What we learnt from customer complaints 2020/2021
We recently published our complaints report for the year 2020/21. We have included a summary for you now and you can read our full report for 2020/21 on our website www.settlegroup.org.uk/complaints-how-we-are-doing.
Complaints we received during 2020/21
During 2020/21 we received 602 complaints. Of these 31% were resolved informally at the first point of contact from a resident and 69% were investigated under our complaint resolution procedure.
The three main service areas that residents raised dissatisfaction with were – repairs and maintenance, housing management and estates management.
What we’ve done
As a result of customer complaints we have taken several actions to improve our services to customers. We have:
- Introduced a service to book repair appointments on our website
- Introduced the facility to provide instant feedback about our responsive repair service
- Improved how we respond to and resolve issues around damp and mould
- Reviewed the way we set estimated service charges, so that they are now set in line with the previous years’ actual costs, making them more accurate
- Created a dedicated team to support residents who are impacted by anti-social behaviour.
We know that these areas remain important to residents and we will continue to do all we can to improve our work and deliver the best possible services.
Housing Ombudsman enquiries and complaints review
Between April 2020 and March 2021, we received nine enquiries on behalf of the residents from the Housing Ombudsman Service.
During the second half of the year, we undertook a full complaints review and self-assessment against the Housing Ombudsman complaint handling code. As a result of this we completed actions which included revising our compliant resolution policy, providing complaints training for all colleagues and introducing a quality assurance check for all completed complaints.
‘Make Things Right’ – how to make a complaint to settle
Earlier this year the government launched a campaign to help social housing residents raise complaints if they’re unhappy with the service delivered by their social housing provider.
The ‘Make Things Right’ campaign provides advice to residents on how to seek redress from their social landlord and escalate complaints to the Housing Ombudsman where necessary. We fully support this campaign at settle.
We continue to encourage any settle resident to get in touch where you think we could have done better.
You can see how we handle complaints on our website www.settlegroup.org.uk/complaints
If you are not happy with something we have done, you can make a complaint to us online at www.settlegroup.org.uk/make-a-complaint or please call us and our settle colleagues will help you.
