Learning from getting it wrong

Every Habinteg customer deserves a safe, comfortable, and high-quality home.

We work hard to provide great service, and most of our tenants are happy with their homes. But sometimes, we don’t get things right. When that happens, we listen, learn, and make improvements.

On this page, you'll find information about how we've handled complaints and the steps we've taken to improve our service for you.

Learning from complaints

Our complaint process is here to support customers who feel we haven’t met their expectations. While we always aim to fix issues before they become complaints, we encourage residents to speak up if something isn’t right.

How to Make a Complaint

We are part of the Housing Ombudsman Service, an independent organisation that reviews complaints if a customer is still unhappy after going through our process.

We work closely with the Ombudsman and use their feedback to make our services better.

Below, you’ll find a summary of our 2024/25 Complaints Board report Nov 2024.pdf [pdf] 314KB.

Handling complaints

To improve our approach to handling complaints, we've committed to:

• Reinforcing the importance of obtaining clear tenant consent before contacting support workers.
• Ensuring full consultation prior to implementing planned improvements to communal areas.
• Considering tenant’s access to communal areas when carrying out future repairs
• Escalating complaints where the tenant expressly asks us to do so.
• Recruiting a Customer Services Resolution Officer to monitor complaints handling. 
• Recruiting a dedicated ASB officer to ensure a national standard is now applied to our ASB responses.

Repairs 

Repairs was the leading category making up most of all complaints, with 36 repair related service requests received in Q1 and Q2 out of a total of 52 (70%).

What we’ve done about it

• On 1^st October 2024, we appointed Bell Group as our new contractor for the North.
• We’ve strengthened R&M contractor management with the appointment of a dedicated Director of Assets and an additional Surveyor in the North.
• We’re committed to a better use of stock condition data and will bring forward future surveys as appropriate.
• Surveyors will pro-actively chase contractors where delays have been identified.
• Tenants will be kept informed of identified delays in job completion.
• We’ve changed the way that our customer services team capture information about repairs affecting communal areas. They now receive guidance on which questions to ask when receiving similar reports to enable quicker decisions on the actions needed.
• Our new gas contractors will have enhanced software to record specific access requirements of tenants.

Listening to our tenants 

Tenants’ lived experience as the heart of Habinteg. We want to make sure that tenants’ have the chance to influence our services and policies. We want you to feel valued, listened to, and be confident that we’re acting on your views.

We’ve created many ways for you to share your views on how we’re performing and where you think we need to improve. Here are some tenant engagement highlights:

• Following the Tenant Scrutiny review of Repairs and Maintenance (September 2023), five of the thirteen recommendations have been implemented and the remainder are underway
• The Scrutiny Panel influenced faster repair completion times, better contractor accountability, and improved communication in the new repairs specification
• The Scrutiny Panel interviewed two contractors were key in appointing Bell Group as the North’s new contractor. The emphasis by tenants placed on communication has been included with a commitment by Bell Group to communicate with tenants at three key points
  1. 1. calling the tenant to book the appointment within 72 hours
     2. calling the tenant to confirm the appointment the day before
     3. calling the tenant to confirm the appointment on the day.
• Following two tenant focus groups in March 2024, changes have been made to the Tenant Portal which have led to 1455 registered portal users (45% of tenants). These include:
  1. 1. A new button on the home page was added in December 2024 to make the Portal clearer to tenants
     2. A breakdown of service charges has now been added to the Portal
     3. Anew landing page has been created and a marketing drive took place in December 2024.
• Since April 2024, 72 local scheme meetings have taken place with tenants. Following these meetings, 23 Neighbourhood Plans have been created, with the initial focus placed on our larger schemes.  Plans are in place for 42% of Habinteg tenants with the target to reach all tenants by 25/26.