Housing Ombudsman Annual Report 2025: complaint volumes at a record high

Direct answer

According to the Housing Ombudsman's recent annual reporting, complaint volumes from social housing tenants have reached their highest recorded level. The most common failure categories remain repairs, damp and mould, and complaint handling itself. For tenants, the key finding is straightforward: more complaints are being upheld, and landlords are increasingly being found to have acted unreasonably. If you have a problem with your landlord and have not yet used the formal complaints system, you may be leaving a legal remedy untouched.

What the annual report covers

The Housing Ombudsman publishes an annual report each year setting out how many cases it handled, what it found, and how landlords performed. The 2025 report covers cases decided across the social housing sector, including local authorities, housing associations, and arm's-length management organisations.

The report gives a breakdown of:

• Total complaints received and decided
• The proportion where the landlord was found to have done something wrong (maladministration findings)
• The most common categories of failure
• Whether landlords followed the Ombudsman's orders and paid the compensation ordered

The trend across the most recent reporting periods is clearly upward. Both the number of complaints and the proportion upheld have risen year on year.

What maladministration and severe maladministration mean

When the Housing Ombudsman investigates a complaint, it decides one of three outcomes:

No maladministration. The landlord acted reasonably in the circumstances and there is no finding against it.

Maladministration. The landlord made an error, failed to act, or handled something poorly. This can lead to an order for compensation, an apology, and a requirement to put things right.

Severe maladministration. This is the most serious finding. It is made where the failure caused significant distress, detriment to health, or a serious breach of the tenant's rights. Compensation orders in severe maladministration cases can be substantially higher, and the landlord may be required to take systemic action, not just fix the individual case.

Severe maladministration findings are publicly named. That means the landlord's name appears in the Housing Ombudsman's published decisions and in its media releases. This creates reputational pressure that is separate from any compensation paid.

The most common failure categories

Across recent annual reporting, three categories consistently account for the largest share of upheld complaints:

Repairs. This covers everything from leaking roofs and broken boilers to windows that do not close and lifts that are out of service. Landlords are often found to have taken too long, failed to keep tenants informed, or left a repair incomplete.

Damp and mould. This has become one of the highest-profile categories since the introduction of Awaab's Law. Landlords are expected to investigate damp and mould reports promptly and carry out lasting remedial work, not apply cosmetic surface treatment. Cases where damp or mould affected a child's bedroom or a vulnerable resident's health attract the most serious findings.

Complaint handling. This is the category that surprises many tenants. A high proportion of upheld cases include a specific finding about the landlord's complaint handling, separate from the underlying issue. This means that even where the landlord eventually fixed the problem, they can still be found to have failed by: not responding within the required timeframe, not offering a fair outcome at Stage 1 or Stage 2, or failing to acknowledge what went wrong.

How the Ombudsman's powers have grown

The Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 significantly expanded the Housing Ombudsman's authority. Key changes include:

• The Ombudsman can now investigate a landlord's wider policies and practices, not just individual complaints. This is called a "systemic investigation" and can result in orders affecting thousands of tenants.
• Landlords are required to have a designated member of staff responsible for complaints and a designated board member who oversees complaint handling at governance level.
• The Ombudsman can share intelligence with the Regulator of Social Housing, so a pattern of serious failures in one organisation can trigger a regulatory inspection.

These changes mean that a well-documented complaint from a single tenant can contribute to a wider investigation if the failure reflects a pattern across the landlord's stock.

What tenants can learn from the report

The annual report is not just a set of figures about other people's cases. It is a guide to what is expected of your landlord.

If your landlord is on the wrong side of many of the findings in the report, your own case is more likely to succeed. If the most common failing is that landlords do not complete repairs within a reasonable time and your landlord has not completed a repair within a reasonable time, you are in exactly the territory the Ombudsman upholds.

There are a few practical lessons from the patterns in recent annual reporting:

Keep everything in writing. The upheld cases consistently involve tenants who can show a clear paper trail: when they reported the problem, what the landlord said, what was or was not done. Cases that fail are often cases where the timeline is hard to reconstruct.

Use the formal complaints system in stages. The Ombudsman cannot investigate a complaint until you have been through the landlord's internal complaints procedure. Most landlords have a two-stage process. If you have only made informal repair requests without using the formal complaints system, you have not yet used the legal mechanism that leads to an Ombudsman investigation.

Do not accept a low compensation offer without checking it. Landlords sometimes offer a small goodwill payment to close a complaint. Accepting it does not necessarily prevent you from pursuing a disrepair claim in court, but it can complicate things. Check with a solicitor or advice service before signing anything.

What has not changed

The annual report reflects a system that is working better than it did five years ago, but it does not mean problems are being resolved at source. Social housing waiting lists remain long, repair backlogs remain significant, and many tenants still feel they cannot afford to challenge their landlord. The report documents the outcome of complaints from tenants who did push back. There will always be a larger group who did not.

What to do if you have not complained yet

If your home has an unresolved repair issue, damp, mould, or another problem and you have not yet made a formal complaint, this is the moment to start.

You do not need a solicitor to make a complaint to your landlord. You need to write to them (email is fine) setting out the problem, what you have asked for previously, and what you want them to do. That is Stage 1. If Stage 1 does not resolve it, you escalate to Stage 2. If Stage 2 fails, you can take the case to the Housing Ombudsman after eight weeks.

While the complaint process is running, you may also have the right to bring a disrepair claim in court if the problem affects your health or your use of the property. Those two routes can run in parallel.

We assess cases for free. If your landlord has failed on repairs, damp, mould, or complaint handling, call us and we will tell you honestly whether a claim is worth pursuing and how to build the evidence you need.

Start a free claim check | Free call: 0800 030 4669

Sources: Housing Ombudsman annual reports and data.

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