Qualitative and quantitative analysis of our complaint handling performance
We take complaints extremely seriously, and see them as an opportunity to help us continually improve the services we deliver to residents. We are committed to learning from any complaints we receive, and most importantly, to putting things right for residents when we have got something wrong.
We have an annual target for complaints received. Our target is to receive no more than 2.1% complaints, compared to our overall number of properties. This works out at around 155 complaints per year, or 13 ‘stage 1’ complaints per month.
You can see in the table below that we received 115 stage 1 complaints during 2023/24 (1st April 2023 to 31st March 2024). This is 1.56% of CCHA properties and is below our target of 2.1%.
The table below provides a breakdown of the service area complaints related to, compared to the previous year:
We received nine more stage 1 complaints in 2023/24, compared to 2022/23.
We’ve seen reductions in complaints in some areas. The largest reductions year on year were for customer services complaints (down from 7 to 1), anti-social behaviour related complaints (13 down to 8) and compliance works (down from 12 to 8).
The biggest areas of increase relate to issues with newly developed homes, which went up from 1 to 11, and those relating to tenancy management matters (housing), going up from 7 to 17.
The table below shows the proportion of complaints a department receives against their ‘headline transaction’ measures. We have defined what these are in the table.
It’s difficult to compare the proportion of complaints per department against their total number of transactions, as many departments have a significant amount of other contacts with residents in the delivery of their services. We will continue to look at new ways we can show the number of complaints we receive, against the number of services delivered for each area.
Total number of calls and emails received by the
number of repairs
Contacts recorded as notes by the team
Total arrears recommendations
Primary cause of complaints and lessons learnt
We declined to accept two requests for complaints during 2023/24. One of these was treated as a service request for replacement doors and windows, and the second was declined as it related to a medical condition not recognised by the NHS.
In both cases we wrote to the residents to explain why we had not accepted the issues as formal complaints, and explained their right to request a review of our decision by the Housing Ombudsman. We also provided services in line with the requests.
Complaints performance
We hold quarterly review meetings with service managers to scrutinise resident satisfaction results and complaints data to:
•Identifyanytrends
•Makesurelearningfromcomplaintsiscaptured andactioned
•Makesurethatifanychangesarerequiredasaresultofa complaint,theyhappen,andwetrackthattheyhappen, sowecanimproveservicesandhelptopreventfuture recurrenceofissues
In addition, we share information on complaints and residents satisfaction performance with our Residents’ Scrutiny Panel (RSP), to help inform areas for the RSP to select and carry out scrutiny exercises.
Primary cause of complaints and lessons learnt
We always take complaints seriously and investigate each one thoroughly. Each one is seen as an opportunity to identify where our services may have fallen below expectations, and can be used to learn, so we can improve the services we deliver for residents.
Some examples of learning from complaints during 2023/24:
The issue
A resident called our Out Of Hours (OOH) Service to report a repair needed to their front door. The OOH service sent out the wrong contractor for the job.
How we resolved it
Our investigation found that the OOH service had checked the wrong contractor rota. An emergency job was raised for a temporary repair, and a permanent repair was later made. Following this, we reviewed our OOH service and now work with a different provider. We apologised to the resident for the unacceptable delay in responding to an emergency repair request.
The issue
A resident reported that they were unhappy with the recent works carried out to their fire door. We asked our contractors to revisit the site to resolve the issues, but the resident remained dissatisfied with the standard of the works and asked to make a complaint.
How we resolved it
We contacted the resident to apologise, and then re-inspected the work. The inspection identified that there were some issues which needed rectifying. This work is now complete and we have assured the resident that the door meets the relevant safety standards.
The issue
A resident complained as they had reported ongoing damp and mould issues in their home and felt that they weren’t being resolved to their satisfaction.
How we resolved it
We carried out urgent damp and mould works over two days in the property to eradicate the issue. We apologised for the length of time this had taken and compensated the resident for the inconvenience.
The issue
A resident complained as they had multiple outstanding repairs that they felt had taken too long to complete.
How we resolved it
We apologised for the length of time taken to carry out these repairs, compensated the resident for the delays and worked with our contractors to arrange suitable appointments to get the repairs completed as soon as possible. These delays were discussed during meetings with our contractor, to ensure that lessons were learnt from the experience of the resident.
