have fallen, from 68% to 65%. 

Repairs remain the biggest concern 

Responsive repairs featured in 80% of cases and had the highest severe maladministration rate of any category, at 5%. Living with disrepair has a serious impact on residents’ lives. 

Condensation, damp and mould made up 34% of repairs complaints; leaks made up 23%. We upheld over 75% of both. 

Windows, a new category this year, had the highest uphold rate among repairs complaints (80%) and a severe maladministration rate of 10%. 

Over 65% of compensation related to responsive repairs. 

Differences between landlords and regions 

We upheld more complaints from local authorities than housing associations (72% versus 59%), mostly because housing associations resolve more issues through redress before a case reaches us (31% versus 12%). This suggests problems arise at similar rates for both, but housing associations may have more flexibility to put things right early. 

We also investigated more than twice as many complaints per 1,000 homes in London as elsewhere pointing to specific challenges in London including overcrowding and aging homes. Across all landlord types, variation within groups was often greater than variation between them: a landlord’s own practices matter more than its type, size or location. 

We encourage landlords to use their individual performance reports to benchmark against similar organisations. Our Centre for Learning offers free eLearning, workshops and case studies to help improve services. 

Annual Complaint Review 2025-26