When we met recently with the new Housing Ombudsman Richard
Blakeway, he mentioned plans to consult on the Service's new
business plan for 2020-21 and revisions to the Housing Ombudsman
Scheme.
The Housing Ombudsman Service has now published both documents for
consultation and says that together they mark an
important stage in developing the Housing Ombudsman Service so that
it can provide faster, effective redress for the 5 million
households who can access it.
The consultations are open for 8 weeks until 20 December
2019.
In summary, on the business plan the Housing Ombudsman is:
- Committing to a step-change in determination times over the
next two years with an average of 4-5 months in 2020-21 and 3-4
months in 2021-22. These would be the fastest average
determination times on record for the service;
- Expanding the Service's sector development and engagement work
to ensure that the Housing Ombudsman Service knowledge and
experience is used to improve complaints handling across the
sector;
- Promoting the quality of decision-making through a new
performance indicator on quality control;
- Publishing more data to increase transparency, including
quarterly casework and performance reports;
- Appointing an independent examiner of complaints against the
Housing Ombudsman Service and publishing their first report in
2020-21.
Delivering a better service will require additional resource;
The Housing Ombudsman Service is currently operating at a higher
cost than the subscription rate by using financial reserves. The
subscription rate has been fixed for three years, despite a 17 per
cent year-on-year increase in casework. This business plan
therefore proposes a maximum subscription rate of £2.16 per home
for the next two years. The rate will be confirmed at, or
below, the cap when the final plan is published next
year.
Turning to the Housing Ombudsman's proposals for revisions to
the Scheme, this follows the direction of travel set out in The
Service's corporate plan and proposes new powers to:
- Ensure evidence is provided by landlords to the Housing
Ombudsman in a timely manner, to support the faster resolution of
complaints. The Housing Ombudsman estimates that over 25 per cent
of cases do not have evidence provided by the landlord on the first
request;
- Increase consistency of practice across landlords and ensure
that residents know what to expect when a complaint is made,
irrespective of their landlord by developing, with stakeholders, a
complaint handling best practice;
- Help residents whose complaints have got stuck in the process
by issuing a new determination of complaint handling failure and an
order to provide a resident with an outcome, improving
accessibility and speeding up redress for residents;
- Investigate beyond an initial complaint to establish whether
any evidence of service failure is indicative of systemic failing
and ensuring that any systemic failing found will be referred to
the Regulator.
The proposals will have implications for local authority
landlords and ARCH is encouraging local authorities to respond
directly to the consultation and provide feedback to ARCH on these
proposals to help inform an ARCH response.