Complaints - by decision, landlord, representative and compensation

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Dear Housing Ombudsman Service,

Please can you supply me with a breakdown for April 2010- March 2011 of:
a) complaints received into the Ombudsman service by landlord (name of)
b) complaints decided on by decision reason and landlord
c) compensation payments recommended by landlord
d) complaints received (total and percentage) where the complainant was represented by a local councillor
e) complaints received (total and percentage) where the complainant was represented by a MP

Yours faithfully,

Mr Z Arran

Rafael Runco, Housing Ombudsman Service

Dear Mr Arran

I acknowledge receipt of your request. We will respond to you as soon as
possible and no later than 22 July 2011.

In the meantime, you may wish to consider the approach to requests such as
yours described in the Freedom of Information section of our website,
[1]www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk.

Yours sincerely,

Rafael Runco
Deputy Ombudsman
Housing Ombudsman Service

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Rafael Runco, Housing Ombudsman Service

Dear Mr Arran.

I am writing in response to your request.

As you may be aware, the Housing Ombudsman Service is not a listed body in
Schedule One of the Freedom of Information Act. Nevertheless, the
Ombudsman has agreed to deal with requests for information within the
terms of the Act when at all possible. Nor is the Service funded by the
taxpayer, be it in the form of central government or other sources of
grant-in-aid in the public sector; we are, therefore, obliged to charge
for information when it is not readily available and the work involved in
producing it is resource-intensive.

I confirm that we process the information you request for item a). We
partially process information for items b) and c) . We do not process
information for items d) and e).

For the reason given above we will need to charge you for fulfilling your
request. The cost will be **40 if you wish to receive hard copy, and **30
for electronic files.

If you wish to proceed with your request please send me a cheque for the
relevant amount made to IHO Ltd so that I authorise the actions necessary
to supply you with the information in question. Could you please also send
us your full name and address if you wish to receive the information in
hard copy.

Yours sincerely,

Rafael Runco
Deputy Ombudsman
Housing Ombudsman Service

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Dear Rafael Runco,

Can I firstly clarify if the proposed charge would be made to access any or all of the information you hold and process? Or is the charge just for the information that you partially process?

Could you also clarify the information that is partially processed ie what would this information include and how would it differ from that originally requested?

Yours sincerely,

Mr Z Arran

Rafael Runco, Housing Ombudsman Service

Dear Z Arran,

We process (or hold) only certain information from our cases. The
information concerned can be made available providing a request meets the
usual tests (confidentiality, data protection, public interest, commercial
sensitivity, proportionality, and so on). We charge for fulfilling a
request when the information involved is not in a ready form; that is to
say, when we have to produce it specifically for the request. We also have
to charge for any copying, postage, and packing when we cannot produce the
information in electronic form (many of the documents involved are on hard
copy only).

So, in answer to your questions, and following the order of your request,
I confirm that the information we can provide you regarding the period
April 2010 and March 2011 is:

a) complaints received into the Ombudsman service by landlord (name
of) - YES, we can send you a list with all such complaints; this may
involve listing some 4,000 items.

b) complaints decided on by decision reason and landlord - PARTIALLY, we
can send you a list with the decisions we made by landlord but not with
full reasons.

c) compensation payments recommended by landlord - PARTIALLY, we cannot
provide this information in full because producing it would be
disproportionate to our resources (it will require extracting data from
manual files) and may in some cases breach confidentiality, commercial
sensitivity (our landlords are private bodies), and possibly data
protection; we may be able to provide you with some of this information
but we will not know exactly what until we search for it.

d) complaints received (total and percentage) where the complainant
was represented by a local councillor - NO, we do not process (or hold)
this information.

e) complaints received (total and percentage) where the complainant
was represented by a MP - NO, we do not process (or hold) this
information.

Yours sincerely,

Rafael Runco
Deputy Ombudsman
Housing Ombudsman Service

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