The New Home Ombudsman

Discover the Three ways : New Home Ombudsman transforming & Empowering Homeowners and Ensuring Positive Results

 New Homes Ombudsman Service exists to help customers resolve issues with their new homes, which the Registered Developer has been unable or unwilling to fix.

The remit of the New Homes Ombudsman Service covers the whole period from the Reservation and Legal Completion of a property through to after-sales and complaints management for issues during the first two years of a new home purchase.

Primary purpose of NHOS is to provide a free and independent service to customers,  which can impartially assess and adjudicate on issues that have arisen that fall within the Ombudsman’s scope. This includes complaints around the Reservation, Legal Completion and complaints management processes, or issues or defects that have arisen at or after occupation and which are not major defects.

Governance

The New Homes Ombudsman Service is a subsidiary of the Dispute Service Ltd, which is a not for profit company specialising in dispute resolution work in relation to tenancy deposits in the private rented sector and tenant-landlord mediation and conciliation for issues arising during a tenancy.

NHO Service Board oversees the work of the Ombudsman and meets four times a year.  It has a majority of directors who are independent of the housebuilding industry.  Although it has no involvement in decisions taken by the Ombudsman, it does review the operation and management of the Service

Step 1

How to raise your complaint with the New Homes Ombudsman

First, notify the developer of your complaint. If dissatisfied, file a complaint with NHOS, Failing a response from the developer is registered.You can find out if your developer is registered by clicking here.

Step 2

If you are still not happy with their response you can approach NHOS

If the Registered Developer fails to respond fully to you within 56 days of you raising your initial new home sales complaint with them then you can raise a complaint with us.

If the Registered Developer has given you a Final Complaint Closure letter

Step 3

Make sure that you have the information to hand to raise a complaint

To raise a complaint with NHOS you will need to provide us with some information and it would be helpful to get this together before you start the complaint.  For example, we will need details of:

• the property you have Reserved or Purchased.
• details of your new home sales complaint or any evidence to support your complaint [including what you have already sent to the developer].
• what part of the NHQB Quality Code you think the developer may have breached [although if you are not clear on this you can always say “Don’t Know” during your complaint submission process].

Customer Journey video

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