Making a complaint about your housing association

If you have a problem with your housing association home you should:

Step 1. speak to your landlord

Step 2. make a formal complaint following their complaints procedure

Step 3. contact the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales to look into your complaint if you are still unhappy

Step 1: Speak to your landlord

If you have an issue it is important that you contact your landlord to ensure that they are aware of the issue and can take steps to try and resolve it.

Housing associations in Wales have established processes to respond to repairs, some incidents of anti-social behaviour, and other issues which might impact on your home and you. You can access information on what landlords can or can’t help with through your tenancy handbook, or by looking at your landlord’s website or by contacting them. A list of our members and their websites is available here.

Our member landlords want to provide good customer service, and safe and secure homes. They will aim to work with customers to respond to issues and help where they can. If you are dissatisfied with the service provided by your landlord after speaking to them, you have the option of raising a formal complaint.

Step 2: Make a formal complaint

Your landlord should have a complaints policy. The policy will set out how to complain and what to expect, and may include timescales for acknowledging, responding to, and offering a resolution. The complaints policy can be provided by contacting your landlord or will be available on their website.

The complaints policy will also include how to appeal if you are not satisfied with the decision or the proposed resolution.

Step 3: Public Service Ombudsman

The Wales public services ombudsman has specific duties that enable them to investigate complaints about housing services provided by housing associations and local authorities.

Before they can consider any complaints, the law states that the problem must first be brought to the attention of the landlord and the landlord must also have been given a reasonable opportunity to resolve the issue (step one and two above).

The Ombudsman have published a series of fact sheets that can help inform on what can or can’t be investigated, in addition to guidance on how to make a complaint to the Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman can publish findings and a casebook to support improvements in specific services where there may be issues that impact on several organisations.

Our Role

Community Housing Cymru can not respond to issues raised by individual tenants or customers of housing associations. We work with our members to raise awareness of national policy, highlight shared issues to the Welsh Government and other organisations on our members behalf, and provide a platform for our members to learn from each other.