Guidance

How to report a problem or make an individual complaint about your social housing landlord

What to do if you live in social housing and you have a problem with your home or landlord

Applies to England

Making a complaint

Everyone deserves a safe and secure home.

If you live in social housing and you have an issue with your home or your landlord, there are ways to make things right.

Complaints could include:

  • repairs and maintenance
  • issues with communal areas
  • health and safety issues

Advice on how to make a complaint, and who to address your concerns to, is available here:

Making a complaint about building safety concerns

For advice on how to make a complaint where it relates to issues in a high-rise residential building that could lead to fire spreading  or to part or all of the building collapsing, and who to address your concerns to, see ‘contacting the building safety regulator’.

Making a referral to us

We regulate at the landlord level, which means that we look at how well the landlord is delivering the outcomes of our standards overall. You can find out more about our approach to regulation here.

Our role is not to resolve individual disputes between tenants and landlords. This is the role of the Housing Ombudsman Service. We signpost tenants and their representatives who have individual complaints to the Ombudsman.

When information about a landlord is referred to us, we look at it to understand whether the issue may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards.

To understand more about what we do and how we regulate social landlords, please read How we regulate.

If you want to make a referral about a social landlord to us, you can find out how to do it here.

This guide includes information on what you need to tell us, where you can send it and what to expect afterwards.

Privacy notice

Our privacy notice explains how we process and protect your personal information in line with data protection legislation and sets out your rights.

Updates to this page

Published 2 April 2024
Last updated 14 May 2024 + show all updates
  1. Addition of guidance on making a complaint about building safety concerns.

  2. First published.

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