Strengthening our services by learning from complaints | Tenant news

From 1 April to 31 December 2020, Habinteg handled a total of 51 formal complaints from individual tenants.

The lessons we learn from complaints are key in improving our services. As part of our complaint monitoring, we always review how we can improve our services to tenants.

As a result of insights that we’ve gained from reviewing recent complaints, we will now:

• ensure our investigations are thorough when undertaking quarterly scheme inspections
• check service charge schedules closely
• pick up poor contractor performance through regular performance meetings (to help prevent unavoidable delays and get things right first time)
• provide clear & timely communication to tenants when scheduled works have finished
• ensure we stick to timeframes for responding to complaints
• communicate clearly to tenants about what Habinteg is responsible for when resolving issues.

The Housing Ombudsman Service launched a new Complaint Handling Code in July 2020, which sets out good practice for ways that landlords can deal with complaints fairly.

We’re working on a new Habinteg complaints policy to reflect the new code. We’ve already spoken to a number of tenants for their input and we’re in the process of finalising the new policy. Keep an eye out for more news on this in the coming months.

We’ll report on how the new way of handling complaints is working and what lessons we’ve learnt in the Update newsletter and the Annual Report to Tenants.