How we're performing: complaints
Looking at the work we've done to improve our complaint handling performance this year.
Listening to complaints is one of the best ways for us to understand your experiences and challenges. We want things to go perfectly every time, but we know that issues can arise. When they do, it’s our priority to respond quickly and resolve your concerns. Here’s how we’ve improved our complaints handling this year.
Satisfaction with complaints handling
In 2023/24, 49.5% of customers were satisfied with our complaints handling. Although this was a fair bit higher than the average for housing associations (35%) we wanted to improve. We set ourselves the target of at least 60% satisfied overall with complaints handling in 2024/25. Guided by the Housing Ombudsman’s complaints handling code, and your input, we introduced a new complaints policy and process designed to make the experience better.
Things have been steadily improving, and in October – December 2024, we were pleased that 59% customers told us they were satisfied with our complaints handling approach.
We're moving in the right direction, but there's still more to do. The 2024/25 overall satisfaction results will help us figure out the next steps to reach our target and keep making your experience with our complaints service better.
Overall satisfaction
of customers were satisfied with our complaints handling in 2023/24
Complaints response times
In 2023/24, we responded to 76% of stage 1 complaints and 73.5% of stage 2 complaints on time. This fell short of our standards, and we’re really sorry if this affected your complaint.
This year, following our changes, 98.5% of stage 1 complaints and 100% of stage 2 complaints have been addressed on time. For the months where we didn’t achieve 100%, we’ve looked into the issues and put measures in place to make sure they don’t happen again.
of Stage 1 complaints were responded to on time in 2023/24
of Stage 2 complaints were responded to on time in 2023/24
of Stage 1 complaints have been responded to on time so far in 2024/25
of Stage 2 complaints have been responded to on time so far in 2024/25
How we're improving
- We're learning from complaints: We use complaints to understand where organisational change is needed, and we hold learning sessions with teams to share insight and prevent issues from repeating.
- We're mapping customer journeys: We use these to help make sure colleagues can see things from your perspective and do the work make these journeys smoother.
- We're tracking promises: We make all promises made in complaints responses are logged and kept, regularly checking back.
- We're getting more feedback: We now have a survey that checks if you're happy with our complaints service after using it so that it's fresh in your mind.
Over time, we're aiming to learn from your complaints to reduce the number we get. Thank you for your feedback – it really does help us improve, for everyone.
