Complaints handling performance
Read about how we're doing with complaints handling, and the improvements we're making.
Each year, we publish our complaint handling performance reports - this is also now a legal requirement from the Housing Ombudsman.
These reports matter to us, as we're committed to:
- improving complaints handling
- providing a positive customer experience
Below you will find links to our latest reports covering 2024-25.
Our annual performance
Over the past year we have made a range of improvements, yet recognise we have a way to go. While the number of complaints received has increased, we have reduced the time taken to resolve them, and increased our customer satisfaction with how these complaints were handled.
Here we share key information from our annual performance and service improvement review, this covers:
- complaint numbers and types
- how we're resolving them, and
- most importantly, what we're doing to improve.
We want to handle complaints in an easy-to-access way, that keeps you informed and resolves your complaint quickly and thoroughly.
2024-25 snapshot
While the number of complaints received increased to 6,898, we've handled them more quickly, which has helped improve customer satisfaction.
We acknowledged 76% of all complaints within 5 working days, taking an average of 18.9 working days to resolve. Our complaint-handling customer satisfaction rate was 42.7%.
60% of your complaints related to our repairs service, which represents c.1% of total 300,000 complete repair jobs.
We established the Resident Voice team, making resident feedback, including complaints, central to our service improvement efforts.
Overall we see a mixed picture (detailed on the table) against our three key objectives:
- Acknowledging and resolving issues/complaints within agreed service level.
- Reducing the need for customers to escalate complaints.
- Improving customer satisfaction.
Performance indicator |
2023/24 |
2024/25 |
Trend |
| Number of complaints received | 5,750 | 6,898 | Increased |
| Average overall resolution time (working days) | 24.5 | 18.9 | Improved |
| Housing Ombudsman maladministration rate (proportion of negative findings by the Ombudsman) | 66% | 60.2% | Improved |
| Findings of severe maladministration | 28 | 15 | Improved |
| Complaint Handling Failure Orders (CHFOs) | 3 | 0 | Improved |
| Cases escalated from stage 1 to stage 2 | 30% | 32.4% | Increased |
| Customer satisfaction with complaints handling | 37.7% | 42.7% | Improved |
Making improvements
We use learnings from regular review to improve our approach, including:
- Housing Ombudsman findings - we carry out monthly self-assessments against Spotlight topics.
- Root cause analysis - using the complaint root cause to improve systems.
Resident feedback
Residents are central to our approach, and this year we introduced a new Resident Voice team within our Performance, Quality and Compliance directorate. This brings together our complaints handling and resident involvement teams, so improvements are truly resident-focused.
We also:
- conduct follow-up surveys with residents who’ve made a complaint
- established a Complaints Special Project Group, made up of residents
In addition, we are improving our internal processes and systems, along with training and appointing additional staff.
Looking ahead
We're developing a new complaints handling module within our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, this is where all our resident information is stored and contacts are managed.
This should mean a more efficient, smoother complaints process for both customers and colleagues, with key improvements including:
- An end-to-end complaint case process
- Better root cause analysis
- Our ability to manage complaints covering several topics
- Better capacity to define and log lessons learned
- Automated triggers to approach and expire service levels
- Improved ability to log and monitor follow-on activities
Download previous reports
Here are our previous reports, showing how we comply with the Housing Ombudsman's code, as well as the actions we’ve taken to improve our complaints-handling.
Complaint Handling Code Self-Assessment - April 2024 (pdf)
Complaint Handling Performance and Service Improvement Annual Review 2023/24 (pdf)
Governing Body Statement on Complaints Handling Performance 2023/24 (pdf)
Complaint Handling Code Self-Assessment - October 2022 (pdf)
Complaint Handling Code Self-Assessment - December 2021 (pdf)
Complaint Handling Code Self-Assessment – December 2020 (pdf)