Annual complaint performance and service improvement report 2023/24
Introduction
We are committed to providing services that make people’s lives easier. We seek feedback from residents on our services through monthly satisfaction surveys and encourage residents to let us know if we have got things wrong so that we can put them right.
Our rolling monthly satisfaction survey results tells us that in 2023/24 61% of residents who rent from us were satisfied with the landlord services we provided. 69% of residents who rent thought their home was safe and 67% were satisfied with the repairs service.
We compare our performance via Housemark and this shows our year end position on overall satisfaction compared to our London benchmark to be in the top 25%. We want to do better and will continue to respond to resident feedback in improving our services.
The Annual Complaints and Service Improvement Report is an annual regulatory report that requires landlords and housing associations to report the number of complaints they’ve received that year, the lessons they’ve learned, and the results of their self-assessment against the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaints Handling Code.
You can read here how we are listening and acting on resident feedback gathered through our wider survey programme.
Our complaint handling performance
Complaints received per 1000 homes
Percentage of complaints responded to on time
Number of complaints we have refused to accept – none
Outcome of complaint
We fully or partially upheld 73% of stage 1 complaints and 83% of stage 2 complaints.
Complaint reasons (Top 5)
Customer Satisfaction
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Positive comments from residents have included:
“L from the complaints team was incredible and I felt very validated by the work she did. She listened to the phone recordings of the phone calls with …. to corroborate my position, and we chatted on the phone for about an hour to ensure that she properly understood the situation”.
“During the final stages of the complaints process, Origin kept in touch with me regularly which made things much easier.”
“Origin responded to my complaint quickly and kept me updated throughout the process.”
Comments from residents telling us where to improve include:
“Better communications between different teams”
“The initial response to my complaint could have been quicker after I raised this complaint”
“Reduce call waiting time”
Comments from residents telling us where to improve include:
“Better communications between different teams”
“The initial response to my complaint could have been quicker after I raised this complaint”
“Reduce call waiting time”
Commentary
We welcome complaints as an opportunity to put things right and learn from what went wrong.
In 2023/24 we saw an overall increase in the volume of complaints with 920 stage 1 complaints and 113 stage 2 complaints received. This is higher than the median position for our London benchmark peer group. Our centralised complaints team is effective in capturing resident dissatisfaction and complaints from right across the organisation.
We are performing well in responding to complaints within the Code timeframes and our transactional survey (after a service has been requested/provided) showed satisfaction with the complaints process increased to 48% from 29.4% in 2022/23, demonstrating the positive impact that our complaints team are having.
Whilst it is important to handle complaints well, this coming year we are also focused on getting our service right the first time more often, to reduce the need for residents to have to complain in the first place.
Learning from complaints
We take learning from complaints seriously and ensure lessons learnt are used to inform service improvements.
In 2023/24, we took the following steps to improve services based on feedback from complaints and our independent customer surveys:
- Focused on our core repairs service with Gilmartins (our main day-to-day repairs contractor) by addressing missed appointments, improving communication, and closely monitoring complex work and ongoing jobs to reduce delays
- Enhanced our management of damp and mould issues with better processes and monitoring
- Changed the working hours of our caretakers from 6 am to 2 pm to 8 am - 4 pm from January 2024 to improve visibility and responsiveness to issues arising on estates in the afternoons
- Served notice on our window cleaning contractor due to poor performance and accelerated the procurement process for a new one
- Integrated neighbourhood walkabouts and action plans into daily neighbourhood management and introduced an experienced housing management coach to help neighbourhood managers build improved problem-solving skills
- Equipped our customer services team to resolve more queries on the first contact
- Continued our stock condition survey and analysis to provide information we plan to use to develop a forward investment programme
- Improved how we record and use data on resident vulnerabilities to tailor services
With our Customer Relations (Complaints) team, we:
- Strengthened monitoring and completion of stage 1 complaint action plans
- Implemented service area Complaint Ambassadors to improve the complaint handling internal process
- Introduced more specific categories for recording complaint reasons for better analysis of trends
- Enhanced weekly complaint reporting to improve oversight and promote a positive complaint-handling culture
- Embedded the quality assurance framework for complaint handling
- Recruited an additional coordinator post to help with logging cases and support the team in meeting the code requirements
Housing Ombudsman
We are a member of the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS), an independent body that reviews and investigates complaints when customers remain unhappy with their landlord following the complaint process.
