Housing Ombudsman is too prescriptive, CFO at major landlord claims
The Housing Ombudsman’s approach to regulation has become overly prescriptive and “confuses the regulatory landscape”, the chief finance officer at a housing association has said.
Speaking at the National Housing Federation’s Housing Finance Conference this week, Duncan Brown of Vivid said the complex network of regulations enforced by multiple regulators can lead to overlapping obligations.
“My personal preference is the regulators that define the outcomes that we want to achieve and give us a degree of flexibility about how we achieve them, versus the ones that are prescriptive about how we must do things,” he said.
“In reality, we’ve got both, and sometimes they conflict or they overlap with each other.”
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During a panel discussion on balancing trade-offs in business strategy, in answer to the question of whether the Housing Ombudsman is “too prescriptive”, Mr Brown said the answer was “yes”.
“The ombudsman’s role is to take an individual consumer complaint and make a judgement on that. That’s an important role that we need,” he explained.
The difference is when the watchdog starts “prescribing how we should do things”, he said, rather than taking the approach favoured by the Regulator of Social Housing, which opts for outcome-based regulations.
This approach allows landlords to “innovate” and “decide how we achieve those outcomes”, Mr Brown said.
“It is not helpful to have an ombudsman that says, ‘But you must do it like this, and I will find against you if you don’t.’ That confuses the regulatory landscape.”
Also on the panel was Jo Makinson, who joined Abri as chief investment officer in January.
Ms Makinson added: “When there are very specific findings arising from another regulator, it then does become very difficult to know where you should put yourself and how you should manage that position.
“I think it clouds the more important questions for boards. We end up with boards very much in the weeds of the detail of how we do things, rather than actually [asking], ‘What are we aiming for?’ and keeping the conversation strategic.”
Jonathan Walters, deputy chief executive of the Regulator of Social Housing, said the question of whether the Housing Ombudsman is too prescriptive was an “interesting” one.
“Our standards are outcome-focused, and we are very deliberately not being prescriptive,” he said.
“It’s always really important you know what the regulations are, which I think are our standards. It’s then really important you’re thinking about how you do that as effectively and efficiently as possible.
“I think some of the stuff coming out from the Housing Ombudsman will help with that, but really it’s important that you are delivering for your customers at the end of the day.”
On Thursday, the ombudsman highlighted 16 landlords for safety failings as part of its ‘Learning from severe maladministration’ report series.
One report from the series highlighted inspection failures that left children exposed to damp and mould. Another was on anti-social behaviour, which included an incident where a resident reported being threatened with a gun.
A spokesperson for the Housing Ombudsman said: “An ombudsman makes decisions based on the evidence that it has available to it, provided by both parties in the dispute.
“The decisions will draw on the policies of the landlord, which should reflect the wide range of regulation and legislation that landlords must adhere to if they are to fulfil responsibilities to residents. This is not a directive of the ombudsman itself, rather a reflection of the current regulatory and legislative landscape.
“Where the ombudsman orders the landlord to put things right or review its handling of the issues to learn lessons, this is based on the evidence from the case in question. We also share wider learning we see in our casework to help landlords prevent future failings and provide better services to residents. Learning from complaints should see innovation by landlords to improve outcomes, which we welcome.
“There is a clear line and definition between the role of the ombudsman and the Regulator of Social Housing, as evidenced by our memorandum of understanding.”
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