Page 23 - Solving Housing Disputes

but wholesale across the housing sector. Rather than housing problems,
conditions and relationships festering, regulatory action - if needed - would
be promptly taken, issues proactively identified and the underlying
motivations and interests of parties to housing relationships explored in a
mediative fashion. These are the primary objectives as distinct from punishing
parties for their failings and faults. The culture must be one of substituting an
examination of issues with a view to improving performance, for the
allocation of blame and the imposition of penalties. This culture will need to
be established from the beginning and will need to be articulated to
participants and those looking to use the service. Because the investigation is
not confined to strictly legal issues, parties’ motives, which may well be
legally irrelevant, can play a proper part. The landlord who has, through
misunderstanding or mistake, failed in their duties need not be treated in the
same way as the landlord who has taken the same action on a calculated basis,
whether to make a greater profit and/or to harm the tenant. The aim is to find
solutions and remedies which most closely match the justice of the issue and
the parties’ aspirations for resolution of the dispute.

2.17 The exercise might be described as one in which the housing relationship is
turned over to the HDS to be brought up to standard and handed back to the
46
parties fully compliant and functional. It combines an advisory approach
with active assistance, enforcement of regulatory and contractual compliance,
and dispute resolution. It is not envisaged that the service would be a
regulator, but that it would work closely with the various housing and property
regulators. It would feed data on disputes back to regulators to create a
continuing cycle of enforcement, regulatory provision and improvement of
housing standards. The service must be accessible in various ways (face-to-
47
face, over the phone, digitally), widely known to be a free service to use and
conduct itself in a user-friendly manner in which it is easy for people to
participate. The approach would be multi-disciplinary with, so far as possible,
skills embedded to contribute to a culture not dominated by any one skill and
which, so far as possible, is able to effect actual solutions, rather than referring
people elsewhere. It would use whatever mechanisms are appropriate to
resolve the problems which have brought the matter to its attention and which

46 Primarily, this refers to landlord and tenant, but again it includes local authorities, landlords and others.

47 Subject to such subscription as a landlord may be required to pay for the HDS as a redress scheme,
see para 2.80-2.81.

17