A moment to reflect

In an ever changing and fast paced environment, it is important to take a minute to reflect on how far we have come in the last year.

In April 2022 a new code was introduced by the Housing Ombudsman, and social landlords were asked to self-assess against the code by October 2022. We published a new Complaint Policy and self-assessed against this in November 2022. This policy met the requirements of the Complaint Handling Code and set out the start of improving our complaint handling.

To ensure complaints received the attention they deserved, we selected new complaint handlers who had the authority to handle complaints, the knowledge of the area complained about, able to provide quick investigations and explore appropriate remedies. We then set out to train all these complaint handlers to help them to understand their new complaint handling duties. You can read more on the training we delivered in section 10 of this report.

During this time, we also had a backlog of complaint cases that exceeded the timescales set in the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code and our own Complaint Policy. With oversight from our Leadership team, weekly reporting and a shift in complaint handling culture, these backlog cases were all cleared by May 2023.

Our percentage of complaints responded to on time in 2022-23 was 56.89%, whereas we ended 2023-24 with 88.44% of complaints responded on time. It is worth noting that we also had a 21% increase in complaints in 2023-24 compared to the year prior, showing that even with an increase in demand, we were still able to significantly improve our performance.

Our Governing Body and Leadership Team have agreed to increase our target from 90% of complaints responded on time, to 95% of complaints responded on time, for the following three years in our delivery plan.

Whilst we recognise we still have room for improvement, we are proactively seeking ways to improve the service for our customers, which is evident with our plans scheduled in 2024-25.

The Housing Ombudsman cases that we have provided detail on, relate to cases we reviewed at stage one of our complaints process, in 2021-22. Many of the learnings from those cases have already been implemented as part of our new Complaint Policy and complaint handling processes. We hope to see the change in determinations as cases that relate to 2023-24 start to become independently investigated.