Complaints performance

Information about how many complaints we’ve received.

Complaints performance: 2022 to 2023

Here’s a summary of the complaints we have received from April 2022 to March 2023:

  • Stage 1 complaints: 4,356.
  • Stage 2 complaints: 936.
  • 21.2% of complaints escalated from Stage One to Stage Two.

MTVH complaint reporting

Overall, we have seen an increase in new complaints. This increase can be linked to external factors including, The Social Housing White Paper which increased resident awareness of their right to complain, The Housing Ombudsman providing greater awareness of their support, and more recently The Governments advertisement for ‘Making Things Right’ on TV, Radio and social media to complain about Social Housing.

Complaints that go to the Housing Ombudsman 2022/2023

Some of the complaints that we have not managed to resolve go to the Housing Ombudsman Service. It’s a free, independent and impartial service that looks at customer complaints.

We’re working closely with the Ombudsman to resolve complaints earlier, and we’re learning from their decisions (the results of their investigations).

In the last year, we’ve worked with the Ombudsman on 96 complaints. Their decisions were:

  • Severe Maladministration – 3
  • Maladministration – 35
  • Service failure – 43
  • Early resolution/Adequate redress – 39
  • No Maladministration – 16
  • No jurisdiction – 8
  • Withdrawn – 2

 

You can find out more about the different types of decisions on the Housing Ombudsman’s website.

Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code self-assessment

MTVH reviews its compliance to the Housing Ombudsman Code periodically, or each time the Housing Ombudsman updates the Code. Read our latest self-assessment (PDF), completed in March 2023.

The Housing Ombudsman recently updated their Complaint Handling Code guidelines. MTVH are compliant to all the requirements and continue to make this a key focus to the way that we work. This was last reviewed in March 2023 and will be reviewed again in March 2024.

How we’re improving the way we handle complaints

Risk meetings take place between the Complaints team and Senior Leadership Team. The complaint team identify any issues relating to MTVH’s internal processes, specific customers, or housing blocks. Working together, changes are tracked and communicated to ensure MTVH delivers a better service to its customers. Lessons Learnt may also be identified following these meetings and recorded appropriately. These happen at any point of our process from Stage 1, Stage 2, and HOS complaint referrals. Such collaboration ensures that MTVH continues to improve and deliver a better service to our residents.

In February 2023, we launched a new internal complaint module to strengthen complaint handling. Due to the importance we made this a mandatory module on our Learning Zone for all colleagues. The module provides clear guidance for colleagues on effective complaint handling ensuring our teams can confidently understand MTVH’s responsibilities.

At the end of last year made improvements to the customers journey and made changes to the way we pay our redress. This reduced the average time of payment’s being made from 4 weeks to less than 2 weeks and decreased complaints relating to payment issues.

We analyse our complaints performance regularly with weekly, monthly, and quarterly interval reviews.

We have set up an Insight & Learning group which will analyse the customer feedback regularly to better address areas for improvement.  Our new insight learning group will seek to identify common trends across all customer feedback. Actions from these themes include review of procedures, training, and communication, which are prioritised for highest impact.

Through our Customer Voice channel, we share complaints data with our regional panels every quarter and talk through any emerging themes or concerns with the relevant operational leads. The Customer Council and Customer Service Committee also look at complaints data but do this in a more strategic way to understand if actions being taken are driving improvements or dissatisfaction and to identify areas for further investigation.

Our past complaints performance