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Government to launch cross-sector Housing Ombudsman
The government has announced plans to launch a single ombudsman for social and private sector housing after communities secretary Sajid Javid voiced his exasperation with the current fragmented system.
Speaking in London yesterday, Mr Javid said he would launch a consultation in the new year on a “new Housing Ombudsman – a single, transparent and accountable body with a remit that covers the whole of the housing sector, including both private and social landlords and the providers of new build homes”.
He said he wanted to act because the present system had “all kinds of issues and inconsistencies” with a “confusing number of schemes in place and gaps in protection”.
Since the Grenfell Tower fire residents have asked why their concerns were not acted upon.
There are currently four organisations that can deal with housing complaints: the Housing Ombudsman, the Property Ombudsman, Ombudsman Services: Property, and the Property Redress Scheme.
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“Even this combination of overlapping schemes fails to provide full coverage of the potential issues that consumers might encounter, nor do they cover all parts of the market,” Mr Javid said.
Giving examples of holes in the system, he noted membership of the housing ombudsman scheme was compulsory for social landlords, “but getting a case considered takes too long, and there are all kinds of barriers to doing so”, while sales, lettings and property managing agents had to join a redress scheme, but private landlords did not.
He added: “Abuse of the leasehold system is rife, yet leaseholders and tenants can find it almost impossible to get their complaints heard and acted on, and the current system contains all manner of unjustifiable loopholes.”
Mr Javid also raised the plight of tenants of charities, whose only recourse was to the Charity Commission, which does not specialise in housing issues.
Redress systems for buyers of new private homes were also working poorly, he noted.
