Issue - meetings

To present Cabinet with the 2023/24 Annual Complaint Performance and Service Improvement Report which the Council is required to submit to the Housing Ombudsman

Purpose of the report

To present Cabinet with the 2023/24 Annual Complaint Performance and Service Improvement Report which the Council was required to publish and submit to the Housing Ombudsman.

Decision

Cabinet welcomed and noted the report.

Alternative options considered and rejected

To not present the report to Cabinet for their feedback.

Reasons for the decision

In 2023/24 the Housing Directorate received 284 Stage 1 complaints compared with 371 in 2022/23. The number of complaints escalated to Stage 2 in 2023/24 was 39 compared with 21 in 2022/23. There had been a positive reduction in the total number of complaints received which was reflective of the continuous service improvements the Housing directorate was striving to achieve.

The Council could only provide ‘root cause’ information for 129 of the complaints received in 2023/24. The corporate complaints system, Meritec, was being updated to make it mandatory to complete the ‘root cause’ field for complaints. This would ensure that all service areas within the Council would be able to analyse all complaints and identify trends and potential actions to avoid repeat complaints.

Records were being centralised to enable officers to investigate all queries. There were three officers in the Housing directorate responsible for logging complaints and directing them to the relevant teams: this had led to better response times. Regular meetings were held with senior officers to review complaints and identify lessons that could be learned.

Improved service delivery had been helped by tenant satisfaction measures. New and refreshed policies had been seen across the Housing directorate. Tenants had been more involved in reviewing and managing how housing services were delivered.

Cabinet Members highlighted that complaints were a learning opportunity; the outcomes of complaints showed that residents were being listened to. They were also an opportunity to improve the housing services.

When the Landlord Performance Report for 2024/2025 was available, it would be advisable to compare it to this year’s results.