Localism Bill

My Lords, like the Minister I, too, have been a housing chair in a local authority, for some 11 years. I am also chair of a housing association—an interest that I have declared—and regularly sit at stage 4 of precisely these complaints panels that are the subject of discussion. I am sure that the Minister knows but I wonder whether your Lordships realise how thorough the complaints procedure is, and rightly so, within housing associations and local authorities, particularly encouraged by the TCA of the Homes and Community Agency. At stage 1, the tenant’s complaint—often, it is a neighbour’s complaint against the behaviour of a neighbour of some sort—is investigated by the local senior housing manager. If that is not resolved to the satisfaction of the tenant, stage 2 means that it will go to the housing manager at the top of the organisation, who will then seek to get all the information, build the file and see whether some resolution can be arrived at. If that is not satisfactory, there is a stage 3 where the complaint goes to the chief legal officer, who is usually the deputy chief executive of the housing association, who goes through the file, takes the evidence, makes further notes and attempts again a further resolution of the difficulty. If that is not enough—by this stage, most complaints have been reasonably addressed—the matter goes to stage 4, which involves the panel, chaired by someone like me, alongside the tenant board representatives of the housing association and the senior staff. Five or six of us spend perhaps a couple of hours going through a thick file and seeking as best we can to hear and resolve the tenant's complaints and concerns. In my experience, the tenant nearly always finds that satisfactory. However, if on that occasion the tenant is still not satisfied, having gone through the four stages to the final panel hearing, putting in a fifth stage, bringing in who knows what—perhaps the councillor who sent the letter into stage 2 or the MP who sent a letter into stage 3—as an independent adjudicator, sitting on top of those four stages to decide whether to progress the complaint to the ombudsman, would be to add an absurd additional bureaucratic delay that would stand between a tenant whose complaint, legitimate or otherwise, should by rights be heard by the ombudsman if the appeals system locally has been exhausted. When I, with my modest experience of chairing panels at stage 4 of an elaborate appeals and complaints process, saw these government proposals for a stage 5 to go in before there is the possibility of recourse to the ombudsman, I was baffled beyond belief. If we believe in reducing bureaucracy and regulation, what on earth are we doing putting this in the way of a tenant who feels that they have exhausted all the local appeals and who therefore wants to go to the ombudsman? It is an unnecessary, restrictive and undemocratic block on a tenant's rights.