More disrepair clients now arrive with a complaint history, and some with a Housing Ombudsman determination. Since 1 April 2024 the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code has been statutory: a landlord must give a full stage 1 response within 10 working days of acknowledging the complaint, and a final stage 2 response within 20 working days. The upshot is a paper trail — complaints are more often logged, dated and escalated, and more of them end in a published decision.
A determination can shorten the argument about notice, sharpen the disclosure request and support a conduct argument on costs. It can also hand the landlord a credit argument against damages. What it cannot do is decide the claim, and a file that treats it as if it had is exposed.
What an Ombudsman determination decides, and what it does not
The Ombudsman investigates complaints about its member landlords: housing associations and local authorities in England. It decides each issue in a complaint separately, and it keeps the landlord’s handling of the repair apart from its handling of the complaint. A landlord can be cleared on one and criticised on the other.
The findings are set out in paragraphs 52 and 53 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme:
| Finding | What it means | What it is worth in a claim |
|---|---|---|
| Severe maladministration | A serious failure, or a series of them, with a seriously detrimental impact on the resident | Strong evidence on conduct and chronology; still not a finding of breach |
| Maladministration | A failure that adversely affected the resident, which the landlord did not put right | Useful evidence of delay and of what the landlord knew |
| Service failure | A minor failing where action was still needed | Limited, but the chronology is often the valuable part |
| Reasonable redress | The landlord had already acknowledged the failing and put it right before the investigation | Expect the landlord to rely on its own redress as credit |
| No maladministration | The landlord acted in line with its obligations and policies | Expect it to be quoted back at you. Read what was actually investigated |
The remedies come in two kinds. Orders are binding: the landlord is required to comply with them under the Scheme. Recommendations are not. Compensation is ordered for things like “distress, inconvenience, time and trouble”. It is not damages, and the Ombudsman does not decide whether there was a breach of section 11 or section 9A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, what a claim is worth, or who pays costs. The Ombudsman says as much itself. In one 2026 decision, on the resident’s health: “We are not medical experts so we cannot assess whether something caused an impact to health or not. The resident could seek independent advice on this aspect or consider a claim through the landlord’s liability insurance or the courts.”
Sequencing matters. Under paragraph 42(e) of the Scheme, the Ombudsman may decline complaints where the resident “has or had the opportunity” to raise the subject matter in legal proceedings. The Ombudsman treats a matter as legal once proceedings are issued, so a Letter of Claim alone does not end its involvement, but issue may. If a client’s complaint is part-way through the Ombudsman’s process, decide deliberately whether to wait for the determination before issuing.
Using a determination as evidence
Notice. For defects within the demise, the landlord is not in breach until it has notice and has had a reasonable time to do the work: O’Brien v Robinson [1973] AC 912. Notice is where many disrepair claims are fought, and a determination usually settles the chronology. It records what the landlord knew and when, what it raised, and when (or whether) it inspected. In London Borough of Lambeth (202519737), the Ombudsman found maladministration in the handling of a leak, damp and mould. It said: “We do not know exactly when the resident reported the leak but, on 28 January 2025, the landlord raised work to trace and remedy it.” When it decided the complaint in March 2026, it found the issue “unresolved, more than 12 months after the resident reported it.”
Two lessons follow. The landlord’s own works order proved notice by 28 January 2025 at the latest. And even the Ombudsman could not date the first report, which is exactly the gap a targeted disclosure request is for.
Disclosure. The Pre-Action Protocol for Housing Conditions Claims (England) already asks the landlord for its records concerning notice, its inspection reports and its computerised records. A determination tells you which of those records exist: job references, contractor visits, surveys, the stage 1 and stage 2 responses. A request that names them is harder to answer with “no records held” than a request for “all records”.
The limit. The Ombudsman’s finding is about how the landlord handled the matter. It is not a finding that the landlord breached its repairing obligation, and the court will make its own findings on the evidence. Plead the facts the determination records, not its conclusion.
The credit argument: read the award, not the headline
Landlords increasingly say that compensation paid through the complaints process or ordered by the Ombudsman should be credited against damages. Whether, and how far, is an argument for each case. What decides it is what each sum was for, and the headline figure rarely tells you. Check five things:
- Who awarded it. Did the landlord offer or pay it, or did the Ombudsman order it?
- What it was for. Distress and inconvenience caused by the disrepair, time and trouble caused by poor complaint handling, or an issue outside the claim?
- Total or component. Does the total include sums the landlord had already offered?
- Paid or merely offered.
- Rent-based and ongoing. Some redress is expressed as a percentage of rent for a period. At least one decision runs “until the repair is completed”, which can overlap in time with the damages period.
