Making your voice heard
We know that not everything can go to plan, and when this happens, we want to know so we can try to put things right. This guide outlines the steps to take if you aren’t happy and what you can expect from us when you make a complaint.
General Guidance
You can contact our Customer Service Advisors by calling 0800 054 6710. Additionally, for general advice regarding complaints and escalations, you can access the Housing Ombudsman Service at any time through their website or by calling 0300 111 3000.
Understanding Complaints
The complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction about:
- The standard of service.
- Actions or lack of action.
- Our staff or those acting on our behalf.
- Something affecting an individual resident or group of residents.
This can include a failure to provide a service, poor quality of service, dissatisfaction with staff behaviour, failure to follow our policies or procedures, and being unreasonably disadvantaged or unfairly discriminated against by a ccha policy.
While most matters can be addressed through our complaints procedure, some exceptions exist. These include issues where 12 months or more have passed since the incident, cases where legal action is being pursued, or matters that have already been considered under the complaints policy.
Who and how?
Any resident or a representative acting on their behalf can file a complaint.
There are multiple methods for you to submit a complaint. Formal complaints do not necessarily have to be in writing. You can also report your complaint on our website.
Alternatively, email or call us on 0800 054 6710.
If you prefer to write us a letter, you can post it to: Senior Customer Investment Officer, ccha, 29 Sheldon Street, Croydon CR0 1SS
How are we doing?
Each quarter, we look at how we’re doing with complaints, reviewing the number, the topics and what we can learn from them. From 1 April 2024, we’re obliged by law to follow the requirements of the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code, which aims to achieve best practice in complaint handling, ensuring you receive a better service.
We have self-assessed against this code, which you can read on our website.
Between April 2023 and March 2024.
We received 89 complaints – this is 65% higher than last year.
17 of those complaints were escalated to Stage 2 – this also increased from last year.
4 complaints were escalated to the Housing Ombudsman.
We refused 2 complaints*.
100% of complaints were acknowledged within 2 days.
83% of Stage 1 complaints were responded to within 10 days – this was mainly due to staff changes throughout the year and have been working hard to ensure staff changes do not impact our complaint handling going forwards.
100% of Stage 2 complaints were responded to within 20 days.
80% of our complaints were about repairs and maintenance.
The majority of complaints were upheld.
37% of residents are satisfied with our complaint handling – this is higher than our peer group** however still low and we are actively trying to improve this experience for residents.
*From April 2024, the new Code introduced the requirement to capture cases where we refuse to take a complaint which we now record. Whilst we did not formally capture this last year, we are aware of two cases which were refused. One was subsequently challenged and accepted.
**Acuity TSM benchmarking report 2023/24 (London LCRA).
Listening and Learning
We treat complaints as an opportunity to gather feedback, spot trends and improve and implement policies as a result. We review individual issues raised, look at trends, feedback from the Ombudsman and discuss underlying issues.
As a result of complaints, we have:
- Brought in new Customer Service Advisors to improve communication and ensure we get back to residents and improve communication.
- Provided additional training on our customer relationship manager (CRM) system to ensure all conversations with residents are recorded.
- Reviewed our process for issuing alarm pendants to residents in our older persons accommodation.
- Introduced joint meetings for complex complaints which require involvement from multiple teams.
- Approved and begun a full review of our repairs service.
- Identified a wider issue with flooring at one of our schemes and developed a planned programme to address the issues.
- Revised our policy on how we deal with potential subsidence cases.
- Restructured our Property Services team to have clearer areas of responsibility.
- Delivered complaints handling training to key staff and managers.
Don’t forget, if you want to make a complaint, call us on 0800 054 6710 or email complaints@ccha.biz