Your landlord ignores your repair requests for three months. You chase by email and hear nothing. Your options have long been to keep chasing, go to court, or give up, and most tenants gave up.
The Renters' Rights Act 2025 is changing that. It creates a mandatory Private Rented Sector (PRS) Landlord Ombudsman that every private landlord in England will have to join, with civil penalties for those who don't. Once it launches, a landlord ombudsman complaint will be a real, binding process rather than a letter you send into the void.
The scheme is not live yet. It is expected around 2028, so this guide covers how it will work, how to prepare for it, and the routes you can already use in the meantime.
What the mandatory landlord redress scheme will require
The Renters' Rights Act 2025 will require all private landlords to register with the PRS Landlord Ombudsman. This is not a voluntary code. Landlords who fail to register will face civil penalties, and once that duty is in force a tenant will be able to cite non-registration as part of a wider complaint or, in time, as part of the enforcement that can lead to a Rent Repayment Order.
The scheme will cover disputes about property maintenance, rental terms, and unfair treatment or discrimination. Critically, the Ombudsman's decisions will be binding on landlords. That word matters. Informal dispute resolution has always given landlords room to ignore outcomes they disliked, and the PRS Ombudsman removes that room.
The scheme is not live yet. Full implementation is expected around 2028, and the timing depends on the secondary legislation that sets it up. Until then, the routes further down this guide are what you rely on.
Social housing tenants and tenants of letting agents have had access to redress schemes for years. Private renters have not. The Renters' Rights Act closes that gap, aligning private sector redress with what already exists for social housing.
What you can and cannot complain about
The Ombudsman will handle disputes, not crimes. The distinction matters because tenants sometimes take complaints to the wrong body and then wonder why nothing happens.
The scheme is expected to cover complaints about:
- failure to carry out repairs within a reasonable time
- disputes over rental terms written into your agreement
- unfair treatment or discrimination in how your landlord has dealt with you
- conduct issues like poor communication or failure to follow correct procedures
You cannot use the Ombudsman to pursue criminal landlord behaviour, like illegal eviction or unlawful entry. Those go to the police and local council. You also cannot use the Ombudsman to recover a withheld deposit, because deposit disputes have their own dedicated adjudication process through government-approved deposit protection schemes.
For harassment specifically, the Ombudsman is one route but not the only one. Our article on what counts as landlord harassment and how to stop it lays out the full set of options, including which situations call for council intervention rather than an ombudsman complaint.
The Ombudsman also does not replace the tribunal system for rent repayment orders or disrepair claims. Think of it as a first-tier dispute resolution body. If the conduct is serious enough to warrant financial penalties, a tribunal is where you escalate.
How to make your complaint before you reach the Ombudsman
The PRS Ombudsman will require you to have raised the complaint with your landlord first. This is standard practice across all ombudsman schemes. Skip this step and your complaint gets bounced back.
That means your paper trail is everything. Email your landlord with a clear description of the problem, a specific deadline for their response (14 days is standard), and a reference to the relevant obligation. If you have a repair issue, cite the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. If it is a conduct issue, describe the specific incident and date.
Do not send a vague message saying things are not right. Send a letter before action. A formal letter citing legislation does two things: it shows the Ombudsman you tried to resolve the matter, and it often prompts landlords to act without you needing to escalate at all.
Remedy drafts these formal letters for tenants, citing the relevant legislation and checking it for accuracy, and its free assessment gives you a clear read of your legal position before you write anything.
Keep every exchange, including screenshots of messages and exported text logs. The Ombudsman will want evidence that the issue was raised and then ignored or inadequately addressed.
How the PRS Ombudsman complaint process will work
This is how the process is expected to run once the scheme opens. It is worth knowing now, because the preparation is the same whether you take a case to the Ombudsman later or to court today. Once you have raised the issue with your landlord and received an inadequate response, or no response after a reasonable time, you will be able to submit a formal complaint to the PRS Ombudsman.
Step one: gather your evidence. This means your tenancy agreement, all correspondence with the landlord, photos if the complaint involves disrepair, and any professional reports (like a gas engineer's finding). Evidence gathering is the part most tenants underestimate. An undocumented complaint is a weak complaint.
Step two: submit to the Ombudsman. The scheme is expected to provide an online complaint portal. You will describe the issue clearly, explain what resolution you are seeking, and attach your evidence.
