Housing Ombudsman Annual Submission

[Elaine Winter]

Hi, We are voluntary members of The Housing Ombudsman and are being asked to do an Annual Submission to comply with their requirements. This submission involves a lot of work updating our website and providing links to our Complaints Policy and various other documents.
Has anyone else had to do this and, if so can they offer advice as to what they did and the documents they provided. We presently have a Complaints Policy and I am in the process of completing the Self Assessment Form using the template provided. There are several other documents required which we do not have.
I understand the importance of an open and informative complaints procedure but this seems like an awful lot of work for a small charity.
I would appreciate any advice or pointers that anyone can offer. Thanks

[christian.noll]

We have just gone through all of our policies. They are on our test website which should go live in the next 2 weeks. Take a look at http://www.noll.co.uk (temporary site name) the password is hardrett (name of one of our almshouses). You can then navigate around and find the policies – 13 in total. Feel free to cut and paste.
Christian

[christian.noll]

… if you need a business strategy and cashflow/budgets template please let me know. christian@noll.uk

[Elaine Winter]

Hi Christian
Thanks for this, I have just had a look and your list of policies is impressive. Can I ask are you members of the Housing Ombudsman, and have you had to submit an Annual Submission to them?
My issue is they are asking for links to a ‘Governing Bodies Response’ and an ‘Improvement Report’ along with our Complaints Policy and a Self Assessment Form.
I am hoping that someone has already done these and can offer some advice or a template. The Almshouse Association do the template for the Policy and self assessment but I have nothing on the other two documents?
Thanks

[christian.noll]

Hello Elaine,
We are not part of the Ombudsman scheme and handle all resident issues ourselves. So far so good – we have managed to resolve all issues amicably and as part of the community aspect of our housing proposition. Our residents must be ‘of good character’ and we place emphasis on their fit into the community. This brings harmony and the number of real issues is very limited (I exclude maintenance requests). Our equality and diversity policy reminds us to be fair to everyone at all times. I am sure the Ombudsman provides a very valuable service however we have not seen a need in our situation at this time.

[Jan Peake]

Hello Elaine,

I can help. We had no idea that this had been introduced, so had to turn it around very quickly recently . Once I had done a bit of research I discovered the Report and – Governing body reply, could be one document. This really helped us.

Here are our documents on our website. https://www.tauntonheritagetrust.org.uk/complaints-policy-and-procedure/

I am happy to give you a bit more information, if you want to email your contact number, I’ll give you a quick call.

Best wishes

Ros

chiefofficer@tauntonheritagetrust.org.uk

[emmapannell]

I’ve been in email communication with the housing ombudsman this week, following their request for the Annual Submission, which finally found its way to me this week. Their response to me yesterday was that our submission is not due until March 2025, and they said:

“We are currently working with the Almshouse Association, so please also reach out the them if you require any help and support. If you do require anything further before submission date, please do not hesitate to contact us again.”

They have been responsive to my various emails,, and I had explained to them that although we were keen to comply, we are a very small team (without a complaints department etc).

I will now ask the almshouse association direct about their advice on this.

[Clare Heyes]

HI Elaine,

I agree, this is a nightmare. I have a small charity of 5 almshouses that has had to go through this rigmarole! I downloaded the from from the association and literally write two one sentence documents for the other requirements as we have not had a complaint in 23 years! This new compliance is enough to make you leave the Ombudsman scheme. Sorry to be no help at all.

Clare

[Tina LL]

we have done it. our website address is:

Home

We also submitted a return to the Housing Ombudsman via their website.

We need to update our complaints policy after our trustees meeting next week

[emmapannell]

Received yesterday from Danielle Hughes at Almshouse Association Support, who may well post to this forum too:

Good afternoon Emma

We are working with Housing Ombudsman to share guidance and make it more accessible for our members. This is being worked on over the next couple of months so should be ready for when you are required to submit.

Kind regards

Danielle Hughes
Member Support Officer

[Admin Station]

We are working with Housing Ombudsman to share guidance and make it more accessible for our members. This is being worked on over the next couple of months so should be ready for when you are required to submit.

[William Clemmey]

Elaine
We discovered from another Almshouse who had had a complaint from their resident that got raised with the Housing Ombudsman that we needed a Complaints policy on our website so you can see it here
https://municipal-charities.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Complaints-policy-and-procedure-March-2024-.docx.pdf
also our complaints form
https://municipal-charities.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Municipal-Charities-Complaints-leaflet-March-2024.docx.pdf

Then in July we received an email stating we had not complied with having our annual retrun sent to them by 30 June – which sadly we were not even aware was needed
We have now produced this – it includes our Board’s response – see
https://municipal-charities.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Annual-Complaint-Performance-and-service-improvement-report-June-2024-Google-Docs.pdf

We would be happy to send you our 26 page response to the Housing Ombudsman self assessment form – this link may work
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fnGhwQCiOcQzCPCO4tzsnQk7qeLknoWE/edit#heading=h.chfb9ydpswpw

If you need anything else then do get in touch
William Clemmey chiefofficer@municipal-charities.org.uk

[Elaine Winter]

Hi All, Thank you very much for all the comments, especially to Ros at Taunton Heritage Trust. It has been marvellous to get so many responses and has saved me a lot of time.
I think I have everything I need and hopefully this will help others.
Elaine
Tring Charities

[Julie Booth]

Yes we had to do it and as a small charity with only 7 almshouses and four trustees it was extremely difficult to do this in such a short time frame (they gave us about 5 days from me receiving their email to their deadline date) it was very in depth. We had a basic complaints policy but now have had to put alsorts of other policies in place that we didn’t have. Luckily we have one trustee who is used to dealing with things like this.

We haven’t had any complaints since i became a trustee over 25 years ago! It seemed very much for larger housing associations rather than small almshouse charities.

[Linda Russell]

Hi
Yes. I was expecting it next year as our year end finished 25th March and was therefore before this came into force but was asked for us to complete the process. I am now on my third submission. The result is a policy unintelligible to our residents. It is a huge waste of time – hours and hours. We do not have any complaints, but have to write a report etc. We renewed our volunteer membership in June but I will be advising the trustees to withdraw. I know the AA recommend membership but we/residents have received no benefit from their services and this additional work is too much. I am sure if any of our residents felt they had a matter unresolved they would not turn to the HO. They would asked the council or CAB. Though of course they do not have unresolved matters because they just phone me and I sort anything that’s wrong. I think they are making everyone produce a one size fits all policy so that they can take a tick box approach to dealing with complaints.
I have gone through the assessment grid they provided and added the section numbers from our ‘revised’ policy to the evidence section. The assessment grid is available in the HO site. The very long unintelligible letter you most likely received because you had not submitted on time also asks you to write a report addressing certain points and then load that with the assessment grid onto the website – even if the website is not used by residents – just those seeking accommodation. The only people who will then read it are the HO!

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