The Ombudsman made 16 findings against Dacorum as a landlord in 2025/26, one of severe maladministration over damp and mould. Repairs drove 358 complaints.
The Housing Ombudsman made 16 findings against Dacorum Borough Council as a landlord in the year to March 2026. One was severe maladministration over the handling of a damp and mould case.
The council was ordered to pay £8,487 in compensation across eight Ombudsman decisions. That is an improvement on the year before, which had five more decisions, twelve more findings of maladministration and £6,138 more in compensation.
The figures are in the council’s Annual Complaints Report for 2025/26, which goes to Cabinet on Tuesday 6 October (Annual Complaints Report 2025/26). Going by the complaint rates in the report, Dacorum is landlord to about 10,000 homes. It benchmarks itself against other councils with more than 10,000 properties.
What the Ombudsman found
The eight decisions, known as determinations, contained:
- one finding of severe maladministration, for handling a damp and mould case
- 13 findings of maladministration
- two findings of service failure, for complaint handling and for handling damp and mould repairs
The 13 maladministration findings break down as follows.
- six about complaint handling
- three about handling reports of anti-social behaviour between tenants
- two about repairs
- one about a request for reasonable adjustments
- one about void works, the repairs done to an empty home before it is let again
From the report’s comparison, the year before brought 13 determinations, 25 findings of maladministration and £14,625 in compensation orders.
Repairs are behind most complaints
Tenants and leaseholders made 614 complaints about the council’s housing and property services in 2025/26:
- 549 at Stage 1, down from 585 the year before
- 65 at Stage 2, when a complainant is unhappy with the first answer, down from 79
358 of the 614 were about responsive repairs. The report says the common themes are delays, the quality of work, damp and mould, repeat repairs and poor communication. Around half of the complaints about poor quality also mentioned damp and mould.
The council answered 94.2% of Stage 1 complaints and 81.1% of Stage 2 complaints on time. But it agreed with the complainant more often than not:
- 55.8% of Stage 1 complaints were upheld
- just over 37% of Stage 2 complaints were upheld, up from 31%
- 75% of Stage 1 complaints about delays were upheld, the highest rate of any type
Only 32.6% of people who complained were satisfied with how it was handled. The report calls that “low” and says dissatisfaction comes mainly from “unresolved underlying service issues and poor follow-through, rather than the complaints process itself”.
Complaints also rose sharply in March 2026, above both the national and peer averages, before falling back in April. The report links winter peaks to weather driving up repair requests.
What tenants say in the satisfaction survey
A second report to the same Cabinet sets out the council’s Tenant Satisfaction Measures, which every social landlord in England must collect for the Regulator of Social Housing (Tenant Satisfaction Measures report, 6 October 2026).
Overall satisfaction rose to 62%. The council says tenant perception improved on every measure this year. The weakest results are:
- 44.9% satisfied that the council listens to their views and acts on them
- 27.5% satisfied with the council’s approach to handling complaints
The survey’s 1,232 written comments most often mentioned repairs, waiting and service, and named windows, kitchens, bathrooms and mould or damp.
The landlord measures look much stronger. The council reports 100% on gas, fire, asbestos, water and lift safety checks. Homes failing the Decent Homes standard fell to 1.6%, from 5.1% in 2023/24. About 95% of routine repairs and more than 99% of emergency repairs were done within the target times (Tenant Satisfaction Measures annual report 2025/26).
The council’s own summary is that there is “a disconnect between measured performance and resident perception”. Repairs are increasingly “on time”, but tenants do not feel the difference.
A correction to the council’s own figures
The satisfaction report admits that its anti-social behaviour figures for 2023/24 and 2024/25 left out some cases, so were too low. It says they “cannot be reliably corrected”.
The new figure for 2025/26 appears twice in the same report, as 14.4 cases per 1,000 homes in the results table and as 14.8 in the footnote that explains the error. Either way it is well above the 8.6 reported for 2024/25, mostly because the old figure was incomplete.
What the council says it will do
The complaints report sets out priorities for 2026/27:
- better resolution and follow-through on complaints
- clearer communication with residents, especially about delays
- fewer repairs complaints, through better service and contractor management
- learning from complaints across every service
It says damp and mould reports are now treated as a priority following Awaab’s Law, which puts legal duties on social landlords to deal with those hazards promptly. Cabinet is asked only to note both reports; there is no vote on spending.
What it means for you
If you rent from Dacorum Borough Council and have a problem with a repair, damp or mould, or a neighbour, these are the routes open to you.
- Complain to the council first. Complaints can be made and tracked through the council’s MyDacorum online account, which the report credits for the faster response times.
- Ask for Stage 2 if you are unhappy with the first answer.
- Go to the Housing Ombudsman if you are still unhappy after Stage 2. The Ombudsman’s decisions are what produced the findings and compensation in this story.
The full figures are in the Cabinet papers for 6 October, along with the council’s Complaints Improvement Action Plan.
Sources
- Dacorum Borough Council, Annual Complaints Report 2025/26, for the Ombudsman determinations and findings, the compensation figures, complaint volumes, response times, uphold rates, satisfaction with complaint handling, the March spike and the 2026/27 priorities.
- Cabinet report, Annual Complaints Report, 6 October 2026, for the 614 total and the 358 repairs complaints.
- Cabinet report, Tenant Satisfaction Measures 2025/26 and its Appendix A annual report, for overall satisfaction, the perception scores, the safety, decency and repairs measures, the written comments and the anti-social behaviour correction.
- Cabinet agenda, 6 October 2026, for the meeting date and the recommendations.
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