Annual housing complaints handling report 2024 to 2025

As a social landlord, the council commitment to delivering quality housing and services is at the heart of everything we do. 

As a service we recognise we can continually develop and learn, and complaints provide a valuable opportunity to understand our tenants and leaseholders needs better, address concerns effectively, and continually improve in all areas.

The Annual housing complaints report and Self-Assessment report relates directly to and supports the following Council Plan outcomes: Outcome 2: A fair and inclusive city, Homes for everyone; Outcome 4: A responsive council with well-run services.

The Housing Repairs and Maintenance service is the area where we receive the highest number of customer contacts. This is also reflected in the figures around highest number of complaints. The service is completing over 3,000 repairs monthly, with high volumes of repair requests being received. While progress is being made to reduce our backlog of routine repairs, including with additional contractor capacity, this remains challenging. A steady reporting of new repair requests has meant that while the backlog of routine repairs has been reducing, progress has been slower than anticipated. Analysis is currently underway to identify key drivers, with early findings suggesting the trend aligns with national pattens.

In addition to our in-house team, we have invested heavily in additional repairs contractor capacity. Our focus is to ensure work is completed punctually and that we better understand and our service is more responsive to and reflective of our tenants' requirements and expectations.

We are also delivering an ambitious investment programme to modernise our ageing housing stock and a significant building health & safety programme to ensure compliance with regulatory and legislative requirements.

As of January 2025, the council's social landlord duties cover 12,145 rented properties and 2,210 leasehold properties. During 2024 to 2025, we completed the following activities.

Based on the complaints received last year, our key priorities are the following.

Tenant voice

Actively listen to tenants to ensure their needs and perspectives shape service improvements.

Complaint handling

Strengthen follow-up processes and enhance satisfaction by addressing concerns promptly and effectively.

Learning and improving 

Use tenant feedback to continuously refine services and exceed customer expectations.

Transparency 

Build trust with residents through honest, open communication and accountability.

Effective communication

Improve channels to foster better dialogue, keeping residents informed and engaged.

Accessibility

Ensure services are easy to access, inclusive, and responsive to tenant needs.

Analysis of complaints

Following analysis of complaints 2024 to 2025 (and other customer intelligence including member enquiries), we ran a series of co-produced workshops with tenants and staff, focussed on 4 key themes.

Findings from these workshops will be used to form the basis for a Creating Great Homes Together plan.

1. Day to day repairs - addressing delays, improving repair quality, preventing missed appointments, enhancing diagnostics, and ensuring better communication.

2. Complaints handling - focusing on empathetic responses, addressing all concerns, offering fair redress, and considering individual vulnerabilities.

3. Health and safety - tackling issues such as anti-social behaviour, damp and mould, electrical safety, noise nuisance, asbestos, and pest infestations.

4. Customer service and communication - improving information clarity, ensuring a respectful tone, enhancing staff conduct, and providing consistent updates.

Digital access

New Housing Online service makes it easier for residents to report repairs.

Tenant Handbook

Reviewed with residents in Seniors schemes to improve clarity and service transparency.

Neighbourhood team presence

Dedicated staff recruited to regularly visit estates to identify and resolve issues early, creating a more responsive service.

Early intervention and resolution

Increased focus on early intervention and resolution of noise nuisance issues for residents, through review of the noise nuisance procedures working jointly across the council with Environmental Health service and use of Community Protection Warnings and Community Protection Notices.

Cleaning services

Restructured cleaning schedules to enhance efficiency, with a 4-week rota for high rises and clearer tasks for residents. Adjusted van routes to reduce travel time.

Anti-social behaviour

Clearer case review process to ensure a more robust, responsive and accessible service Whist the number of complaints has reduced over the last year in this area we are still always looking at way we can improve the service based on resident feedback.

This report shows the number and types of complaints we have received and resolved in 2024 to 2025.

A total of 832 Stage 1 complaints were received in 2024 to 2025, with 50% being either upheld or partially upheld. This is equal to 68 complaints per 1,000 homes. This compares with a total of 775 in 2023 to 2024. This is equal to 59 per 1,000 homes.

