These investigations are designed to improve landlord accountability for delivering better services, helping to prevent complaints.  

It uses a tiered approach that encourages landlords to detect and fix problems early. Each tier in the process brings a higher level of scrutiny.  

This release comes seven months after it launched a new approach to further investigation powers. 

This process encourages landlords to make improvements on governance arrangements and reporting, create and amend key policies, and introduce new systems and ways of working to improve residents’ lives. 

Later this year, the Ombudsman will share an Insight report based on our further investigations, highlighting key issues frequently identified for landlord improvement and how we have worked with landlords to identify the root causes of these weaknesses. 

It is also aiming to share more details about the Ombudsman’s root cause analysis training programme, starting with an initial eLearning module, with further learning to follow next year. 

Read the full further investigations process on the further investigations page.  

The open Tier 1 investigations the Ombudsman has currently are:  

• Hexagon Housing Association 
• London Borough of Southwark 
• Orbit Group 
• Origin Housing 
• Southend-on-Sea Council 

The Ombudsman has concluded several investigations in recent months following a Tier 1 intervention. For these landlords, it will continue to monitor performance to make sure it sees improvements. They are:  

• A2Dominion 
• Amplius 
• London Borough of Ealing 
• London Borough of Redbridge 
• London Borough of Wandsworth 
• Karibu  
• Norwich City Council 
• Soho Housing Association 

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “Further investigations help landlords to join the dots between cases to spot emerging risks and issues. The positive engagement from landlords has seen the lessons of complaints used to improve policies, process, systems and oversight.  

“These lessons help improve outcomes beyond individual complaints, giving housing professionals insights to make an impact and improving residents’ experiences of housing services. It not only helps landlords grapple with the problems they are facing now, but builds resilience for future challenges.  

“The new process has demonstrated how lessons from complaints can be identified earlier and actions implemented sooner. This has been beneficial for landlords looking to prevent complaints and also meet expectations within the consumer standards. 

“I would encourage all landlords to look at the lessons shared with us to see where they can have most impact within their organisations.” 

Further details can be found here.