Complaint handling performance

Here you can see how our housing landlord service has performed on handling complaints in 2023-24.

Number of complaints opened

Number of Stage One complaints opened 27
Number of Stage Two complaints opened 2
Number of Housing Ombudsman investigations 1
Total 30

Reasons for complaints

Repairs and maintenance 15
Tenancy services 4
Communal areas 4
Anti-social behaviour 3
Housing allocations 2
Rents 1
Leasehold services 1
Total 30

Stage One and Stage Two complaint response timescales

Complaints responded to within timescales 21
Complaints not responded to within timescales 8
Total 29

Complaint outcomes

Complaint upheld 5
Complaint partially upheld 7
Complaint not upheld 16
Complaint withdrawn 1
Complaint determined by the Housing Ombudsman - no maladministration but service failure in complaint handling 1
Total 30

How we have learned from complaints and made improvements to services

When we get things wrong we apologise and put things right. This may include looking at changing our policies or procedures to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again, or we may provide training to staff to increase their awareness or skills in a particular area if needed. If it is a complaint about something we haven’t done, for example a repair, we’ll make sure it gets done right away.

Improvements as a result of learning from complaints is an important part of a positive and effective complaint handling culture. This year we’ve made improvements to how we do things. For example:

  • We received a pattern of complaints about the standard of cleaning of communal areas. We discussed how improvements should be made with our cleaning contractor. Since then, performance of the cleaning contract has improved and there have to date been no further formal complaints received about the issue.
  • In relation to a complaint about how we handled a report of anti-social behaviour, this found we needed to improve how we support vulnerable residents affected by anti-social behaviour. We’ve since put together a procedure to make sure we’re providing better support to residents.