Annual Complaints Review 2024-25

Overall sector performance

Our investigations decide whether a landlord is responsible for maladministration. When we decide a complaint, we make a finding. Our findings are:

• severe maladministration – the most serious failing
• maladministration – there was a failure which affected the resident
• service failure - there was a minor failing but action is still needed to put things right
• reasonable redress – there was a failure, but the landlord has put it right
• no maladministration – the landlord acted fairly and reasonably
• mediation – the complaint has been resolved with the Ombudsman’s help

Every day social landlords do vital work and resolve a range of service requests successfully. However, where things go wrong, we see consistent themes. These include cases where landlords:

• do not meet statutory requirements
• do not follow their own policies and procedures
• do not investigate hazards
• avoidably delay repairs
• overlook household circumstances, including disabilities and health needs

We often find these failings are compounded by poor communication, complaint handling, and record keeping.

Maladministration rate (or ‘uphold’ rate)

A complaint is upheld if we find severe maladministration, maladministration, or service failure. This may mean the landlord did not:

• carry out its legal obligations
• follow its own policy or process
• act fairly or reasonably

We upheld 71% of complaints in 2024-25. The rate reduced by 2 percentage points compared to 2023-24 but is still too high.

The Ombudsman decided complaints about 419 landlords in 2024-25. 16 landlords show significant improvement in the rate and number of upheld complaints compared to last year. However, 120 landlords had 75% or more of the complaints about them upheld.

Regulatory standards and upheld complaints

The Regulator of Social Housing (the Regulator) inspects landlords to find out how well they are providing the outcomes of the regulatory standards. The consumer standards concentrate on the provision of housing services, including complaints. Housemark found that landlords given the highest consumer grading (‘C1’) have lower uphold rates and lower compensation orders. This suggests a link between good complaint handling and good overall performance.

Landlord type

30% of the complaints we decided in 2024-25 were about local authorities. We upheld a greater proportion of complaints about local authorities compared to housing associations and other types of landlords.

We upheld 87% of disputes about local authorities’ complaint handling. This is higher than housing associations (73%). Housemark analysis suggests local authorities typically report weaker performance on complaints responded to within timescale than housing associations.

This is also shown by other measures. For example, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman reported an 18% increase in incoming housing complaints and upheld 85% of housing-related complaints in 2024-25. Local authorities also account for 31 of the Regulator’s 36 ‘C3’ consumer gradings, and the only ‘C4’ gradings issued to date.

Local authorities provide a much broader range of services than just housing. This may impact the complaint handling resources available for housing complaints. However, every available measure suggests that there are challenges with local authority housing complaint handling. This is a priority for local authority leaders.

While housing associations perform better on complaint handling overall, we also found 20 housing association landlords with a complaint handling uphold rate at, or above, the average for local authorities. Leaders of those landlords, all of which received individual performance reports, should focus on improving complaint handling and outcomes for residents.

We’ll continue to provide insight wherever possible through our systemic work and our Centre for Learning.

Severe maladministration

The most serious failings will result in a finding of severe maladministration. We made 714 findings of severe maladministration in 2024-25. This is a 2 percentage point decrease in the proportion of maladministration findings overall.

We found more severe maladministration in landlords’ handling of complaints about property condition than any other category, and more than in 2023-24.

Landlords with more than 10,000 homes received almost 4 in every 5 of the severe maladministration findings we made in 2024-25.

Housemark used slightly different size bands to ours. They found that larger landlords, particularly those with over 20,000 homes, received larger compensation orders and reported lower resident satisfaction levels.

There was an increase in the number and proportion of severe maladministration findings in complaints about landlords with between 1,000 and 9,999 homes. These landlords were, perhaps, better able to provide services than larger organisations in recent years. This could now be more difficult in light of increasing operational and economic pressures.

This may lead to lower satisfaction levels and more complaints upheld by us. However, despite the complaint handling problems referred to earlier in this report, local authorities were only slightly more likely than housing associations to receive a finding of severe maladministration.

We publish details of our severe maladministration findings throughout the year which pull out important learning and include learning statements from landlords.

No maladministration and reasonable redress

Our investigation may find no maladministration by the landlord. The overall number of no maladministration findings increased slightly, although the proportion fell from 15% to 13%.

Our investigation may also find that there was some maladministration, but the landlord fairly and reasonably put things right using its complaints procedure. In these cases, we say there has been “reasonable redress”.

In 2024-25 we saw an increase in the proportion of reasonable redress findings (13%, up from 10% in 2023-24). This was particularly seen in complaint handling disputes. This suggests landlords are getting better at recovering service failings, even if services still need to improve.

Compensation was part of the landlord’s offer in 4 out of every 5 reasonable redress decisions. However, in half of the reasonable redress cases, other remedies were used alongside or instead of compensation. Most of these were case-specific actions such as providing better explanations for decisions or helping residents to access other services.