Step three: the Ombudsman investigates. Both sides get to respond. The Ombudsman may request additional information. This is not a quick process, typically taking several months.
Step four: a binding decision is issued. The Ombudsman can require the landlord to take specific action, pay compensation, or apologise formally. If the landlord refuses to comply with a binding decision, they face further penalties.
Remedy supports you through evidence gathering and can help you file directly with the right body. It also gives you an estimated claim value and a read on which route, the Ombudsman later or a tribunal or court now, is likely to give you a better outcome.
When to use a tribunal or court instead of the Ombudsman
The PRS Ombudsman will be the most accessible route, but it cannot award the money a tribunal or court can.
For financial recovery, a Rent Repayment Order through the First-tier Tribunal can award up to 2 years' rent for offences committed on or after 1 May 2026 (12 months for earlier offences). The Ombudsman cannot. If your landlord has committed a qualifying offence like running an unlicensed HMO or illegally evicting you, a tribunal is where you get real money back. An unprotected deposit is a separate county court claim worth one to three times the deposit.
For disrepair that has affected your health or damaged your belongings, a County Court claim for damages, brought on the Part 7 form N1, is usually the right route rather than the Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman scheme will suit conduct complaints where you want the landlord held to account and required to act, but where the financial stakes are lower, such as a landlord who ignores emails for months, applies rental terms inconsistently, or never acknowledges a repair request.
For higher-stakes situations, check whether you are eligible for a Rent Repayment Order. The two routes are not mutually exclusive. You can make an Ombudsman complaint about conduct while separately pursuing a financial claim through the tribunal, and Remedy can assess both at once.
Why an ombudsman complaint gets rejected
Ombudsman schemes reject a significant proportion of complaints. Most rejections are avoidable.
The most common reason a complaint fails before it starts is no evidence of prior contact with the landlord. If you cannot show you raised the issue formally, the complaint is dead on arrival. The Ombudsman's job is to assess whether the landlord failed to resolve something after being given the opportunity, and no opportunity given means nothing to assess.
The next most common is submitting too early. You need to give the landlord a reasonable time to respond and act. As a general expectation, non-urgent repairs are given about 14 days and emergencies around 24 hours, and submitting before that window closes weakens your complaint.
Complaints outside the scheme's scope also bounce. A rent increase, for instance, follows a separate statutory process under Section 13, so it is rejected if you route it through the Ombudsman. See our guide on what to do when your landlord raises your rent.
The last common failure is vagueness. "My landlord is difficult" is not a complaint. "My landlord received written notice of a boiler fault on 3 March 2026, acknowledged it on 4 March, and took no action for six weeks despite two follow-up emails" is a complaint. Specificity wins.
How the end of Section 21 strengthens a complaining tenant
The abolition of Section 21 evictions on 1 May 2026 removed the landlord's main no-fault exit route. What replaced it is a more formal, rights-based tenancy system, and the PRS Ombudsman will be part of that infrastructure once it launches.
Landlords can no longer terminate a tenancy without grounds. That changes the power dynamic in a dispute. A tenant who raises a complaint no longer faces the threat of a Section 21 notice as an informal mechanism to shut the complaint down. The Renters Rights Act explicitly prohibits retaliatory eviction as a response to a tenant exercising their rights.
That does not mean the risk disappears overnight. Some landlords will try to find other grounds to end tenancies after complaints are raised. But the legal barrier is now real rather than theoretical. If you receive any eviction notice after raising an Ombudsman complaint, take advice immediately. Timing matters for a retaliatory eviction defence.
For the full picture of what Section 21's abolition means for your tenancy security, our article Section 21 ends on 1 May 2026 covers the transition in detail. The short version is that your position as a complaining tenant is materially stronger than before.
When the PRS Ombudsman opens, a landlord complaint will be a binding first formal step rather than a last resort. Until then, the tribunal and county court routes above are what carry real consequences for a landlord who ignores you, and the organised, specific, well-documented case you build now is what wins in either forum.
If you are not sure whether your situation calls for a court claim, a Rent Repayment Order, or a future Ombudsman complaint, start with Remedy's free assessment. You get a clear read of your legal position and which route gives you the best outcome, and if your case has financial value, Remedy's no-win-no-fee support means you do not pay unless you win.
