Our response to the Housing Ombudsman’s investigation

We take complaints very seriously and we are sorry the customers involved in these cases did not receive the level of service they should have.

We have fully complied with the Housing Ombudsman’s orders in each case and taken learnings from them forward. This includes apologising to the customers, compensating them, completing any follow-up work required, and updating our policies and procedures.

Most of the cases the Housing Ombudsman has dealt with reflect the ongoing challenges we faced following our merger in April 2021, when we were still agreeing a single process for handling complaints and bringing together a complex set of policies and procedures across our operational services.

We now have a much more robust complaints handling process and many of the challenges identified in these cases are now either resolved or are in the process of being resolved.

We recently conducted an internal investigation into all cases handled by the Housing Ombudsman with a fresh pair of eyes to review what we would do differently today and test whether the changes we have made go far enough.

We continually review and learn from complaints, and we now run regular sessions to share detailed learnings from all complaints with colleagues to help to avoid cases like this in the future.

We welcome the opportunity to share with the Housing Ombudsman the progress we have made to address the issues highlighted in these cases and the wider progress we have made since our merger.

We also look forward to sharing further actions we are taking to drive improvements to our services and our approach to complaint handling as part of our long-term strategy. “We will work closely with the Housing Ombudsman during its investigation, and we are committed to taking any further learnings forward.

Ruth Cooke, Chief Executive at GreenSquareAccord.