Torn to absolute shreds by the Housing Ombudsman’s latest figures, councils’ complaints handling emerges as a disgrace: tenants are ignored, failures go unfixed, and cases are upheld far more often than at housing associations.
Published on 11 September 2026, the Housing Ombudsman’s Annual Complaints Review 2025–26 examined decisions involving landlords responsible for more than five million households. It recorded a striking 13-percentage-point divide between landlord types.
The Ombudsman upheld 72% of findings against local-authority landlords, compared with 59% against housing associations. It concluded: “things are going wrong for residents of both types of landlord at similar rates.”
But what happens afterwards differs. Housing associations offered reasonable redress in 24% of applicable findings, compared with just 10% for councils. The Ombudsman says associations may be “putting things right more frequently” before external intervention becomes necessary. Housing Ombudsman, 11 September 2026
The complaint becomes a second failure
A tenant initially reports something wrong with a home: mould, a leak, a dangerous window, broken heating or antisocial behaviour. When the landlord mishandles that report, the resident acquires another problem: the response itself.
An upheld finding is not simply evidence that a resident remained unhappy. It means the Ombudsman found maladministration, service failure or both, concluding that the landlord’s processes had failed to put something right.
The review identifies the most frequent causes of maladministration as failure to apply policies, unreasonable delay and non-compliance with the Complaint Handling Code. These are institutional failures of ownership, timeliness, communication and follow-through.
Council tenants therefore appear more exposed to an especially punishing cycle: report the original fault, chase the landlord, make a formal complaint, chase again, escalate externally, then wait for someone else to confirm the failure.
The numbers rose despite an apparent improvement
The Ombudsman upheld 12,485 findings during 2025–26, representing 62% of those determined. Although the proportion fell by nine percentage points, the actual number upheld increased by 22% from the previous year.
That apparent contradiction requires care. From October 2025, investigators began examining complaint handling in every investigated case, including cases where residents had not specifically complained about the landlord’s handling of their complaint.
The Ombudsman says this methodological change created a new benchmark and contributed to the lower headline rate. Excluding complaint-handling findings, the overall uphold rate would have been 65%, only three points below the previous year.
The reassuring percentage therefore masks a worsening workload: more investigations, almost 2,000 additional cases determined, and thousands more confirmed failures. A falling proportion does not mean fewer residents were failed in absolute terms.
Serious failures cause serious harm
The review recorded 470 findings of severe maladministration. The Ombudsman defines these as the most serious failures, where a landlord’s actions caused significant harm, including damaged belongings, unusable rooms, prolonged inconvenience and lasting distress.
Responsive repairs accounted for 355 of those findings, or 75% of all severe maladministration. The recurring causes included poor communication, inadequate records, missed risk assessments and failure to offer temporary protection while major works remained outstanding.
This matters because institutional silence is not separate from physical harm. A leak continues leaking while an email awaits ownership. Mould keeps growing while departments transfer cases, close tickets or wait for residents to chase.
The Ombudsman captured that cumulative damage directly, reporting that “multiple failures also compound service delivery issues,” prolonging inconvenience and delaying resolution. Unresponsiveness is therefore not merely frustrating; it can materially extend exposure to unsafe conditions.
Damp and mould make delay dangerous
Damp and mould accounted for 34% of investigated repair complaints during 2025–26, while leaks represented another 23%. More than three-quarters of findings involving either problem were upheld by the Ombudsman.
Windows produced an even higher uphold rate. Of 283 findings, 80% were upheld and 10% reached severe maladministration, the highest severe-failure proportion among the responsive-repair categories recorded in the review.
These failures can affect whether residents can safely use bedrooms, keep children warm or prevent possessions being damaged. Every avoidable delay converts a communication failure into additional physical, financial and emotional exposure.
The Ombudsman ordered or recommended £1.1 million specifically for damp-and-mould complaints. Leak cases produced the highest average responsive-repair award, at £827, reflecting the disruption created when water damage remains unresolved.
Awaab’s Law has not solved the response problem
Awaab’s Law came into force on 27 October 2025, requiring social landlords to investigate and repair emergency hazards and significant damp-and-mould dangers within legally enforceable timescales. It was intended to force urgent institutional action.
On 13 July 2026, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government published Awaab’s Law: Test and Learn. Verian conducted interviews with 30 tenants and research involving 35 English social landlords.
