Damp in the child's bedroom. Reported nine months earlier. Two contractors booked, both no-shows. Two more phone calls that went nowhere. The housing association's complaints team said they'd "look into it" and never came back.
The formal letter did what the phone calls hadn't. It cited the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 - the tenant's implied right to a fit-for-habitation home from day one of the tenancy. It named the Housing Ombudsman explicitly as the escalation route if the complaint wasn't resolved.
Eleven days later, an inspection was booked, an apology issued in writing, £250 offered as compensation for the delay, and remedial work started within two weeks. The child's bedroom got dry.
The tenant said afterwards the difference wasn't the words she'd used. It was that they'd been aimed at the exact bit of the association's own complaints policy that named the Ombudsman as the next step. That naming does the work.