New-look Insight report focuses on emerging themes and key lessons from recurring themes
20 July 2023
The Ombudsman’s Insight reports will now feature learning for the sector on the emerging trends, as well as a dive into some of the big themes we’ve seen over the past quarter.
As we strive to deliver more learning, our new-look Insight report will provide vital lessons for the sector on a range of topics and cases.
For the first time, this quarter’s report will contain a viewpoint from our Dispute Support team, who are the first response to many complaints. This can show early indications of where complaints are heading, in particular this quarter showing an increase in group complaints and confusion around claims.
As ever, we have scrutinised the last quarter’s casework to find some key lessons for the sector, which now includes resources that landlords can take away to improve their own services in these areas.
Among the themes looked at this month are the Ombudsman’s top three complaint categories, property condition, anti-social behaviour and complaint handling.
At the same time as the publication of the Insight report, we have also released our latest quarterly data.
The statistics show:
- The Ombudsman received 11,025 complaints and enquiries in the last quarter
- Property condition continues to be the most complained about category at 68% of all complaints
- In 64% of determinations, the Ombudsman found maladministration
- The Ombudsman made 1,527 orders in the quarter.
Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “Complaints are a mirror of landlord services and can often be the first warning light that a policy or procedure may not be working in practice as it should be.
“This report will help landlords to make improvements and deliver better services for residents. Crucially, it includes insights from our case handlers who support earlier resolution while the complaint is still in the landlord’s procedure, bringing fresh insights into cases raised in the last few weeks.
“We continue to experience high demand and a surge in complaints about disrepair as well as upholding more findings, so the insights from our investigations – both good and poor handling – should help landlords get to the root causes of complaints.”