The Housing Ombudsman Service

In an ideal world, the relationship between landlords and their customers is a happy one which benefits both parties; Stonewater, the landlord, providing safe homes for its customers, and customers taking good care of those homes. Unfortunately, from time to time, things go wrong and disagreements can happen, which will lead to a formal complaint.

In the event of a complaint, we will work really hard to resolve the disagreement as promptly as possible through our complaints process. If, as a customer, you are still dissatisfied, you can approach the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) who will look at the case and may review how we have handled the complaint.

The Housing Ombudsman, much like the Financial Services and Health Ombudsman, is a dispute resolution service to help customers and landlords resolve disagreements outside of court proceedings. This is a free, independent service and membership for Social Landlords like Stonewater is compulsory.

The HOS encourage a local resolution between landlord and customer. This means that they prefer us to come to an agreement to resolve an issue between ourselves. They will only consider reviewing a complaint that has completed our internal complaints process.

If a complaint has been investigated through our formal complaint process, and you remain unhappy with our response, you have the right to approach the HOS. The HOS will only look into complaints eight weeks after you received your final complaint resolution from Stonewater.

The HOS will ask Stonewater for all information and documentation relevant to your complaint, and will make an independent decision which we as the landlord have to follow.  This can include a recommendation and/or order for the landlord to carry out, which could be different to our original resolution response.

For more information, visit the housing ombudsman website http://www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk/ or phone 0300 111 3000 Monday to Friday.