Listening and learning

…through working together

Listening to the views of our tenants and acting upon them is important to us. This year we’ve made it easier for you to get involved and see how you are holding us to account. This is helping us to get better and keep you at the heart of our decision-making.

Our Together with Tenants Charter has been recognised as good practice by the National Housing Federation and was developed alongside tenants over a nine month period. The Charter details our commitments, based on what tenants told us was important. We report our progress to you on our website four times each year so we’re being open with you on where we’re getting it right, and where we need to improve.

Click the video below to find out more about the Together with Tenants Charter.

In other areas, members of our Scrutiny Panel have developed a new way of undertaking reviews of our services to make sure that we hear the voices of a wide range of people.

470 tenants also helped us to improve how we communicate with you. During the year, these tenants helped us to understand how they use our website and we worked with a focus group to test it and make sure it’s easy for you to find what you’re looking for. We listened to feedback and have also developed a ‘Did you know..?’ section on our website, giving examples of how you’ve helped us to make improvements. And working with a group of tenants, we also reviewed our rent statements and rent-setting letters, making improvements to the way (how) they look so they’re clearer and easier to understand.

From listening to tenants on what’s important, this year the Supported Housing Forum developed a money saving leaflet for older people. And following feedback from the Community Voice in Fitton Hill, a local area improvement grant was awarded to local volunteers to tackle fly-tipping through engagement with schools.

…through complaints

We know we can always do better. By listening to your opinions and feelings, we want to improve and make positive changes so that you feel satisfied with our services and trust us to deliver what we promise.

How complaints were resolved

During the year, 1,090 Stage 1 complaints were closed, including some complaints from the previous year. A Stage 1 complaint is where we acknowledge and log your complaint so we investigate and resolve it.

We responded to 81% (884) Stage 1 complaints within target and 19% (206) were out of target. We want to do better than this in future.

106 tenants were dissatisfied with our Stage 1 response and escalated their complaint to Stage 2. This means we looked at the complaint again to consider whether it was fully dealt with.

We responded to 75% (79) of Stage 2 complaints within target. Again, we want to do much better than this in future.

During 2022/23, we received six maladministration determinations from the Housing Ombudsman relating to complaints escalated to them by tenants. This means the Ombudsman found we had not delivered the service to the standard we should have. These complaints mainly related to repairs.

Your feedback through complaints is really important to us. We’re focused on learning from the feedback we receive to improve our services because we know this is what matters to you.

We know we can do better and we’re working hard to improve how quickly we respond to complaints. Ensuring that we resolve as many complaints as possible when you first tell us about where we’ve gone wrong will be a key focus for the year ahead.

…through surveys

You are at the heart of what we do, what we decide and how we act. We completed 3,834 phone surveys with you about the services you received in 2022/23. 84% of you were satisfied.