The company Ombudsman Services has won government approval to operate a redress scheme for lettings and managing agents.
Recent legislative changes mean that all lettings and managing agents will have to belong to an approved redress scheme. Ombudsman Services already offers services for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the managing agents' professional body ARMA, and for the UK Association of Letting Agents, as well as working closely with the National Approved Letting Scheme.
We already have many lettings and managing agents as participating companies and this change does not affect them explains the firm's spokesman, Lewis Shand Smith.
The company operates on a not-for-profit basis and provides dispute resolution services for the property, energy, communications and copyright licensing sectors. It claims that it resolved 19,639 complaints across all of these sectors in 2012-13, with 90 per cent of them being settled within six weeks.
Last year the government announced that all lettings agents must join a redress scheme, saying: Compulsory redress schemes for these agents will ensure agents can be investigated where they have not been clear about fees or other issues, and will provide a cheaper, easier way to pursue compensation if there is a complaint.
However, the redress schemes will not be able to force letting agents to belong to a code of practice. However, it would be possible for tenants and landlords to complain if there had been non-compliance with a voluntary code.
The government says the redress schemes must be free for complainants to use, should be easy to access, and provide full data about complaints in their annual reports.
The main application period for firms to seek approval as redress schemes was January this year; the DCLG says it is not in a position to confirm whether there will be other new firms announced.
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