Localism Bill

My Lords, it has been a very interesting and helpful debate, mostly coming from people who understand the process in place at the moment. There has been a lot of talk about arbitration. However, this is not about arbitration; it is about resolution. It is about somebody having a problem and needing it resolved. They need somebody to write a letter to the housing chairman. They need somebody to write a letter because they have been through the process and they have not got a reasonable answer. As former councillors, we have all done precisely this and made sure that there is some means of resolving a problem for tenants. To say that councillors, MPs, and now tenants cannot do this seems absurd. One of the reasons for suggesting that people take their complaints through one of those filters—if that is what they are—is, as my noble friend Lord Tope said, that there is a strong belief that removing housing by and large from the direct control and interest of councils and taking it to ALMOs and housing associations means that councillors and MPs become disconnected from the problems. Councillors in particular ought to know what is going on in the housing stock in their borough. I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, knows exactly what she is doing and has a very good complaints procedure. I am not sure that is true of every ALMO or even of the way council properties are run. So we want to reconnect councillors and MPs with what is going wrong within their area. Can we dump the suggestion of arbitration? Nobody is asking them to arbitrate. We are asking them to resolve a problem. If they cannot resolve the problem, they would be required to pass the matter on to the Local Government Ombudsman with the agreement of the complainant. I do not want there to be any misunderstanding. We recognise that the Housing Ombudsman does an extremely good job. There is no doubt about that. It is responsive and it knows what it is doing. This is not about trying to exclude the ombudsman from the system. But the Housing Ombudsman has an enormous case load which went up by 72 per cent between 2007-08 and 2009-10. Maybe that reflects the fact that there are more complaints coming forward about housing, which could be dealt with locally if there was the opportunity to do so. An additional 11 per cent of complaints have been made in the past year. We want to ensure that the ombudsman is not the first port of call. We do not want the immediate response to be, ““Oh, I’m going off to the ombudsman””. There should be a step before that; namely, going to one’s tenants panel, a councillor or an MP and seeing whether the matter can first be resolved through them. A dual-track model currently applies to complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman. In practice, although the ombudsman does not collect detailed statistics, complaints are almost always submitted directly to the ombudsman and not via local councillors. Therefore, we are not convinced that this model will help local complaint resolution. I have listened carefully to what has been said and I know that these matters have been raised over a number of weeks. I understand what has been said about discussions passing a last barrier point between the council or tenants panel to the ombudsman. I am not clear that dual track increases the number of ways of resolving complaints, but I have heard what has been said. Bearing in mind what was said by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Tope, and my noble friends Lord True and Lady Eaton, who all see the advantage of an initial stage, I am happy to look again at the second stage and how a matter would get to the ombudsman. I give a commitment to do that before the next stage of the Bill so that we can discuss how we think that could take over. We feel that this would be a good way to proceed. I hope that both my noble friends and the noble Lords opposite will be content for us to see whether there is a way through here without absolutely undermining the provisions that the Government wish to introduce. The Government believe that local people who are associated with local housing and have become disconnected from it should be aware of what is going on and be capable of dealing with a lot of the problems that tenants have without them having to approach the ombudsman. My offer is one of discussions to see whether there is a way through. If we have not found one by Third Reading, we will be able to deal with the matter then. On that basis, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.