Three published decisions show why:
| Decision | What the landlord will say | What the determination actually shows |
|---|---|---|
| Peabody Trust (202417674) | “The Ombudsman awarded £1,844.69.” | The order is expressly “inclusive of the compensation previously offered by the landlord”. £600 for distress and inconvenience over the damp and mould, which includes £400 the landlord had already offered. £969.96 is the landlord’s earlier offer concerning asbestos. £275 is for complaint-handling time and trouble, including £75 already offered. The components add up to £1,844.96, not the stated total. |
| London Borough of Lambeth (202519737) | “The resident has had £700, and we paid for the survey.” | £600 for distress, inconvenience, time and trouble caused by the failures on the leak, damp and mould. £100 for complaint handling. Separately, an order to reimburse £238.80, “the total cost of the specialist damp survey”. Do not claim that survey again as a disbursement. |
| London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (202346048) | “We paid £800 before the Ombudsman looked at it.” | The landlord paid £200 for delays, £500 for failing to resolve the damp and mould, and £100 for time and trouble. The Ombudsman still found maladministration on the damp and mould. |
The pattern is consistent. Sums for complaint-handling time and trouble answer a different wrong from damages for living with disrepair. Sums for an issue outside the claim answer nothing in it. A reimbursed survey is a disbursement already paid. Work the credit point out before the Letter of Claim and before any Part 36 offer, not in reply to the defence.
Costs: where a determination helps, and where it does not
Conduct. Under CPR 44.2(4)(a) the court has regard to “the conduct of all the parties”. Under CPR 44.2(5)(a) that includes “conduct before, as well as during, the proceedings and in particular the extent to which the parties followed the Practice Direction – Pre-Action Conduct or any relevant pre-action protocol”. A determination recording reports ignored and deadlines missed is evidence of pre-action conduct that the paying party cannot easily dispute. It is a published finding about its own file.
Proportionality. Under CPR 44.3(5)(d), costs are proportionate if they bear a reasonable relationship to, among other things, “any additional work generated by the conduct of the paying party”. When a bill is attacked as out of line with a modest damages figure, a documented history of delay is how you show why the work was needed. This is where common points-of-dispute reductions are won or lost. The same evidential rule applies: the work must be recorded against the cause.
What does not transfer. There are no costs in the Ombudsman process. Time spent running the complaint or the Ombudsman referral itself will be challenged as not incidental to the proceedings. Obtaining and analysing a published determination for use in the claim is ordinary claim work, so record it as such. For the pre-issue position generally, see pre-action costs in housing disrepair. For low-value claims, see Smith v Wigan.
Finding the decisions
The Ombudsman publishes its determinations on its website, searchable by landlord.
For damp, leaks, heating and pests, the Housing Disrepair Index compiles 43 published decisions from 27 social landlords. Each finding, order and award is separated out, and each row carries the excerpt it came from and a link to the decision. Its award data records exactly the distinctions that matter for credit: who awarded each sum, whether it was ordered, offered or paid, and whether it is a total or one component of one.
The index describes itself as an exploratory, source-verified set rather than a representative sample, and its methodology explains what it cannot tell you. Use it to find and check decisions about the landlord in front of you, not as statistics about that landlord. For example, three Peabody decisions, including the £1,844.69 award above, sit together on the Peabody page, each linking to the Ombudsman’s own text. Cite the decision itself for any specific case.
A checklist for the file
- Ask whether the client complained, and how far it went: stage 1, stage 2, the Ombudsman.
- Obtain the landlord’s stage 1 and stage 2 responses and any determination.
- Extract the report dates, the findings on each issue (repair and complaint handling separately), any orders and their deadlines, and every sum: who awarded it, what for, total or component, paid or offered.
- Name the records the determination mentions in the protocol disclosure request.
- Work out the credit position before the Letter of Claim and any Part 36 offer.
- Record time against its purpose: work on the claim, not work on the complaint.
- In Wales the route is different: social housing complaints go to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, and the Welsh protocol applies.
A determination is some of the best evidence a disrepair claimant can arrive with, provided it is used for what it is: a published account of the landlord’s own conduct, not a judgment on the claim.
Acting on a settled housing disrepair claim where Ombudsman compensation is in the mix? We prepare the bill and deal with credit and conduct points in negotiation. See housing disrepair costs drafting.
Sources
- Housing Ombudsman, Guidance on outcomes (Scheme paragraphs 42(e), 52 and 53).
- Housing Ombudsman, Complaint Handling Code, statutory from 1 April 2024 (paragraphs 6.3 and 6.14).
- Civil Procedure Rules, rule 44.2 and rule 44.3(5).
- Pre-Action Protocol for Housing Conditions Claims (England).
- O’Brien v Robinson [1973] AC 912 (HL).
- Housing Ombudsman decisions 202519737, 202417674 and 202346048 (linked above).
- RemedyBridge (2026) Housing Disrepair Index: 43 published Housing Ombudsman disrepair decisions, source-verified (accessed 26 September 2026).