The issue
A resident made a complaint that they had reported a woodlice infestation and a perished fence in their garden to us and felt that our response hadn’t addressed the issue.
How we resolved it
Our investigation found that there was a woodlice infestation. We arranged for a pest control contractor to attend and spray pesticides and for the fence to be replaced. We also had the rear garden re-cultivated to make sure the infestation was fully removed.
The issue
We received a complaint from a prospective resident after she had viewed one of our empty homes and repairs were incomplete.
How we resolved it
Our investigation found that the repairs needed to meet our Empty Homes Standard were incomplete at the time of the viewing. We aim to let our empty homes as soon as we can, and that means sometimes viewings take place before repairs are fully completed. In future, we will make sure we give residents more details about the lettings process and be clearer where further works are still to be completed before a home is ready to let.
The issue
A resident reported anti-social behaviour but hadn’t heard back from us to explain the actions we had undertaken.
How we resolved it
Our investigation found that the report had been recorded and acted upon. However, in this case we hadn’t kept the resident up to date as we should have. Data protection laws meant that we couldn’t give the resident full details of the actions we had taken, but we should have provided an update. We’ll make sure that we do this for similar cases in the future.
The issue
A resident had found somewhere else to live and informed us that they wanted to end their tenancy. They had previously asked us to contact them in writing but one of our colleagues had telephoned them.
How we resolved it
We apologised for contacting them in a way other than their preferred method of contact. We amended our tenancy termination procedure to make sure that we contact residents in accordance with their preferred method of contact in future.
Findingsofnon-compliancewiththe ComplaintHandlingCodebytheHousing Ombudsman
Over the course of 2023/24, CCHA received two complaint determinations from the Housing Ombudsman (HO).
The first determination, which we received in September 2023, found that CCHA had offered reasonable redress in respect of our handling of the complaint. In this instance, the Ombudsman did not find any service failures, maladministration, or noncompliance with the CHC.
The second determination, which we received in March 2024, unfortunately determined two findings of maladministration. These related to our handling of a complaint regarding the resale of a leasehold property.
Maladministration is defined by the HO as “a decision by the Ombudsman that a landlord has failed to do something, done something it shouldn’t have or, in the Ombudsman’s opinion has delayed unreasonably.”
We have taken these findings extremely seriously. Following receiving the determination in March 2024, a detailed action plan was developed, to ensure we learned from where we had fallen short on our complaint handling in this instance, and to make sure a future recurrence of the issue could not happen. This action plan is being tracked to completion by our Audit & Risk Committee, which is a subcommittee of our Board, so that our Board has oversight of delivery of the actions, within the agreed timeframes.
The full HO report of findings are published on their website, these are usually published three months after the final decision is made by the HO.
Examples of the service improvements made because of the learning from complaints
• Following several complaints about the service provided to residents ‘out of hours’ we changed our service provider, and continue to monitor resident satisfaction and feedback for our new provider.
• Improvements were made to our antisocial behaviour (ASB) procedures to ensure complainants were kept better informed about progress throughout their case.
• Post-complaint actions are tracked to completion by our Customer Experience Team, reflecting learning from a complaint where these promised actions weren’t delivered.
• The calendar window in which we deliver roofing works has been amended following complaints about works carried out during poor weather.
• We are currently working to make sure we have a contractor in place to deliver works to newly built homes, which fall outside of the defects service provided by the developer.
AnnualReportfromtheHousing OmbudsmanServiceaboutthe PerformanceofCCHA
TheHOpublishesanIndividualLandlord Report,wherealandlordhashadfiveor moredeterminationsinanyyear.
TherewasnoindividualreportforCCHA during2023/24,asCCHAreceived twodeterminations.
However,theHOwillpublishinformation oneachofthetwodeterminationswe havereceivedduring2023/24.Theywillbe foundhere,andareusuallypublishedthree monthsafterthefinaldecisionbeingmade bytheHO.
Anyotherrelevantreportsor publicationsproducedbythe HousingOmbudsmanServicein relationtotheworkofCCHA
Therewerenootherreportsorpublications producedbytheHOinrelationtotheworkof CCHAduring2023/24.
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