Its conclusion was cautiously alarming: early benefits remained “uneven and fragile,” constrained by limited capacity, unclear guidance and poor tenant awareness. Landlord responsiveness was still variable, with fragmented handling and inconsistent communication reported across similar hazards.
Some damp-and-mould cases continued for weeks or months. The research found that landlords did not always identify tenant vulnerability when contact began, although recognised vulnerability usually produced faster and more structured action. MHCLG and Verian, 13 July 2026
Tenants judge progress, not automated acknowledgements
The Awaab’s Law research found that tenants were often prepared to tolerate delay when landlords demonstrated visible progress, credible communication and confidence that the underlying hazard would receive a durable repair.
Dissatisfaction intensified when activity stopped after an initial response, updates disappeared or a landlord technically met a deadline without completing an effective repair. Speed mattered, but credible ownership and follow-through mattered just as much.
The report says missed appointments, absent updates and no single contact were “major sources of stress.” Researchers found these weaknesses could undermine confidence as much as the dangerous condition originally reported.
That distinction is crucial for measuring responsiveness. An automated acknowledgement can satisfy a system clock while leaving the resident no closer to a decision, named owner, inspection, repair plan or human explanation.
Even the written record goes missing
Awaab’s Law requires information that enables residents to understand inspections and subsequent action. Yet the July 2026 research found tenants did not consistently receive written summaries after landlords examined reported hazards.
Without that record, residents struggled to track commitments, establish what had been found, challenge missed work or seek redress. A missing summary makes institutional memory stronger than the tenant’s ability to prove what happened.
Many tenants did not realise they were entitled to receive one. Low awareness allowed non-delivery to pass unnoticed, while residents with unresolved cases frequently said they wished they had understood their rights earlier.
The researchers warned that weak awareness creates “equity risks,” particularly for vulnerable or less-engaged tenants. Rights that work only for informed, confident and persistent residents are not operating equally.
Vulnerable residents face a higher price for failure
One-third of complainants whose cases were determined by the Ombudsman identified themselves as disabled. Long-term medical conditions and mental ill-health were the most commonly disclosed impairments, although substantial missing data prevents direct group comparisons.
The Ombudsman nevertheless states that failure can be worsened when landlords overlook disability, illness or household circumstances. A delayed repair does not have the same consequences for every resident occupying the affected property.
A broken lift may inconvenience one tenant while effectively imprisoning another. Failed heating may be uncomfortable for a healthy adult but dangerous for someone whose condition makes temperature regulation medically important.
Responsiveness therefore cannot be assessed only through average closure times. Landlords must establish what the problem means for the particular household, then allow vulnerability to change priority, communication method and remedial action.
Housing stability has measurable human value
On 14 July 2025, Homes England published Measuring the Wellbeing Impacts of Temporary Accommodation and Social Housing, research conducted by SQW and IFF Research using 2,341 survey observations across England.
After controlling for observable characteristics, respondents in temporary accommodation reported life satisfaction approximately 0.86 points lower on a ten-point scale than former temporary-accommodation residents who had moved into social housing.
Parents also reported a 1.01-point happiness difference between children in temporary accommodation and those rehoused socially. The report described these differences as “statistically significant,” although children’s scores came through parental assessment.
Homes England calculated a central annual wellbeing value of £13,771 for each adult moving from temporary accommodation into social housing, illustrating the scale of security, stability and control attached to a settled home. Homes England and SQW, 14 July 2025
The wider housing system is already overloaded
Homes England reported that 127,890 households were living in temporary accommodation during the final quarter of 2024, including 164,040 children. Those totals had risen by 16% and 15% respectively within one year.
For these households, council responsiveness can determine more than whether a repair happens. It can influence homelessness assessments, temporary placements, transfers, suitability challenges and access to the scarce social homes associated with improved wellbeing.
A complaint-handling system that favours people able to chase repeatedly may reproduce disadvantage. Those working unpredictable hours, living with illness, lacking internet access or managing children have less capacity for sustained administrative combat.
The broader danger is rationing by exhaustion: services remain formally available, but effective access depends upon persistence. The people most burdened by poor housing may possess the least spare capacity to force acknowledgement.
The regulator says data failures become service failures
On 28 July 2026, the Regulator of Social Housing published its Regulatory Casework Review 2026, drawing on inspections and responsive casework covering governance, financial viability, safety and consumer standards.
It declared that “accurate and timely data” underpins effective governance and service delivery. Without reliable information, landlords cannot understand performance, manage safety risks, identify emerging problems or tailor services around tenants’ needs.
