England's statutory New Homes Ombudsman goes live on 7 September. A third of the market still isn't in it.
The government's statutory New Homes Ombudsman scheme starts 7 September 2026, making membership mandatory for all residential developers in England.
The government's statutory New Homes Ombudsman scheme will go live on 7 September 2026, making membership compulsory for every residential developer in England. The contract — valued at £12 million excluding VAT and running to September 2031 — was procured under powers in the Building Safety Act 2022 and formally tendered in February 2026. Around a third to two-fifths of the new homes market is not currently registered with the voluntary scheme.
What happened
In October 2024, the government accepted a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recommendation to activate statutory powers for a mandatory New Homes Ombudsman, alongside implementing a single consumer code for all housebuilders operating in Great Britain. A procurement exercise was published in May 2025. A tender opened in February 2026. The contract for the statutory scheme runs from 7 September 2026 to 6 September 2031.
Under the Building Safety Act 2022, the Secretary of State has the power to require any developer that does not join voluntarily to do so. Developers must register, pay a fee linked to their annual turnover from private home sales, provide company information, and demonstrate internal processes for handling complaints.
The voluntary New Homes Ombudsman Service — established by the New Homes Quality Board in 2022 — has handled over 11,000 enquiries and complaints since launch, upholding approximately 70% of resolved cases. Binding decisions have required developers to carry out remedial works, pay compensation of up to £75,000, reimburse expenses, and amend internal processes. More than 98% of cases have been resolved within three months.
The HCLG Select Committee, in its May 2026 report on new build quality, estimated that around 35–40% of the new homes market sits outside the voluntary NHOS — a figure the committee cited when calling for mandatory coverage by end of 2028/29. The statutory procurement, already under way, brings that deadline forward by over two years.
Why it matters for developers
For developers currently outside the voluntary scheme, September is effectively immediate. Registration will require demonstrating complaint-handling procedures that comply with the code. But in practice, an NHOS case is won or lost on documentation: what was inspected before completion, what defects were raised and when, and what was done to resolve them.
The NHOS already upholds around seven in ten cases it resolves. The cases that fail for developers typically lack a defensible record at the plot level — not the facts in dispute, but the evidence to support them. That gap is much harder to close after a complaint arrives than before one does.
Developers already registered with the NHQB should not assume the statutory scheme is identical to the voluntary one. A new operator, a statutory footing, and a potentially merged consumer code may introduce differences in process and expectation.
What to watch
The contract operator for the statutory scheme had not been publicly announced as of June 2026. The CMA's recommendation for a single consumer code — which would align the NHQB's existing code with the statutory scheme — is expected to follow the scheme's launch. Developers not currently registered should treat 7 September as a hard operational deadline: complaint procedures, pre-completion inspection records, and aftercare documentation all need to be in place before that date, not after the first referral arrives.
How Guided Home helps
When an NHOS referral arrives, the defence is documentation — a timestamped, plot-level record of what was inspected, what was raised, what was communicated, and what was resolved.
Guided Home's Inspections and Defects module captures that record from pre-completion through the defects liability period: structured, auditable, built to the evidence standard an ombudsman review expects rather than retrofitted after a complaint lands. The Document Assurance engine confirms that mandatory documentation — home user guides, warranty certificates, safety information — was present at handover and acknowledged by the buyer, with read-receipt tracking against every document.
Where homeowners have questions after handover, Hugo answers directly from their record — reducing the volume of routine queries that reach customer care and creating a traceable log of every interaction with the resident.
For customer care directors managing complaint risk across multiple sites, the Executive Dashboard surfaces defect volumes, resolution timelines and outstanding items in a single portfolio view.
Sources
- UK Find a Tender — Notice 069766-2025: New Homes Ombudsman Scheme (Gov.uk)
- Mortgage Solutions — "Govt to make New Homes Ombudsman mandatory and protect privately-managed homeowners" (22 October 2024)
- CIOB — "UK government announces support for a mandatory New Homes Ombudsman scheme"
- New Homes Ombudsman Service — Written evidence to HCLG Select Committee [HCE 040]
- MFMac — "New Homes Ombudsman Scheme under Building Safety Act 2022"