At Horton Housing, we expect high standards throughout our services, but recognise that occasionally things go wrong.
We aim to deal with and investigate all complaints thoroughly and promptly. By doing this we can find solutions, put people’s minds at rest and prevent the same things from happening again. Each year, we keep a record of all complaints, compliments, and suggestions from the people who access our services and external customers so that we can identify what we are doing well, and also any problems we need to act on in order to improve service delivery.
Below are the complaints and compliments that we received in 2022 to 2023
Complaints
40 formal complaints
The main trend identified was:
Complaints about landlord responsibilities and accommodation
Some of the people who receive support from Horton but do not live in our accommodation were unhappy about their property or landlord.
As they do not live in our accommodation, their complaints were not treated as Horton’s responsibility as a landlord. We supported them to contact their landlord and assisted them to resolve their complaints.
Sometimes people can be unhappy if they don’t get the support outcome that they are looking for and/or struggle to find suitable long-term, move-on accommodation. We work with people to try and help them achieve their goals. However there is often limited choice in terms of move-on properties due to the lack of available accommodation.
All complainants received written letters to explain why their complaint had been agreed with or not. The letters also included the actions taken to stop repeat incidents and/or an explanation to say why the complaint had not been agreed with. All complaint outcome letters remind complainants of their right to appeal.
The Complaints Policy and Procedure was reviewed against the Housing Ombudsman’s Guidance in March 2023. The informal complaint stage has been removed and the policy now has two stages. Stage One – The complaint and Stage Two -Complaint Review. The revised policy will create a more straight forward and clearer complaints process.
Compliments
217 compliments – some of which include feedback from the 40 Stakeholder Satisfaction Survey responses.
Some of the compliments we received were about:
- Quality of staff and their support
- Quality of service
- Quality of accommodation
- Quality of repairs
- Service involvement activities and how these events have helped to reduce people’s isolation
- Helping people to develop their understanding of British language and culture e.g. running English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes
- Positive student workplace experiences
- Seeing improvement in peoples’ mental health from the support provided.