Page 36 - Solving Housing Disputes

transferred to the court and tribunal digital system, should a party wish to
appeal a dispute. For those who lack digital capability, engagement with the
HDS must be possible through various means – whether over the phone,
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through written correspondence or on the basis of face-to-face approaches
to initiate a dispute or at later stages, where we envisage that much of the work
would be conducted on a face-to-face basis. For certain types of claims, such
as tenancy deposits or low value service charge disputes, consideration should
be given to establishing continuous online resolution within the HDS so far as
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commensurate with parties’ capacity to engage.

2.45 We recommend the HDS feature a prominent landing page, which should
be promoted to appear as the top result when a user types in expressions
like “housing disputes” or “housing problems” into a search engine. User-
facing digital components of the HDS landing page or filing system should
feature design principles which make them accessible and navigable for
lay users. The landing page should include prominent signposting to
sources of independent advice, information and legal advice. Geo-location
tools linking users to nearest advice providers could be embedded into the
landing page, or a user looking for legal advice before initiating a dispute
could insert their postcode data and be signposted to their nearest housing
lawyer, who we envisage would be accessible over the phone, face-to-face or
digitally, based on availability and need (discussed further below).

2.46 The HDS should also be capable of offering basic initial procedural advice to
those who contact it. The Property Ombudsmen (TPO) offers a 24/7 live
webchat function, which offers a first point of contact to assess whether a
dispute is within the TPO’s jurisdiction and to guide claimants to take the
necessary steps (such as exhausting internal complaint processes) before
submitting a formal complaint. We were told by the provider, Yomdel, that

79 The digital case management system should be capable of generating written correspondence to be
mailed out to participants who are unable to access digital processes.

80 A model for continuous online resolution in housing, which is likely to be suitable for financial disputes
where the vast majority of participants are technically literate, could be drawn from the from either the
UK Tenancy Deposit Scheme or the British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal, an online administrative
tribunal which resolves low value money claims, strata disputes and certain motor vehicle accidents
(https://civilresolutionbc.ca/). Both feature a staged approach to dispute resolution, with information and
self-help at stage 1, party-party negotiation at stage 2, facilitated negotiation if party-party is not
successful and then if no resolution can be reached on a consensual basis, a final adjudication stage.

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