Exclusions

Section 2 of the Complaint Handling Code allows landlords to exclude a complaint from the complaints process if there is valid reason to do so. Our Complaint Policy sets out our exclusions. We have excluded a total of 219 cases in 2023-24. We record the complaint as received, and close the complaint down as excluded. Currently our complaint recording system does not allow us to capture what type of exclusion has been applied.

From looking at some of the raw data, we can make an educated estimate that the majority of these relate to service requests. We recognise that we need a way of differentiating these exclusions so we can make informed decisions on what the data is telling us. In section 12 we detail the upcoming improvements with our complaint recording system scheduled for 2024-25, which will include this development.

What is a service request?  

A service request is a request from a resident to the landlord requiring action to be taken to put something right. A complaint must be raised when a resident expresses dissatisfaction with the handling of the service request.

For example, if a customer raises a complaint that their windows need of a repair and this has not been raised before, this would be excluded from the complaints process and a service request raised for a job to repair the windows. If the customer makes contact again showing dissatisfaction with the service request, this will be accepted as a stage one complaint.

Why are there a high volume of suspected service requests?  

We have looked at our data and recognise that a lot of our service requests are made using our online customer portal, My Account. My Account allows customers to log their own complaints.

There are options to raise a repair or raise an anti-social behaviour (ASB) case, however, these are not always selected by the customer. Our Digital Service Developer is looking into why this might be the case and monitoring excluded complaint service requests through My Account over the coming months. 

We added an option to report damp & mould as a service request, as part of our review of the Damp & Mould Spotlight. Alongside this we are arranging to have an option to report fly-tipping on our website, separately to reporting ASB; we found a reoccurring trend that customers consider fly-tipping a complaint rather than making a report of ASB.

The Customer Team have had an increase in calls which has meant in some cases customers will abandon the call and report their concern as a complaint instead. The Customer Team have plans in place to improve the call abandonment rate, including the employment of more Customer Liaison Officers. This should help to lower the volume of service requests received.