The regulator found data-quality and data-use failures remained a consistent feature where landlords missed required standards. Some completed safety checks but failed to follow through on the remedial actions those checks revealed.
Its review also found risk-management frameworks that existed formally but were not properly embedded. Weak controls could remain undetected, limiting oversight and allowing identified problems to continue without adequate escalation or mitigation. Regulator of Social Housing, 28 July 2026
Councillors cannot oversee what systems conceal
The regulator assigns boards and councillors direct responsibility for obtaining assurance about safety, service performance and remedial work. That requires accurate information about what tenants reported, when someone responded and whether promised action occurred.
A complaint can disappear without literally being deleted. It may remain open in one system, closed in another, transferred without ownership, separated from related contacts or counted as answered after an acknowledgement.
Each fragment can look administratively legitimate. Collectively, the resident experiences a black hole. This is why measuring individual departmental targets cannot replace tracking an enquiry from first report through meaningful human response to resolution.
The Ombudsman’s council-versus-association divide should therefore be treated as a governance alarm. Councillors need to ask why reasonable redress occurs less frequently and why more tenants must leave the landlord’s process for justice.
Capacity pressures explain something, but excuse nothing
The July 2026 Awaab’s Law research found real operational constraints: shortages of surveyors and specialist trades, rising contractor costs, incompatible information systems and teams balancing urgent compliance against longer-term planned maintenance.
Landlords also described uncertainty about statutory definitions, vulnerability assessments and when enforcement clocks begin. Some responded by over-classifying cases as emergencies, potentially diverting limited resources from other legitimate needs.
Those pressures help explain inconsistent performance, but they do not make silence acceptable. Scarcity strengthens the case for transparent triage, named ownership and honest updates because residents otherwise cannot distinguish delay from abandonment.
Indeed, the research found communication could preserve confidence during complex repairs. Explaining the problem, next action, responsible person and expected interval costs less than forcing residents to restart contact repeatedly.
Artificial intelligence could deepen the black hole
The Ombudsman created a specific artificial-intelligence complaint category during 2025–26. Its examples include chatbots, automated service decisions, inaccurate data, biased outcomes, misinterpreted tenant contact and “lack of human interaction.”
That list reveals an emerging risk. Automated systems can receive more contacts while making institutions less responsive, especially where successful intake statistics are confused with understanding, ownership or effective resolution.
A chatbot may classify mould as routine, overlook medical vulnerability or send generic advice already attempted by the resident. Unless escalation is tested externally, institutional dashboards may report success while danger remains inside the home.
The essential question is therefore not whether councils use artificial intelligence. It is whether a resident can reach an accountable human when automation misunderstands urgency, loses context or repeatedly directs them nowhere.
Complaints are evidence, not administrative debris
The Ombudsman ordered 33,189 remedies during 2025–26 and landlords to make 6,120 apologies. It also ordered or recommended £6 million in compensation across more than 14,000 findings.
Those figures reveal the downstream cost of failing to respond properly upstream. By the time compensation is ordered, residents have already spent months documenting problems, chasing answers and navigating an external adjudication process.
Complaint handling should function as an early-warning system, showing where repairs, contractors, records and responsibilities are failing. Treating complaints as reputational threats encourages defensive correspondence instead of operational learning.
The regulator’s July review says effective landlords use tenant feedback to shape services and demonstrate what changed. Yet it found some organisations still struggled to convert engagement activity into “tangible improvements” for residents.
Stop counting replies that do not answer anything
Councils should publish time to first meaningful response, not merely time to automated acknowledgement. A meaningful response confirms understanding, provides ownership, explains the next action and gives a realistic timescale for further contact.
They should also disclose repeat contacts before resolution, missed appointments, unexplained closures, stage-one and stage-two delays, redress offered before escalation, reopened cases and Ombudsman findings divided by complaint category.
Performance should be segmented by disability and other relevant vulnerability where legally and ethically possible. An acceptable average can conceal severe failure among households for whom delay carries the highest consequences.
Most importantly, every complaint needs an auditable journey across channels and departments. Residents should never have to reconstruct institutional history from screenshots because the landlord cannot connect emails, telephone calls, inspections and contractor visits.
The real divide is between reporting and being heard
The Housing Ombudsman’s headline gap does not prove that every council landlord performs badly, nor that every housing association responds well. It proves that institutional form does not guarantee institutional accountability.
