We received 63 formal complaints this period (Retirement Living 37 and Extra Care 26). This compared to 38 for the same period in the previous financial year. As reported in the Quarter One update.
From April, the Housing Ombudsman Complaints Handling Code meant all social housing landlords’ complaints procedures changed. This means there is no longer an informal complaint category and so has seen an increase in the number of formal complaints logged. In the year to date 15 (10 percent) of the 157 formal stage one complaints received overall have been escalated to stage two by the complainant (eight within Quarter Two). In addition, a further five were escalated which had originally been logged during the previous financial year.
Our performance
Our performance this quarter against the response targets which are set within the Housing Ombudsman Complaints Handling Code are as follows:
- Acknowledgement of stage one formal complaints within five working days
- We achieved 98 percent (one outside timescale)
- Response to stage one formal complaints within 10 working days
- We achieved 95 percent (three outside timescale and five still in progress with target timescale)
- Response to stage two formal complaints within 20 working days
- We achieved 100 percent
Note: We have introduced new procedures to ensure that our target timescales are consistently met and because of this have seen an improvement in the number responded to within target so far.
What are our complaints about?
Repairs - 19
Employees - 17
Housing Services - 13
Other - 6
Finance - 6
Care - 1
Major Works - 1
The types of complaints which are logged as ‘Other’ include: failure of service (two), fairness and/or respect (one), health and safety (one), leaseholder engagement (one) and resident engagement (one).
Learning from formal complaints
Complaints are important to us, because if we get something wrong there may be changes, we need to make to improve our services. We call these ‘lessons learnt.’
Learning from complaints is mainly related to local learning at schemes. A common theme no matter what the subject of the complaint is a failure to follow policy and procedure, such as complaints and anti-social behaviour (ASB) handling, and lettings which we are working to improve.
Some examples of local learning are:
- Using resident meetings and newsletters to promote the out of hours mobile number and to make all residents aware of the emergency call system
- Ensuring a process whereby new residents (who have started tenancies outside of the nomination process) have been advised of the core support charge by being asked to sign a document
- Ensuring all accounts are checked on a weekly basis to pick up any issues
- Ensuring meal charges were included in the full rental charges
- Improved signage and fencing to be placed around the development, so the public are aware the scheme is in a residential area
- Personal development for ensuring repairs orders are placed, with written confirmation of details such as expected completion date, and keeping in touch when there are delays
- Created a detailed plan of the locations of stop taps and which properties are connected to each one. Al the schemes in the patch will carry out a similar review
- Ensuring process for giving notice for accessing properties is followed
- Employees refreshed on Housing 21’s Skills and Behaviours Framework to include responding proactively to customer requests
- Plan to resolve issues with boiler breakdowns
- Ensuring requirements of lettable standard are met
- Ensuring that choice and consensus was used in correct way to make local decisions
- Additional training on managing ASB and Nuisance Reports
- Reviewed and ensured timely responses to any further aftercare issues following the builder going into administration
Other organisation-wide learning includes:
- Developing our policies and procedures for Residents’ Associations to be clear how we best support them, and the limitations of our role
We continue to review how we learn from our formal complaints and make sure changes are actioned and recorded so we can see how services are improved. We are implementing changes through our internal complaints’ groups, and a resident led complaints’ group. As reported last time, we have developed a new Housing 21 Unacceptable Behaviour Policy to be adopted across the business.
Further details about our Complaints Policy and Procedure can be found via our Complaints page.
Compliments
We always welcome and value compliments about our employees and services. We have received a total of 300 compliments this quarter - 84 percent were about employees/teams, 13 percent about services, and three percent about our contractors.
Housing Ombudsman Update
The Housing Ombudsman looks at complaints from residents from different types of housing providers if residents remain unhappy with the response from their landlord. Its work is funded by annual landlord subscription fees. Investigating these complaints is a free, independent, and impartial service for residents about their housing related complaints.
We received and submitted two case requests during this period (one Retirement Living and one Extra Care); and received one determination.
Case requests can take many months for the Housing Ombudsman to process, and so determinations can often relate to a previous financial year. Our target is zero at fault cases.
The determination received this quarter and found to be outside of the jurisdiction for the Housing Ombudsman to investigate.
We are always seeking more members of our Residents’ Complaint Panel, please take a look at the Resident information section under Complaints if you would like to get involve
You can also speak to your scheme manager for further information or email us at feedback@housing21.org.uk.
The Housing Ombudsman Service can be contacted at any point during the complaints process for advice and guidance using the following contact details:
- Telephone: 0300 111 3000
- Postal address: Housing Ombudsman Service, PO Box 1484, Unit D, Preston, PR2 0ET
- Email: info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk
- Contact us page
