Housing Ombudsman plans phased 20% fee rise

The watchdog explained: “We’ve previously consulted residents and landlords to ask if they would like us to explore alternative models, but this did not receive strong support.

“Given the feedback this year, we’ve added a commitment to the business plan to explore alternative fee models that recognise good complaint handling. We will engage with residents and landlords as part of this work.”

The ombudsman acknowledged that the late timing of its consultation had impacted landlords’ budgets, and committed to aligning future budget consultations to October-December of the preceding financial year.

Building on the corporate strategy the watchdog set out last year, it notes an almost 500% rise in the number of cases accepted for investigation over the last five years – from 2,253 cases in 2020-21 to over 13,000 in 2025-26.

The ombudsman is predicting a further 60% rise in cases in 2026-27. Without intervention, the caseload is predicted to reach over 21,000 cases by the end of 2027-28. 

The report lays out a three-phase strategy to bring the backlog under control, which includes increasing staff levels and investment in systems and AI. It is hoped this approach will support a 92% increase in determinations.

In his foreword, Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman, said: “Most social landlords have transformed their approach to complaints over the last six years.

“They have adopted the Complaint Handling Code, increased resources for complaint handling, recruited and trained more staff, and put in place stronger policies and processes. This has been accompanied by more engaged governance, including proactive learning from complaints.

“It is important to recognise this hard work. But landlords’ services remain under pressure. Problems are still emerging and there is still a long way to go before trust with some residents is rebuilt.”

More than 800 investigations a month are currently being completed, and the ombudsman is heading towards 1000 a month, with 30% more decisions completed in 2024-25 than the previous year.

Its caseload reduction strategy aims to focus on the top 10 landlords, which it says represent 30% of the open cases, but only 23% of total homes.

The business plan will continue with two existing key performance indicators (KPIs): to have 90% of high-risk cases determined within four months, and 50% of all cases within six months.

There will also be new targets: for no more than 20% of the open caseload to be over 12 months by the end of any year, and for no case to be older than 18 months.

Mr Blakeway added: “This investment will be accompanied by new ways of working, which we have adopted over this year.

“This includes the earlier resolution of complaints, as well as vital investment into our core infrastructure, including digital, data and technology. But the impact of this investment could be undermined without further improvement in local complaint handling.

“Here we face a twin challenge of high volumes from a small number of mostly large landlords and poor outcomes from a wide range of landlords. In our current caseload, 10 landlords represent 30% of our investigative work.

“The landlord presenting the most cases is not the largest, and other landlords here are outliers given their number of homes. We need to work differently with these high-volume landlords as well as work to improve complaint-handling performance across the sector.”