We work closely with the Ombudsman and use the insights from determinations made against us to improve the services we provide to residents.
We also take learning points from the Spotlight reports published by the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) as well as their determinations and special investigation reports into other landlords. In 2023/24 we considered the HOS spotlight report on Knowledge, Information and Management and the report on ‘Attitudes, Respect and Rights - a Relationship of Equals’ and we are building this best practice into our approach.
We completed our self-assessment against the complaint handling code in April 2024. This was considered and approved by our Customer Services Committee in April. It shows we meet the expectations within the code although there are areas for improvement.
Here is a copy of our self-assessment.
Housing Ombudsman Landlord report
This link Landlords Archive - Housing Ombudsman (housing-ombudsman.org.uk) takes you to the Housing Ombudsman website where you can read their latest report on Origin (the 2023/34 report had not been published at the time of writing this report).
Actions we have implemented since the publication of the 2022/23 HOS report on Origin:
- Completed the centralisation of our complaints handling team – so that we have a dedicated team responding to complaints at stage 1.
- Invested in more training to improve our customer service and complaint response.
- Recruited a Customer Relations and Quality Assurance Manager to have overall operational oversight of complaints and continued quality assurance.
- Introduced a quality assurance framework to maintain and improve the quality of complaint handling and responses to residents.
Determinations summary 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024
- In this period, we received 17 Housing Ombudsman determinations.
- In 8 of these determinations (47%) the Housing Ombudsman found no maladministration or service failings.
- In 7 of these determinations (41%) the Housing Ombudsman found maladministration.
- In 5 of these determinations, the Housing Ombudsman found a service failing*.
*In some cases there was both maladministration and a service failing, in others, it was a service failing but no maladministration
Determinations and findings related to the handling of complaints/complaint process
- In 5 of the 7 maladministration findings, the maladministration finding related to the handling of the complaint or the complaints process.
- In 4 of the 5 service failure determinations, the service failure related to the handling of the complaint or the complaints process.
Severe maladministration
-
We had no severe maladministration findings in 2023/24
Orders of compensation
-
The total compensation the Housing Ombudsman ordered us to pay across the 17 determinations was £9,655
Complaint failure handling orders
-
We had no complaints of failure handling orders
Findings of non-compliance with the Code by the Ombudsman
The Housing Ombudsman did not find any non-compliance by us with the Complaint Handling Code.
There were no other reports or publications produced by the Housing Ombudsman in relation to our work as a landlord.
Looking Forward
Our focus continuing into 2024/25 is to:
- Reduce the need for residents to complain by getting the service right at the start.
- Continue to work to sustain recent positive changes to the repairs service.
- Ensure stage 1 responses are comprehensive and action plans are monitored to reduce the need for stage 2 escalations.
- Make sure we have knowledge of and consider residents' additional support needs when handling service requests or complaints.
- Enhance our customer service culture with training for senior leaders and a relaunch of our Origin Oath customer service principles.
- Improve internal collaboration to prevent delays when a cross-team approach is needed to resolve service issues or complaints.
View from our Customer Services Committee and Member Responsible for Complaints
In 2023/24 Vicky Bonner was the Chair of the Customer Services Committee (she is now the Board Chair) and was appointed by the Board as the Member Responsible for Complaints.
Vicky said :
‘The Customer Services Committee and the wider Board receive quarterly updates on complaints handling. We are particularly focused on the reasons behind complaints and how we learn and improve services as a result of this feedback. We are pleased that a number of service improvements were made during the year, and this remains an area that we focus on as a Committee. We are satisfied with our performance on responding to complaints on time and in the coming year will be monitoring our progress with the areas set out in section 5 ( ‘looking forward’) of this report.
As the Member Responsible for Complaints, my role is to champion a positive complaint handling culture within Origin and seek assurance from the operational teams that complaints are being handled effectively. I fulfil this role in a number of ways including meeting with the complaints team and their manager to look at how they work, understanding how learning from complaints is happening, providing challenges on their monthly performance and sharing key messages with staff on complaint handling.’