Housing complaints

The Housing Ombudsman has a Complaint Handling Code that all social housing landlords must follow to ensure they are responding to complaints effectively and fairly.

Key areas of the Code include:

• universal definition of a complaint
• providing easy access to the complaints procedure and ensuring residents are aware of it, including their right to access the Housing Ombudsman Service
• the structure of the complaint's procedure - only two stages are necessary and there should be clear times set out for responses
• ensuring fairness in complaint handling with a resident-focused process
• taking action to put things right and appropriate remedies
• creating a positive complaint handling culture through continuous learning and improvement
• demonstrating learning in annual reports
• annual self-assessment against the Code

Annual complaints performance and service improvement report

As a social housing landlord, we are required to produce an annual complaints performance and service improvement report for scrutiny and challenge, which must include:

1. a self-assessment against the Code to ensure our complaint handling policy remains in line with its requirements;
2. a qualitative and quantitative analysis of our complaint handling performance - this must also include a summary of the types of complaints we have refused to accept;
3. any findings of non-compliance with the Code by the Ombudsman;
4. the service improvements made as a result of learning from complaints;
5. any annual report about our performance from the Ombudsman; and
6. any other relevant reports or publications produced by the Ombudsman in relation to our work.

Read the annual complaints performance and service improvement report

The complaints performance and service improvement report was discussed at Cabinet on May 22, 2025. Cabinet resolved to note the contents of the report, which covers areas of achievement, such as aligning the Corporate Complaints Policy and Procedure to the Complaint Handling Code, and the steps being taken to further improve complaint handling and learning from complaints. Further opportunities for improvement include to:

• Develop and carry out regular audits on complaints handled to identify efficiency and whether any service improvements should be made.
• Use the tenant satisfaction measures survey and transactional complaints satisfaction survey insights to identify the pain points and actions for where to improve experience.
• Develop a process within the complaints system to record complaint’s refused including service requests. 
• Develop a monitoring mechanism to track actions made from complaints.

Cabinet approved the report for publishing and submission to the Housing Ombudsman. Visit the committee page for more information.