Complaints about the Housing Ombudsman Service
The Housing Ombudsman Service aims to make things right between residents and landlords; however, we understand that sometimes we can get it wrong too.
What can you consider?
If you are dissatisfied with the service you have received from the Housing Ombudsman you can let us know so that we can try to put things right and share lessons from the complaint with our teams.
What we can consider
A complaint about our service may relate to:
- the quality or standard of service you have received from the Housing Ombudsman
- failure to provide a service
- how long we took to respond to you
- the conduct or attitude of a Housing Ombudsman employee
What we cannot consider
We cannot consider a complaint about your landlord under our service complaint process, for example:
- a decision made on your complaint about your landlord
- the evidence considered in reaching a decision on your complaint about your landlord
- the outcome of a review of a decision
- refusal to review a decision made on your complaint about your landlord
We also cannot consider complaints about the following:
- an attempt to re-open a concluded service complaint
- a freedom of information request
What information do I need to provide?
You need to tell us why you are unhappy with the service you received from the Housing Ombudsman Service, and what you think we should do to put things right.
When you make a complaint, we will need your:
- full name
- email address
- address
- Housing Ombudsman case reference number
- preferred way for us to contact you
If you are making a complaint on behalf of a resident, we will need consent from the resident.
How will you respond to my complaint?
Once we receive your complaint, we will tell you within 5 working days if we are considering it.
If your complaint is not an issue we can consider under our service complaint process we will send it to the relevant team.
Your service complaint will be investigated by a member of our Customer Insight team.
We have a 2-stage complaint procedure.
Stage 1
We will investigate the issues you have raised. To do this we will:
- consider whether we have followed our own policies and procedure
- talk to staff members that have been involved in your case
- review evidence or request further information from you
We will provide a response in writing within 10 working days. Our response will clearly set out:
- the decision we have made on your complaint about the service
- what we are going to do to put things right
- the next step and actions needed, if any
- how you can let us know if you are unhappy with our response
If we need more time to be able to investigate your complaint, we will let you know and agree a date with you that a response will be provided.
Stage 2
If you are not satisfied with the response to your service complaint at stage 1, you can request to escalate the complaint to stage 2.
Please let us know as soon as possible, ideally no later than 4 weeks from the date of the stage 1 response.
You will need to tell us why you are still dissatisfied with our stage 1 response, for example tell us if you:
- do not think we responded to the issues you raised to us in your complaint
- do not agree with our decision at stage 1 of your service complaint and the reasons for this
- have new or relevant information that may change the decision we made in our stage 1 response to you
We will write to you within 3 working days to let you know if we will investigate your complaint at stage 2 of our complaint process.
A senior member of the team will investigate the issues you have raised and provide a response within 20 working days from the date of our acknowledgement to you.
Our final response to you will be in writing and will be the end of the service complaint process.
If we are not considering the complaint at stage 2, we will write to you to explain our reasons for this.
How will you put things right?
We aim to put you back in the position you would have been in had we done things correctly. This could mean that we:
- apologise
- supply an explanation if something has gone wrong
- take action to put things right
- carry out a review of our internal processes, procedures, or systems
- pay compensation
How do I make a complaint about the Housing Ombudsman Service?
To make a new complaint about the service you have received from the Housing Ombudsman, you can email the Customer Insight Team directly via complaintsaboutus@housing-ombudsman.org.uk
Please note the Customer Insight Team will not be able to provide an update on a landlord complaint or case you have with the service for investigation.
Telephone
You can call us on 0300 111 3000.
If we need more information, a member of the Customer Insight team will return your call within 5 working days.
Our phone lines are open on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 9am to 5pm and on Thursday between 9am and 3.30pm.
Lines are closed for staff training every Thursday from 3.30pm to 5pm.
Post
You can send a letter to:
Customer Insight team
Housing Ombudsman Service
PO Box 1484
Unit D
Preston
PR2 0ET
Please note complaints sent by post may take us slightly longer due to postage and processing times.
Privacy notice
Our privacy notice explains what type of personal data we might collect, from where, and what we do with it.
Our commitment to you
Our commitment to you
The Housing Ombudsman’s aim is to improve residents’ lives and landlords’ services 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 finishing a landlord’s complaint procedure.