Complaints and compliments
We always aim to provide a great service, but we don’t always get it right. When things go wrong, we want to put them right quickly and learn from the experience. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve made it easier to raise a complaint and improved how we keep you updated throughout the process.
Every complaint is a chance for us to learn and do better. Here’s what we’ve done this year to improve the service:
- Made it quicker and simpler to raise a complaint online
- Improved how we track and update you on your complaint
- Made sure our approach follows the Housing Ombudsman's new Complaints Handling Code
- Introduced a new team of Case Officers who handle complaints from start to finish
- Delivered more face-to-face training for our teams to make sure we handle complaints properly and fairly
- Worked with the Customer Scrutiny Panel to make our complaint letters clearer
- Created a clearer complaints webpage to help you understand the process.
We also run regular learning circle exercises, where we review real complaints to help us learn and do better next time.
We ask customers who have been through our complaints process to tell us about their experience. From this we’ve learned that early contact and quicker outcomes make a big difference.
Learning from complaints and making things clearer
We recently helped a customer who had complained when they found it hard to understand how much of their service charge was covered by housing benefit.
After speaking to them, we updated our letters to make the charges clearer and easier to understand for everyone.
We’ve also created training for all colleagues and a course dedicated to making sure that complaints are responded to in a positive way. You can read more about how we are learning from complaints you make here.
Handling complaints
Here’s how we handled complaints this year:
complaints were reviewed by the Housing Ombudsman
of complaints were responded to in time
formal complaints received
Hearing directly from the Ombudsman
In Summer 2024, we hosted a virtual event with Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman. Customers from our Customer Community Network, board members, senior leaders and our complaints team joined.
In December, we were joined by a customer from our Designated Complaints Panel to discuss the Ombudsman’s report on Attitudes, Rights and Respects. They agreed it’s important to recognise when customers need extra support and to always treat people as individuals.
Our Designated Complaints Panel member said: “It was a privilege to be the first customer to attend a complaint learning circle.
“A lively discussion took place. The most interesting part for me was discussing how we can support a vulnerability. There are so many interpretations of this one word that we could have gone on for another hour!”
What you said
Below is a small selection of the many compliments we have received via our Contact Centre, website, social media and in-person over the past year.