The Housing Ombudsman Service 2025

In 2023 and 2024, we worked with the Housing Ombudsman Service to deliver human rights staff capacity workshops across the service. These workshops looked at the Human Rights Act 1998, and how staff can use it in their work when considering complaints about social housing landlords. We looked at key human rights that were relevant to the service, as well as case studies showing how human rights applies to the housing sector, and we shared tools, such as the FAIR model.

After the workshops, staff who attended wanted to learn more about human rights in their work to increase their confidence and to top up their knowledge. They shared ideas, including “Case examples, pulling off data from the case management system that could be used for this purpose, looking at possible standard paragraphs.” And “The more Examples the better, we can add to the Casework list”.

We took these suggestions and worked with the senior management team at the Housing Ombudsman Service to figure out how to build on the training we provided through the workshops, and in 2025, we worked with the Housing Ombudsman Service once again to co-produce an internal human rights guide for service staff to use every day in their work. The guide would address some of the participant feedback by providing case studies and practical tools that staff could use.