Sharing our learnings

We believe every time we speak to a customer, we have the chance to learn and improve our service. We review our complaints process regularly and have made several positive changes as a result.

Reviewing complaints with a restorative approach

In December, members of our Customer Services team were joined by a representative from our Designated Complaints Panel (DCP) to discuss insights from the Housing Ombudsman’s Spotlight report on Attitudes, Rights and Respects. The Housing Ombudsman is responsible for all complaints within Social Housing.

The restorative meeting reviewed the spotlight report and discussed how we support customers with additional needs and vulnerabilities. 

The group agreed on the importance of recognising any additional support needs customers might have when we interact with them. Importantly, our approach will remain customer-led, respecting the individual circumstances and preferences of each person we support.

Our DCP customer representative who took part shared their experience:

“It was a privilege to be the first person to attend a complaint learning circle as a customer representative.

“A lively discussion took place. The most interesting part for me was discussing how we can support a vulnerability. There are so many interpretations of this one word that we could have gone on for another hour!.”

We'd really like to hear the views and thoughts of our wider customers so we’re now preparing to engage directly through an upcoming survey. 

Improving our complaint response letters

The Customer Scrutiny Panel (CSP) recently provided valuable feedback on our existing complaint response letter templates. We’ve taken their feedback on board and made our response templates clearer.

Making our services accessible for all

We've recently introduced the 'Recite Me' web extension on our website, significantly improving accessibility. This means you can now easily adjust the language, text size, and colours when you visit our website, and you can also switch to audio content. We’ve done this to make sure the information on our website is accessible to everyone.

We’ll continue to look for more ways to make our complaints service easy to access and use. If you have any feedback on our complaints service, please do get in touch on 0333 400 8222.