Guidance on decisions

We now publish all decisions on cases investigated, as part of our increasing transparency.

They are published every two weeks, providing an ever-expanding resource to promote learning in the sector and demonstrate the difference complaints can make for individual residents and wider benefit. The decisions are anonymised so residents’ names are not used, but landlords are identified. We may decide not to publish a decision if we believe, even anonymised, the resident could be identified or if it is not in the interests of an individual or a landlord.

The decisions published can be searched and filtered by date, the complaint category, type of outcome, tenure and order, plus the type of landlord. An explanation of the range of outcomes on decisions and landlord types is set out below. Please note that the filter on type of landlord only applies to decisions published from November 2021.

Outcomes

• Maladministration – where the landlord, for example, has failed to comply with its legal obligations, its policies and procedures or unreasonably delayed in dealing with the matter. This could be a finding of service failure, maladministration or severe maladministration, depending on the seriousness of the failure and the impact on the resident
• Partial Maladministration – where there are multiple findings following investigation within one determination and at least one, but not all, of these is maladministration
• No Maladministration – where the landlord is found to have acted appropriately
• Redress – where the landlord made redress to the resident which resolved the complaint satisfactorily in the Ombudsman’s opinion
• Resolved with Intervention/Early Resolution – where the complaint was resolved with the Ombudsman’s intervention
• OSJ = Outside Jurisdiction – where the Ombudsman did not have the authority to investigate. This could be for a variety of reasons including: the complaint had not been made within a reasonable timescale; the complaint did not meet the conditions of our Scheme; or the matter was more appropriately dealt with by the courts, a tribunal, another complaint handling body or regulator.

Type of landlord (only applies to decisions published from November 2021)

• Abbeyfield – the landlord is a member of the ‘Abbeyfield Family’, a group of charities that provide retirement housing
• Almshouse – the landlord is a charity providing housing that is held ‘in trust’ to meet the charity’s purpose, usually for the relief of financial hardship
• Co-operative – the landlord is a group of residents who manage and control the housing in which they live
• Housing association – the landlord is a non-profit organisation that rents houses and flats to people on low incomes or with particular needs
• Local authority/ALMO or TMO – the landlord is the local council, and the housing is managed either:
  • directly by the council (local authority)
  • on the council’s behalf by an arms-length management organisation (ALMO), or
  • by an organisation set up by a group of tenants or leaseholders (tenant management organisation, or TMO)
• For profit – the landlord is registered with the Regulator of Social Housing as a profit-making provider of social housing
• Unregistered subsidiary – the landlord is a company owned by a member landlord but not registered with the Regulator of Social Housing itself
• Voluntary – the landlord is a voluntary member of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme
• Voluntary subsidiary – the landlord is a company owned by a voluntary member

The first set of decisions to be published were issued in early December 2020 as they are published three months after the decision date. Details of what, when and how we publish are set out in our publication policy.