We’ll continue to publicise findings of no maladministration and reasonable redress on social media, in our Insight reports, and through our Centre for Learning to showcase how all landlords can resolve complaints positively.

Categories

Every case we decide includes at least one complaint, and many include more than one. When we decide a complaint, we make a finding. We record the category of each finding we make.

We made 14,420 findings in 2024-25.

This excludes complaints which were either decided outside of our remit or withdrawn by the resident before we were able to investigate. In previous years the chart below has included counts of such complaints. This year we have removed them from the numbers in the chart below. This is because we did not investigate those matters and therefore made no findings about them.

Property condition is still the most common complaint category, followed by complaint handling, and antisocial behaviour.

Remedies

We made 26,901 interventions to put things right for residents, ranging from carrying out repairs to paying compensation and improving practices. This is a 24% increase on the previous year which is broadly in line with the increase in decisions we made.

Apologies

We ordered landlords to make 4,210 apologies to residents for poor handling of their case. Apologies can begin to repair trust between a resident and their landlord. They are a chance for the landlord to show empathy, responsibility, and learning.

Of course, a timely apology at the point of service failure is far more effective. We encourage landlords to use apologies in their local complaint handling alongside other remedies where appropriate.

Compensation

The amount of compensation we ordered increased in line with the number of cases we decided.

We are always proportionate in our orders of compensation. They are made to restore the resident to the position they would have been in had things not gone wrong. They are not a sanction or punishment against the landlord.

The average amount of compensation ordered per case has fallen. In 2023-24 we ordered an average of £1,151 per upheld case. In 2024-25 this fell to £947 per upheld case. Along with the increase in reasonable redress findings, this suggests improvement in the redress offered by landlords in their own process - even where we find failings.

Over 40% of the total compensation we ordered in 2024-25 was for failures in handling leaks, damp and mould. The cases with the largest overall compensation orders often included an amount based on the rent paid by the resident while living in poor conditions. We make these orders when the resident has lost the use of, or had reduced use of, part of their home.

In 578 cases we made compensation orders of more than £2,000 – more than double the average amount. The largest order we made in 2024-25 was almost £32,000. The larger compensation orders also often reflect:

• the effect on more vulnerable households including infants, the elderly, and disabled or unwell residents
• the length of any delay
• poor knowledge and information management
• the failure to provide a human-centric service

We urge landlords to consider the findings and recommendations in our Spotlight reports on damp and mould, knowledge and information management, and attitudes, respect and rights.

Wider orders

We gained new powers to issue wider orders under the Social Housing Regulation Act. This allows us to extend fairness more widely amongst residents. We can require landlords to look beyond the individual complaints and address wider issues.

93 landlords received wider orders in 2024-25. The majority of those were landlords with between 10,000 and 49,999 homes, followed by housing associations with more than 50,000 homes.

Failures in managing damp and mould, including poor knowledge and information management, were the most frequent issues resulting in wider orders. The provisions of Awaab’s Law will require landlords to perform better in these areas. The learning identified by landlords in several of these cases is available on our website.

Individual landlord performance

Individual landlord performance reports are issued to landlords with 5 or more findings in investigations issued that year. There are 281 landlords with performance reports for 2024-25.

Landlord performance reports

These reports provide landlords with more detail on their performance. This includes trend analysis over previous financial years and how they compare to other landlords of a similar size and type. These are important reports for the landlord’s Member Responsible for Complaints to review and talk to colleagues about.

Landlords with an uphold rate of 75% or higher

There were 120 landlords with a maladministration rate of 75% or higher. The Ombudsman has written to Chief Executives of landlords who have a maladministration rate of over 75%.

Landlords with a maladministration rate of 75% or higher

The Member Responsible for Complaints and senior leaders at these landlords must urgently consider how to improve in the service areas where we have upheld complaints.

Landlords with improved performance

Encouragingly, we have seen instances where landlords had positive complaint handling cultures. There are 2 landlords with 5 findings or more who have a 0% maladministration rate - Pickering and Ferens Homes and North Devon Homes.

Additionally, we have seen 16 landlords that have substantially lower maladministration rates and numbers of maladministration findings compared to last year.

Landlords with a substantially improved maladministration rate

In our investigations about these landlords, we found evidence of:

• thoughtful and compassionate language
• appropriate use of apologies
• human-centric approaches toward vulnerable residents
• awareness of and compliance with legal obligations, policies and procedures
• damp and mould investigations which did not infer blame on the resident

We have written to these landlords to welcome the figures shown in their reports. We’ll also be sharing learning from these landlords through our Centre for Learning.

Creating a positive complaint handling culture and ensuring that it works in practice can sometimes be a long-term process, and it is encouraging to see many landlords on their way to improving their maladministration rate.