Service improvements arising from complaints

At mhs we recognise the true value in complaints and how they identify where, as an organisation, we need to make changes in our service delivery.

In 2023-24 we introduced the capturing of learnings identified from complaints. In our complaint responses we also explain to the complainant what we have learnt from their complaint. Customers then have visibility into what we are doing to improve and can see we have listened and acted on their feedback.

In section 12 you can read about what we are doing to improve the data collection of the lessons learnt from complaints in 2024-25.

Many of our learnings from complaints are quick low-level changes, often originating from human error or time constraints. For example:

  • Feedback to a contractor  
  • A slight change in wording in a letter  
  • A minor change to a policy or process  
  • Reminding colleagues of a correct way of doing something

There are other learnings where trends have been identified for improvements within a service. Below shows in more detail some of the wider service improvements we have made.

Damp & Mould

In 2020 we saw the harrowing news of the passing of two-year-old, Awaab Ishak, due to exposure of mould in the home. The Housing Ombudsman released their Spotlight Report on Damp and Mould in October 2021. Since, Awaab’s law entered parliament through the White Paper in July 2023, with the aim to ensure homes are safe, decent, and warm.

We have re-shaped the service following our internal review of the Damp & Mould Spotlight Report from the Housing Ombudsman. The changes we have made include:

  • A new administrator joined to triage damp and mould enquiries based on risk and severity of the damp and mould, as well as considering the households' vulnerabilities or demographics 
  • A new customer care officer joined the team to support customers during the process, keeping them engaged and understanding their responsibilities  
  • Additional support from other surveyors during busy periods  
  • Looking at resource to ensure timescales are met
  • Introduced a new system to track repairs and inspections that relate to damp and mould, to allow us to keep to appointments
  • A consultant is going to review the service to ensure it is fit for purpose and compliant with Awaabs Law  
  • External damp and mould training was attended by all front-line staff
  • Due to roll out new sensors to measure moisture levels in customers' homes

Anti-social behaviour (ASB):  

We received a higher volume of ASB complaints during the summer 2023. The Customer Team used a consultant to review the ASB process with an aim of increasing satisfaction of the handling of ASB cases. Following the review, the following changes were made:

  • Triaging ASB cases to meet set timescales and ensure the risk and impact is assessed   
  • We will be setting out how to manage customer expectations and agree timeframes for updates  
  • Improvements with early interventions and mediation to resolve neighbourly disputes early  
  • Looking at resource to support ASB officers with their case load  
  • ASB training to be arranged for all the customer team

We will be reviewing the volumes of ASB and damp and mould complaints in 2024 to identify whether the changes listed above have helped improve the customers experience when reporting those issues.

Time taken to complete repairs 

We recognise we have not been able to complete repairs as quickly as either we or you would like. This has been affected by several issues, including:

  • Works to prevent and treat damp & mould
  • Additional properties  
  • Proactively finding more repair issues for customers we don’t hear from regularly or who have additional needs through home plan visits and property inspections 

This has been recognised by our Leadership team and we are recruiting additional staff to improve time to repair.

We have also reviewed our process to make sure we’re accurately recording time to complete repairs, reducing double handling, and enabling more repairs to be scheduled in a day.

Call waiting times 

Performance for 2023/24 showed we answered 74.2% of calls answered on time. The average wait overall for a call to be answered was 5 minutes and 41 seconds. We recognise this does not reflect everyone’s experience and we’re putting steps in place to ensure we can answer more calls, more quickly. This was affected by a number of issues:

  • 13% increase in calls over the last few months, averaging 1200-1600 per week
  • Longer call lengths, increasing from an average of 5 minutes to between 7 & 8 minutes, driven by customers contacting with more complex queries
  • Improvements to damp and mould and ASB triage at first point of contact taking longer than standard calls. 

As a result, we are restructuring the contact team, increasing dedicated resources to reflect additional volume and time on calls.  We will also be investing in development of MyAccount, our website and self-service options to reduce the need to call us for some queries. 

Estate improvements  

Customers have told us they are not satisfied with the quality of estate management. We have reviewed the service and recognise we did not have flexibility to manage absence and adverse weather as well as we would like to, leading to situations where we were unable to catch up on missed work in some instances.

We are reviewing the way we work and how tasks are prioritised to schedule grounds maintenance work differently and focus on the tasks most important to customers.