Richard Blakeway is the Housing Ombudsman.
Ever since Lloyd George pledged half a million Homes for Heroes, from Harold Macmillan’s postwar building spree to John Prescott’s regional spatial strategies, housebuilding, home ownership, and housing targets have been a focus of debate and division.
More recently, housing quality – rather than targets – has come into sharp focus. Whether new-build defects, leaseholder service charges, or disrepair in rented housing, poor management is something I see daily as the Housing Ombudsman.
That doesn’t mean everything I see has gone wrong, nor that there are not some complex problems underlying these challenges. Yet every minute someone contacts the Ombudsman for help, and last year we made a record 6,500 remedies to put things right after investigation.
Our casework reflects consumers’ daily experiences of this housing crisis.
The lessons, drawn from thousands of cases are clear: value complaint procedures to put things right; demand more from repairs services that are ineffective or inefficient; radically improve knowledge and information management to drive service improvement; and ensure communications are responsive, respectful, and empathetic.
This requires more than an improvement to processes, policies and systems; it often requires cultural change in organisations.
The deep dives we have done into individual landlords using our new powers echo what MPs and councillors see in their constituency surgeries: that residents’ bad experiences are not necessarily isolated or merely historic.
Our role and powers have been strengthened by the Government during this Parliament. This allows us to provide redress, accountability, and learning.
However, despite the problems in the housing market, redress reform has been fragmented in this country. We cannot help about one in five people who contact our service because either their landlord is not a member or their issue falls within the jurisdiction of another body.
The Government has now proposed strengthening redress is in the private rented sector, previously one of the largest gaps. This is a positive step.
Doubtless some landlords will feel it is another burden and more bureaucracy. But this would be to misunderstand what an ombudsman does and the benefits to them as providers.
Our decisions are impartial and rooted in fairness: around half of the cases we investigate are not upheld. This can be an effective way for the landlord to resolve a dispute where relationships with tenants have broken down.
If something has gone wrong, the remedies are not punitive – they are simply aimed at putting the consumer back in the position they would have enjoyed had things been as they should. If requirements are not being met, surely it is better to learn through an ombudsman decision than risk repeating the same mistakes?
Also, they should remember that an Ombudsman is not a regulator – but could be the last step before more regulation.
As an ombudsman and chair of the Ombudsman Association, I’ve long argued for the right to redress to be extended. But I also know that creating rights to redress is one thing, but people knowing about them are another.
So welcome as these proposals are, they risk being undermined through their execution. The legislation allows for the creation of one or more redress schemes in the private rented sector. The bill is not explicit about these being at an ombudsman level of redress – which requires certain criteria to be met – although that appears to be the preference.
It creates another standalone jurisdiction. Yet because of the complexities of the housing market and housing providers’ operations, no jurisdiction is truly isolated.
The role of freeholders, developers, agents, and landlords (both social and private), intersect alongside a multitude of private, social, and home-ownership tenures. These relationships can be complex, accountability and responsibility diffuse.
As a result, salami-slicing redress when there are disputes risks confusion, unintended gaps, and consumers being passed from pillar to post.
Six years ago, ministers declared the system of housing redress broken. Then the proposal was to simplify and strengthen it, including consolidation through a single housing Ombudsman, providing a modern and agile response to a changing housing market.
Yet today there are more bodies than ever. Consumers may have to approach at least seven different organisations to get their issues addressed. This may mean neighbours going down different routes – even for the same issue.
This benefits neither the consumer nor the provider, who may end up having to join and navigate multiple schemes. It sucks up energy and innovation, and makes it harder to identify and implement lessons to improve services.
Conversely, interdependency has increased; the Government’s other plan to extend the Decent Homes standard to the private, as well as the social, sector illustrates this.
Both the Cabinet Office and the Ombudsman Association make clear that multiple jurisdictions can create confusion, complexity, and impair accessibility; operating them makes this country unusual compared to North America, Australia and most of Europe.
The dysfunctions in the housing market should not be compounded in the way problems are redressed.
Governments, of all political control, can be quick to create an ombudsman in response to consumer outcries – but slower to reform them. The approach – placing them in a glass box marked ‘break only in case of emergency’ – is no longer sustainable.
With patience, creativity, and at little cost, sensible reform could have a hugely positive impact, both for the economy and society.
