Housing Ombudsman releases list of latest landlords failing to comply with failure orders

The purpose of CHFOs is to ensure that a landlord’s complaint-handling process is accessible and consistent, and that it enables the timely progression of complaints for residents. 

The landlords that received the most orders in the last quarter were Haringey Council with four; Hyde with three; and Wandle, Barking & Dagenham Council, Lewisham Council, A2Dominion, and Hexagon Housing Association with two orders each. 

Most of the orders were issued while complaints were still within the landlord’s complaints procedure due to unreasonable delays in accepting or progressing a complaint. 

The ombudsman issued three CHFOs where a landlord failed to comply with its membership obligations, which is the most it has issued since the orders were introduced.

The landlords involved were Charnwood Borough Council, Argyle Street Housing Cooperative and Haringey Council for failing to comply with the three orders to provide information to the ombudsman.

In 10 orders the landlord was non-compliant. Haringey Council did not comply with any of the four orders issued by the ombudsman during the quarter. 

The council is subject to a separate wider investigation by the ombudsman over concerns about leaks, damp and mould.

At the time, the watchdog had 13 high-risk open cases linked to Haringey, which manages around 15,750 tenanted and 6,000 leasehold properties.

Richard Blakeway, housing ombudsman, said: “I recognise the pressures that complaint-handling teams are under, yet it is disappointing for six landlords not to comply with these orders and three landlords to receive orders for failing to meet obligations under the scheme.

“During challenging times, complaints matter even more and should be used as a tool to effectively respond to the issues the organisation faces. 

“Good complaint-handling should not be something marginalised because of other pressures.”

Mr Blakeway added that it is “important” for landlords that have received a CHFO to consider what steps they should take to strengthen their complaint-handling procedures. 

“This includes ensuring the complaints team has the resources and co-operation within the organisation to get issues resolved, without the intervention of the ombudsman,” he said. 

Dana Carlin, Haringey’s cabinet member for housing services, private renters and planning, said: “We are very sorry that we failed our residents in the cases identified by the ombudsman, and have fallen short on the high standards our tenants should expect and deserve. 

“In each case, we did ultimately resolve the issues raised but should have done so much more quickly.  

“We must do better and are committed to improving the situation as rapidly as we can. 

“We brought our ALMO Homes for Haringey in-house on June 1, 2022, in order to improve standards and to bring housing services under direct control. 

“We want all our residents to know that we are committed to improving our services and are in the process of reviewing our complaints handling, including improving oversight, to ensure issues are resolved quickly and effectively for our residents.  

“We are also putting in measures to ensure we listen to our tenants, work with them, and make sure they understand what is happening at every stage.   

 “As part of a series of actions to deliver significant improvements to our housing services, we have developed a housing improvement plan, which will be brought for approval to a meeting of our cabinet within weeks.  

“We welcome the opportunity to work with the Housing Ombudsman, act on the lessons from the report and deliver improvements to the service that will minimise future repeated failures.”

Sheron Carter, chief executive of Hexagon, said: “On the 6 March 2023 the Housing Ombudsman issued its quarterly report. 

“During the period April 2022 to December 2022 Hexagon Housing Association were issued with two complaint handling failure orders. 

“We were non-compliant as we failed to comply within the target timescales.

“Hexagon accepts that we did not respond as swiftly as we promised. 

“The introduction of the Complaint Handling Code and the spotlight on the condition of social housing has had a profound impact on our management of complaints. 

“We have responded by prioritising additional resource to appoint a dedicated complaint investigation team. 

“The team are in post and currently undergoing induction training. 

“We regret disappointing residents and anticipate the new team will strengthen our focus and enable us to deliver our customer service standard. 

“We have partially resolved the issues raised in these cases and we are working to resolve the remainder at the earliest date.”

If you are a landlord mentioned in this piece and would like to comment, please email stephen.delahunty@oceanmedia.co.uk or grainne.cuffe@oceanmedia.co.uk

Amendment at 15.18 on 16/03/2023: This article originally stated that Southern Housing had two failure orders. This was due to an error in the original HO report.