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.
On this page
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
When we receive your complaint, we will:
- confirm within 5 working days if we can investigate
- explain what will happen next and when you will hear from us
- ask for more information if we need it
If your complaint is not part of our service complaint process, we will let you know and explain what happens next.
We follow a 2-stage process. You can see how each stage works below.
Stage 1: investigation and response
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1
You raise a service complaint
Tell us what went wrong and what outcome you are looking for.
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2
We acknowledge your complaint
We confirm we have received your complaint and explain what happens next. We aim to do this within 5 working days.
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3
We investigate and respond
We gather information, review your concerns, and send you our decision. We aim to do this within 10 working days of acknowledgement.
Stage 2: review (if you remain dissatisfied)
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1
You ask for a review
Tell us why you are unhappy with our stage 1 response and what you would like us to do within 4 weeks.
This may be because we did not address all the issues you raised, you disagree with our decision, or you have new or relevant information that could affect the outcome.
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2
We assess your request
An independent investigator reviews your request and decides if we can take it forward. We will confirm our decision within 5 working days.
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3
Final response
If we accepted, we review your complaint and send you our final response within 20 working days. This ends our service complaint process.
If we decide not to proceed at stage 2, we will explain why and take no further action.
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.