The Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code

Their service is free, independent and impartial for our customers to access.

The Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code sets out requirements for us, and other landlords, to follow so that we respond to complaints effectively and fairly. The purpose of the Code is to enable landlords to resolve complaints raised by their customers quickly and to use the data and learning from complaints to drive service improvements.

It became statutory from 1 April 2024 and also places a legal duty on the Ombudsman to monitor whether housing associations comply with the Code, regardless of whether they have receive a complaint from customers about their landlord.

To find out more about the Code, see:

• The Housing Ombudsman Service

How we ensure we comply with the code

Cottsway fully supports the Code and we assess our practices against this to ensure we are complying. 

Each year we are required to:

• Carry out a self-assessment to ensure we are complying with the Code: we do this annually, or whenever we introduce major service changes that may affect customer’s satisfaction. This is then submitted to the Housing Ombudsman to review.

• Produce an annual report: which summarises the complaints we’ve received, any compensation awarded and any service changes / improvements we have introduced as a result.

• Submit our findings to Housing Ombudsman alongside our Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs). 

Read our latest:

• Self-assessment (published April 2025)
• Complaints and service improvement: Annual report 2025
• Tenant Satisfactions Measures (TMSs)