I've an experience that will tell you all you need to know about this disgraceful organisation.I made a complaint about my housing association, and the HO's response was completely inadequate: basically, it said my housing association had done nothing wrong. Suspecting collusion between them, I made a Subject Access Request to see what had passed between them. I was told that there was one telephone call made between a HO caseworker and a housing officer but that 'they couldn't find the recording'. I persisted, they finally 'found' the recording, but they wouldn't let me have a copy of it, just a transcript.When I got the transcript, it was heavily redacted. They are required to redact names and anything that could identify someone, but these redactions went way beyond that - some pages were mostly blacked out.I figured out a way to get around the redactions and what I saw shocked me. Those redactions were there to cover up (1) the caseworker openly colluding with the housing officer and (2) the caseworker making highly unprofessional remarks about me. A few examples of remarks that were blacked out:1) The caseworker described my complaint as a 'real tale of woe'.2) Her describing my allegations as 'inflammatory' which probably means she thought I was lying, even though she could have had no reason to.3) Her saying that if I mounted an appeal about the Ombudsman's decision, they would, in her words, 'bat it away'.4) Her saying to the housing officer, "You know, we get these people (meaning me). You get them, we get them..." Basically saying that I was one of those people addicted to making vexatious complaints.5) Just before ending the call, the caseworker, referring to me, saying, "Oh, he's a pleasure, but we'll see what we can do with him".No wonder these remarks were redacted.I sent the Ombudsman my own version of the transcript, with the redacted passages highlighted, and an explanation of just how this caseworker's conduct was unprofessional. I got a reply from the Ombudsman himself: he said she'd done nothing wrong.And one last thing that you're probably not going to believe: he actually asked me how I'd got around the redaction, and told me he wanted to know this to prevent anyone else doing it in the future.Is the Housing Ombudsman Service corrupt? I think you can guess what my answer is.
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