Housing Ombudsman reports sharp rise in cases, increased maladministration rate following another record year for complaints
The Housing Ombudsman has said it expects to double the number of investigations completed in 2023-24 compared to the previous year.
Launching a consultation on its 2024-25 Business Plan, the Ombudsman revealed it was heading for another record year in complaints. This includes:
- a 91% increase in cases in the first nine months of 2023-24 (compared to the same period 2022-23)
- a maladministration rate of 72% (up from 59% in 2022-23) by Q3
- compensation of £3.7m (compared to £1.1m for the whole of 2022-23) by Q3
- more than 14,000 remedies following Ombudsman investigations (compared to 6,500 in the prior year) by Q3.
The Ombudsman said the next year would be “pivotal” in the housing sector with the implementation of sections of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act, including proactive consumer regulation and the legal duties to comply with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
The 2024-25 Business Plan – the final year of the Ombudsman’s 2022-25 Corporate Plan – sets out how the service will develop its role “in light of these system changes and significant increases in demand”.
This would be achieved by working to improve local complaint handling, by implementing its remaining new powers and by delivering the remaining work on its strategic programmes.
The 2024-25 Business Plan also continues the Ombudsman’s focus on expanding its casework activities and using its systemic work to help improve landlord services.
As part of the consultation, the Ombudsman will seek views on what learning tools it can provide to support landlords in improving their complaint handling and to test support for changes to the fee regime to incentivise better complaint handling.
“Overall, 2024-25 is likely to be a difficult year for social landlords and, as a result, the Ombdusman expects demand to continue to increase by between 50% and 80% compared to 2023-24,” it said.
Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “Social housing is vital for residents and wider society, and our work aims to help strengthen it, but it is evident from our casework and the volumes of complaints we are receiving how challenging the situation has become.
“With an ever-increasing volume of complaints, we are using this business plan to look at how we can drive more learning and improvements in complaint handling.
“This would help landlords resolve more complaints within their own complaint processes – providing residents with earlier resolution and improving relationships between landlord and resident. With a range of new statutory powers this year, we are considering how we use these to improve landlords’ services and culture.”
He added: “The vital work of the new statutory Complaint Handling Code will see a huge increase in effort from us to monitor compliance and will ensure that residents will not suffer from poor and inconsistent complaint handling.
“Our focus on learning and helping landlords access the tools they need to handle complaints more effectively will help all landlords – and in particular those where a significant proportion of residents are coming to us – through what is likely to be a difficult year.”
The consultation document can be found in full here.
Harry Rodd
