The Housing Ombudsman has released new figures showing that 57% of the cases it deals with concerning a local authority from the North West end in a maladministration finding.

This could be a finding of service failure, maladministration or severe maladministration, depending upon the seriousness of the failure and the impact on the resident.

This figure is worrying, especially compared to the maladministration rate for housing associations in the region, which sits at 27%.

Encouragingly, housing associations ‘no maladministration’ rate was 41% – only 14% for North West local authorities.

Overall, we found that property condition was the biggest complaint type in the North West, which reflects the national picture. Second was joint – with both anti-social behaviour and complaint handling being at fault for 15% of the number of complaints.

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “Where we see maladministration, we are clear that landlords need to take the learning from these cases and use it to develop a better service for residents.

“Nationally we’re seeing the continuation of the surge in complaints we’ve experienced since last year.

“The lessons learned for sharing emphasise that strong record keeping practices are integral to effective complaint handling and landlords’ overall service provision.

“We’ll soon be publishing a Spotlight report on Knowledge Information Management, which includes record keeping, and hope the sector takes the learning from that to improve in this key area of complaints.”

The series of quarterly Insight reports provide complaints data, a selection of case studies and key learning points. It is part of our continuing progress towards being a more open and transparent service and promoting positive change by sharing knowledge and learning from our casework.

The reports precede ‘Meet the Ombudsman’ events, hosted by member landlords in different parts of the country, which are an important part of raising awareness and understanding of the service among residents.

Landlords can register an interest in hosting a Meet the Ombudsman event by email to [email protected]