Complaints about the Housing Ombudsman Service
We are committed to providing an effective, high-quality, and consistent service to everyone. We want to hear when we get things wrong. We see complaints as an opportunity to learn, improve our service, and prevent the same problems happening again.
Complaints about us
We define a complaint as expressing dissatisfaction about our service standards, actions, or lack of action from us, our staff, or those acting on our behalf.
If you are unhappy with our service, please tell us so we can put things right.
You can complain about:
- the quality or standard of service you received from us
- not following our published processes
- how long we take to respond to you
- the behaviour, conduct, or attitude of our team
Helpful Links
What we need from you
To investigate what went wrong, you need to tell us:
- why you are unhappy with our service
- what we could have done better
- what you think we should do to put things right
Please provide:
- your name
- email address
- address
- case reference number (if you have a case with us)
- preferred contact method
If you complain on behalf of someone else, we need to see signed consent from the resident.
How to make a complaint about the Housing Ombudsman Service
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Email
Email the Customer Insight team directly via complaintsaboutus@housing-ombudsman.org.uk
Please note: The Customer Insight team will not provide updates on complaints you have about your landlord. We will send these requests directly to the relevant casework team and will not respond to them.
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Telephone
You can call us on 0300 111 3000.
If we need more information from you, a member of the Customer Insight team will return your call within 5 working days.
Our phone lines open:
- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 9am to 5pm
- Thursday 9am to 3.30pm
We are closed for staff training every Thursday from 3.30pm to 5pm.
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Post
You can write to us at:
Customer Insight team
Housing Ombudsman Service
PO Box 1484
Unit D
Preston
PR2 0ETPlease note: Complaints sent by post may take us slightly longer due to postage and processing times.
What we cannot consider
We will not consider complaints about:
- your landlord (use our main complaint process)
- requests to re-open a previously concluded service complaint
- an issue with our service from over 1 year ago
- our decision about whether we can consider a complaint, or if another Ombudsman or the Regulator should handle it
- decisions or determinations we have made on a complaint about a landlord
- how we considered evidence during an investigation
- issues going through a legal process or already heard by a court or tribunal
- our response to a Freedom of Information or request under the Data Protection Act
In exceptional circumstances, we may decide not to investigate a complaint due to a service user’s behaviour. We make these decisions following our managed behaviour policy.
How we respond to complaints
Once we receive your complaint, we will tell you within 5 working days if we will consider it.
We will send you an acknowledgment setting out the issues we will consider and when we will respond.
If we need more information, we will ask you for it.
If your complaint falls outside our service complaint process, we will tell you straight away. We will send casework queries to the relevant team and let you know we have done this.
If we accept your complaint, our Customer Insight team will investigate using our 2-stage complaint procedure.
Stage 1
We will investigate the issues you have raised. We will:
- consider whether we followed our own policies and procedure
- talk to staff members involved in your case
- review evidence or request further information from you
We will provide a written response within 10 working days, usually sent by email. Our response will set out:
- our decision on your service complaint
- what we will do to put things right
- next steps and actions needed if any
- how you can escalate your complaint to stage 2 if you remain unhappy
If we need more time to be able to investigate your complaint, we will let you know and agree a response date with you.
Stage 2
If you are not satisfied with our stage 1 response, you can request to escalate your complaint to stage 2.
Please tell us as soon as possible, ideally within 4 weeks from the date of our stage 1 response.
You will need to tell us why you are unhappy with our stage 1 response, for example tell us if you:
- think we did not respond to the issues you raised
- disagree with our decision at stage 1 and want to explain why
- have new or relevant information that may change our stage 1 decision
We will let you know within 5 working days if we are going to investigate your complaint at stage 2 of our complaint process.
A member of the Customer Insight team who was not involved at stage 1 will investigate and provide a response within 20 working days from the date we accept your stage 2 complaint.
The stage 2 response is our final response to you and ends the service complaint process.
If we decide not to investigate your complaint at stage 2, we will write to explain our reasons. No further action or redress will be available from us.
Putting things right
We aim to put you back in the position you would have been in if we had not got things wrong. This could mean that we:
- apologise
- explain why something went wrong
- liaise with the casework team to deliver an action (for example, review a reasonable adjustment or contact you)
- review internal processes or procedures
- pay compensation if we find service failure that caused detriment to you
- recommend internal improvements to our procedures and systems
Our commitment to you
Our commitment to you
Our aim is to improve landlords’ services and resident’s lives through housing complaints.
We provide an independent and impartial service to social housing residents and landlords and offer dispute resolution for complaints that are not resolved after completing a landlord’s complaint procedure.
How we look after your data
Our privacy notice explains what type of personal data we might collect, from where, and what we do with it.