Taking the flak

In 2009, the Housing Ombudsman Service received 3,870 new complaints, an increase of 21 per cent on the previous year. We are expecting an increase of more than 20 per cent by the end of this year. Why are people complaining more?

In the social housing sector there seem to be several answers. Part of the vision of the Housing Ombudsman Service is to raise residents’ awareness of it and we have been working very hard to do that. Awareness of the right to complain has also been raised by the Tenant Services Authority’s ‘national conversation’.

What’s more, anecdotal feedback from ombudsmen and other complaint services, suggests that many people are reacting to the economic downturn by ‘kicking the cat’. Often the nearest and easiest ‘cat’ for residents to kick is their housing provider.

Even if we are technically out of the recession there are clearly hard times ahead and housing providers may have to make tough choices about spending. If this should cause any reduction in service provision or its quality, the ‘cat kicking’ is likely to escalate and 20 per cent year-on-year increases may become the norm. So, how to deal with these rising volumes?

The instinctive reaction is to recruit more staff. We will do this if necessary but we also need to be sure that our processes are as efficient as they can be.

We have recently completely overhauled and re-shaped our dispute resolution process and are constantly seeking ways to refine it further.

So far, this has enabled us to manage increased volumes without upping staff levels but this is unlikely to meet demand indefinitely. Accordingly, we are committed to working with providers and residents to help them resolve disputes and grievances locally.

Our free training and prevention programme is a hugely important feature of our mission, which is to enable early and fair dispute resolution in housing.

In 2009 we set ourselves the target to conduct 29 training events but the demand was so high that by the end of the year we had completed 69. We support providers who encourage complaints, comments, and compliments and who treat that kind of feedback positively as an opportunity to improve services and good relations with customers.

We support speedy escalation to the ombudsman in appropriate cases so that a line can be drawn under grievances and lessons can be learnt to improve future service provision and customer care.

Ultimately, however, we believe that the answer to managing increasing numbers of complaints is to work with providers to enable them to be better at dealing with complaints so that fewer need to reach the ombudsman.

Dr Mike Biles, housing ombudsman, Housing Ombudsman Service