Requesting a review of our decision

The Housing Ombudsman Service was set up by law to look at complaints about housing organisations that are registered with it.

Our actions are governed by the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (‘the Scheme’) which sets out matters that we can and cannot consider within our role, how we consider complaints, and what grounds there are for a resident or landlord to request a review of our decisions.

When we investigate a complaint, we assess it to ensure the issues raised fall within our jurisdiction. We make decisions by looking at the evidence available to us. The purpose of our investigations is to assess whether the landlord:

• has acted appropriately
• acted fairly and reasonably, taking all the circumstances of the case into account
• has complied with our Scheme and Complaint Handling Code

Although there is no appeal against our decisions, the Scheme sets out that there are specific circumstances where you can ask us to review our decision.

Review requests

You can ask for a review of our decision if you are the complainant or the landlord. The Scheme sets out that you can ask us to review our decision on your complaint if:

• you have new facts or evidence which may have a bearing on our original decision
• you are challenging the facts or evidence on which we relied when making our decision

A review request must be made within 3 weeks of the determination date. If a request is made later than this, it will only be considered in exceptional circumstances. This could be where the person requesting a review has been in hospital, or out of the country and unable to do so within the deadline.

We will not review our decision about a complaint if you disagree or have a different view to us.  A review does not mean that we will look at your original complaint again or review any redress ordered by the Ombudsman. A review must be submitted via the dedicated form. We will then check if it meets the circumstances set out above for a review.

If your complaint is accepted for review, it will be allocated to an adjudicator or manager not previously involved with your case. They will assess the information you have provided to decide if our original decision should be changed.

If you have new facts or evidence that we have not seen that you think could affect our decision, please attach it with the review request form. Please also complete section 1 of the review form to tell us why you think the new information will change our decision.

Any evidence you send must be directly related to the complaint we have investigated, and relevant to the time-period covered by our investigation. We will not consider evidence that relates to either historical issues or an issue raised since our decision. The timescale will be clearly defined in the decision.

We will share any new information with the landlord (or the complainant if it is the landlord asking for a review) to give all parties opportunity to consider it before issuing our review response. This is the final stage of our dispute resolution process.

If you feel our decision was based on evidence that contains facts that were not accurate, you must explain why in section 2 of the review form and attach any supporting information.

Complaints resolved by mediation

If your case was resolved by agreement as part of our mediation process, we will consider a review request if there has been a mistake or misunderstanding within the terms of the agreed resolution. We will also consider a review request if the agreed outcomes on which the resolution was based have not been provided.

Timescales

Once a review request form is submitted with supporting evidence, the original caseworker will consider if your request meets the circumstances to progress the review. If it does not, we will notify you within 3 weeks to set out our reasons why we have not accepted a review.

If your review request is accepted, your case and any new evidence you have provided will be passed to a member of staff who was not involved in the original decision. They will then consider the merits of the review alongside any new facts or information provide. If there are no merits, you will be notified that the Ombudsman is unable to review your case. If the review has merit, they will carry out a review and issue a response to both parties within 12 weeks of the request being received (14 weeks for jurisdictional or Complaint Handling Failure Order decisions).

If we need to obtain further information or clarification from either party, we will extend the timescale to provide a final decision to 16 weeks of the review request, unless further time is needed. This also applies where the decision has been changed and parties are given 2 weeks to provide comment or further information.

Updated July 2024