We’re making improvements to our complaints service by creating a dedicated, centralised team to manage complaint cases and work with colleagues to provide the best possible outcome against our published standards and procedures. The team’s already working with half of our services and will be working across the whole organisation by the end of the year. We hope you don’t need to raise concerns, but when we don’t get it right, you’ll have a team to support you to get things fixed. 

Over the past year, of the 2,988 complaints we received, just 16 cases were referred on to the Housing Ombudsman because customers weren’t happy with their complaint outcome. The Housing Ombudsman carried out an independent review of how we handled these matters. Of those, nine were found to have been dealt with correctly, one where we had failed in our services, and we’re waiting to hear the decision on the others.  

We’re committed to learning from the feedback we receive from the Ombudsman to improve our services. Some of the actions we've taken are:  

• We reviewed our repairs and planning services, focussing on reducing wait times for our routine repairs. 

• We’ve transferred the management of our sheltered schemes to our independent living team following positive comments from our customers. 

• Our electrical team are using text notifications to quickly notify customers when there are any issues such as lift breakdowns. 

• Our specialist damp and mould team has made changes to how they identify our customer tenure type to ensure our customers receive the correct level of service. 

• Launched an App for our trades colleagues to order stock needed to complete repairs at the first visit. 

• Updated our pre-tenancy assessment to ensure applicants are able to share information that enables us to identify housing suitable for their individual needs.