Social Housing Complaints and Compliance Issues – Prevention is Better than Cure

Housing Ombudsman Richard Blakeway is a busy man. Between April and June 2021, the complaints arbitration service received 7,276 enquiries and complaints. This was up from 6,010 in the previous three months. 687 cases were considered within the Ombudsman’s remit compared to 505 in 2020.

Compared to the same period in 2020 the total increase in complaints was an astonishing 230%. The reality is that the Ombudsman believes that this volume of complaints and enquiries will continue. The “new normal” – to coin that overused phrase – will be driven by greater awareness of the complaints process and the decent homes standards.

Property condition issues make up a substantial proportion of enquiries to the Ombudsman’s office. In the most recent quarter, 39% of enquiries were condition-related.

Part of the issue is that the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 offers a clearer definition of unacceptable housing conditions and a simpler process for making complaints. If the result is that every social housing resident ends up living in a good standard of housing this has to be a welcome outcome.

Prevent Complaints Rather than Handle Them

There’s a huge benefit in dealing with property condition and compliance issues proactively. Complaint handling is time-consuming and expensive. It can also lead to reputational damage and sanctions from the regulator.

But those are the negative aspects. For most social housing providers, the priority is to ensure that all residents have a safe and decent home to live in.

Whatever the objective (avoiding complaints or improving standards) the route to get there is the same; robust stock condition and compliance data. This is where life can get difficult.

A surprising number of complaints arise simply because details of the property condition are uncertain or out-of-date. Even if you have a highly efficient complaints handling process you ideally want to make sure that it’s never used. It’s far better to avoid issues in the first place. And to do that you have to know your stock.

Getting on top of stock condition and compliance data is something Osborne can help you with. We can extract compliance data held by multiple property services providers in whatever format they use. We then process the data to extract what’s relevant and present it in a crystal clear dashboard.

Making data usable in this way is the first step towards proactively managing housing condition and compliance issues. This will improve life for residents and keep you on the right side of the regulator.

To find out more take a look at our resource centre, browse our case studies or contact Alex McLean ([email protected]).