Richard Blakeway is the Housing Ombudsman.
Ever since Lloyd George pledged half a million Homes for Heroes, from Harold Macmillan’s postwar building spree to John Prescott’s regional spatial strategies, housebuilding, home ownership, and housing targets have been a focus of debate and division.
More recently, housing quality – rather than targets – has come into sharp focus. Whether new-build defects, leaseholder service charges, or disrepair in rented housing, poor management is something I see daily as the Housing Ombudsman.
That doesn’t mean everything I see has gone wrong, nor that there are not some complex problems underlying these challenges. Yet every minute someone contacts the Ombudsman for help, and last year we made a record 6,500 remedies to put things right after investigation.
Our casework reflects consumers’ daily experiences of this housing crisis.
The lessons, drawn from thousands of cases are clear: value complaint procedures to put things right; demand more from repairs services that are ineffective or inefficient; radically improve knowledge and information management to drive service improvement; and ensure communications are responsive, respectful, and empathetic.
This requires more than an improvement to processes, policies and systems; it often requires cultural change in organisations.
The deep dives we have done into individual landlords using our new powers echo what MPs and councillors see in their constituency surgeries: that residents’ bad experiences are not necessarily isolated or merely historic.
Our role and powers have been strengthened by the Government during this Parliament. This allows us to provide redress, accountability, and learning.
However, despite the problems in the housing market, redress reform has been fragmented in this country. We cannot help about one in five people who contact our service because either their landlord is not a member or their issue falls within the jurisdiction of another body.
The Government has now proposed strengthening redress is in the private rented sector, previously one of the largest gaps. This is a positive step.
Doubtless some landlords will feel it is another burden and more bureaucracy. But this would be to misunderstand what an ombudsman does and the benefits to them as providers.
Our decisions are impartial and rooted in fairness: around half of the cases we investigate are not upheld. This can be an effective way for the landlord to resolve a dispute where relationships with tenants have broken down.
If something has gone wrong, the remedies are not punitive – they are simply aimed at putting the consumer back in the position they would have enjoyed had things been as they should. If requirements are not being met, surely it is better to learn through an ombudsman decision than risk repeating the same mistakes?
Also, they should remember that an Ombudsman is not a regulator – but could be the last step before more regulation.
As an ombudsman and chair of the Ombudsman Association, I’ve long argued for the right to redress to be extended. But I also know that creating rights to redress is one thing, but people knowing about them are another.
So welcome as these proposals are, they risk being undermined through their execution. The legislation allows for the creation of one or more redress schemes in the private rented sector. The bill is not explicit about these being at an ombudsman level of redress – which requires certain criteria to be met – although that appears to be the preference.
It creates another standalone jurisdiction. Yet because of the complexities of the housing market and housing providers’ operations, no jurisdiction is truly isolated.
The role of freeholders, developers, agents, and landlords (both social and private), intersect alongside a multitude of private, social, and home-ownership tenures. These relationships can be complex, accountability and responsibility diffuse.
As a result, salami-slicing redress when there are disputes risks confusion, unintended gaps, and consumers being passed from pillar to post.
Six years ago, ministers declared the system of housing redress broken. Then the proposal was to simplify and strengthen it, including consolidation through a single housing Ombudsman, providing a modern and agile response to a changing housing market.
Yet today there are more bodies than ever. Consumers may have to approach at least seven different organisations to get their issues addressed. This may mean neighbours going down different routes – even for the same issue.
This benefits neither the consumer nor the provider, who may end up having to join and navigate multiple schemes. It sucks up energy and innovation, and makes it harder to identify and implement lessons to improve services.
Conversely, interdependency has increased; the Government’s other plan to extend the Decent Homes standard to the private, as well as the social, sector illustrates this.
Both the Cabinet Office and the Ombudsman Association make clear that multiple jurisdictions can create confusion, complexity, and impair accessibility; operating them makes this country unusual compared to North America, Australia and most of Europe.
The dysfunctions in the housing market should not be compounded in the way problems are redressed.
Governments, of all political control, can be quick to create an ombudsman in response to consumer outcries – but slower to reform them. The approach – placing them in a glass box marked ‘break only in case of emergency’ – is no longer sustainable.
With patience, creativity, and at little cost, sensible reform could have a hugely positive impact, both for the economy and society.