But a 72% uphold rate cannot be waved away as tenant impatience. When nearly three-quarters of investigated findings against council landlords are upheld, the external evidence says the internal system failed remarkably often.
The broader research shows what that failure can mean: prolonged exposure to hazards, additional stress, weaker trust, unequal access to rights and preventable escalation for people already living under considerable pressure.
Council landlords do not merely need better complaint letters. They need systems capable of recognising risk, retaining context, assigning human ownership and proving that somebody acted before the resident was forced to ask again.
Sources for The Complaints You Council Tenants Sent Us Strange But We Just Can’t Find ’Em!
1. Housing Ombudsman Service, Annual Complaints Review 2025–26
Source name: Housing Ombudsman Service, Annual Complaints Review 2025–26
Where this source appears in the article: Opening standfirst and paragraphs 2–4; “The complaint becomes a second failure”; “The numbers rose despite an apparent improvement”; “Serious failures cause serious harm”; “Damp and mould make delay dangerous”; “Vulnerable residents face a higher price for failure”; “Artificial intelligence could deepen the black hole”; “Complaints are evidence, not administrative debris”; and the conclusion.
Relevant passages in the source: The review reports a 72% uphold rate for local-authority landlords versus 59% for housing associations, and reasonable-redress rates of 10% versus 24%. It defines upheld findings, records 12,485 upheld findings and 470 severe-maladministration findings, and identifies repairs, damp, mould, leaks and windows as leading problem areas. It also reports compensation, apologies, disability data and the new artificial-intelligence complaint category.
Where to find them in the source: Online report sections “About this report”, “What our decisions mean”, “Overall sector performance”, “Landlord type”, “Responsive Repairs”, “Remedies”, “Equality, diversity, and inclusion” and “Artificial Intelligence”.
2. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Verian, Awaab’s Law: Test and Learn research report executive summary
Source name: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Verian, Awaab’s Law: Test and Learn research report executive summary
Where this source appears in the article: “Awaab’s Law has not solved the response problem”; “Tenants judge progress, not automated acknowledgements”; “Even the written record goes missing”; and “Capacity pressures explain something, but excuse nothing”.
Relevant passages in the source: The study covers fieldwork with 30 tenants and 35 registered social landlords. It finds that early benefits are uneven and fragile; responsiveness, communication and vulnerability recognition remain inconsistent; tenants do not always receive inspection summaries; awareness is low; and workforce, contractor and information-system pressures constrain delivery.
Where to find them in the source: Executive summary, especially “Headline findings – social tenants”, “Headline findings – social landlords” and “Learnings and emerging implications for policy and delivery”. See paragraphs 90–181 in the accessible online version.
3. Homes England, SQW and IFF Research, Measuring the wellbeing impacts of temporary accommodation and social housing
Source name: Homes England, SQW and IFF Research, Measuring the wellbeing impacts of temporary accommodation and social housing
Where this source appears in the article: “Housing stability has measurable human value” and “The wider housing system is already overloaded”.
Relevant passages in the source: The report records 2,341 survey observations. After controls, temporary-accommodation residents report life satisfaction about 0.86 points lower than former temporary-accommodation residents in social housing. Parents report a 1.01-point child-happiness difference. The central annual adult wellbeing value is £13,771. It also records 127,890 households, including 164,040 children, in temporary accommodation in quarter four of 2024.
Where to find them in the source: Foreword, paragraph 1; Executive summary, paragraphs 19–26 and Tables 2.1–2.3; Chapter 7, paragraph 164; Chapter 9, Tables 9.2–9.3; and Chapter 10, paragraphs 213–222 and Tables 10.3–10.5.
4. Regulator of Social Housing, Regulatory Casework Review 2026
Source name: Regulator of Social Housing, Regulatory Casework Review 2026
URL: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/regulatory-casework-review-2026
Where this source appears in the article: “The regulator says data failures become service failures”; “Councillors cannot oversee what systems conceal”; and “Complaints are evidence, not administrative debris”.
Relevant passages in the source: The review says good-quality, accurate and timely data underpins governance and service delivery. It reports recurring data-quality and data-use failures, missed follow-through on safety remedial actions, inadequate assurance for boards and councillors, and continuing difficulty turning tenant feedback into tangible service improvements.
Where to find them in the source: Summary lessons; “Lesson 1: Know that tenants are safe in their homes”; “Lesson 2: Listen to tenants and treat them with fairness and respect”; and “Lesson 3: Use data and insight to drive continuous improvement”.
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