72% of Stage 1 complaints were responded to within the target of 10 working days.

16% of Stage 1 complaints were escalated to Stage 2, with 59% being responded to within the target of 20 working days.

The top 3 areas of complaint in 2024 to 2025 were in relation to:

• the condition of property (repairs, maintenance and improvement) - 68%
• staff conduct - 8.41%
• unhappy with service delivery - 5.89%

Complaint outcomes in 2024 to 2025

Stage 1

50% of stage 1 complaints were upheld or partially upheld, compared to (55% in 2023 to 2024)

72 % of stage 1 complaints were responded to within 19 working days, compared to 83% in 2023 to 2024.

Stage 2

131 complaints were escalated from stage 1 to stage 2.

An escalation rate of 16% compared to 13% in 2023 to 2024.

59% of stage 2 complaints were responded to within 20 working days, compared to 49% in 2023 to 2024.

There have been instances this year where we have not been able to meet compliance with the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.

These are the following.

Maladministration in:

• our handling of a resident’s reports of multiple leaks resulting in damage to the property, there was also service failure in our handling of the related complaint.
• our handling of reports of roof leaks, major works and reports that the property was not fit to let at the start of the tenancy. There was also maladministration in our associated complaint handling.
• respect of our response to the resident’s reports of anti-social behaviour, reports of discrimination, including a failure to make reasonable adjustments, concerns about the communal cleaning and the handling of the associated complaint.
• our handling of a resident’s reports of ASB and the associated formal complaint.
• our handling of a resident’s reports of water ingress.
• our handling of a resident’s reports of a leak coming from the property above, communication on our process regarding the resident’s insurance claim and the associated formal complaint.

Service failure in:

• our handling of the resident’s concerns about asbestos linked to plastering works and reports of repair issues relating to electrics and a kitchen worktop.
• response to the resident’s reports concerning asbestos, damp and mould.
• our handling of repairs to the resident’s roof and the handling of the associated complaint.
• our handling of a resident’s inclusion on the client of concern register.

Severe maladministration in:

• our handling of the resident’s reports of a roof repair and leak resulting in damp and mould and service failure regarding reports about bathroom flooring.

We apologise for all occasions when we’ve got it wrong and have undertaken a review of each case to identify what we need to improve.

There are some types of complaints that we can’t accept. 

This year we have refused to accept complaints where:

• the same matter had already been considered at all stages of the internal complaint procedure, where the issue was not part of an ongoing situation, no new matters were raised and where no new evidence was provided which may have affected the previous outcome.
• the outcome sought by the customer was solely compensation for damages, whether personal injury or unquantifiable financial loss, and no additional matters were raised.
• a more appropriate route of appeal or challenge was available - data protection or information governance issue, leaseholder service charge dispute, complaint solely about the conduct of elected members - and where no additional matters were raised.
• a customer wished to complain that senior members of staff had not replied personally to their emails, despite the customer requests having been considered and responded to through the relevant process, for example, as a complaint, a Subject Access Request or a service request

Where tenants or leaseholders are dissatisfied with the outcome of the council’s internal complaint processes, they can escalate their complaint to the Housing Ombudsman.

The Housing Ombudsman can consider matters where the local authority is the landlord or freeholder, all other types of complaint (including those relating to homelessness or emergency accommodation) can be escalated to the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman.

The information provided enables us to benchmark our performance against 2 different comparators:

1. Comparison to other landlords with a similar number of properties
2. Comparison to other local authorities

The Housing Ombudsman Service produces a combined comparator figure. The analysis for Brighton & Hove City Council’s performance for 2023 to 20 4 is below. This is known as the maladministration rate. 

In 2023 to 2024 the Housing Ombudsman investigated 10 cases relating to Brighton & Hove City Council’s landlord services. Our performance has declined since this was last reported in 2022 to 2023. Our performance is better in most areas than comparable local authorities with similar numbers of properties, however, our performance compared to last year has declined and do it is important that we learn the lessons with the aim of recovering our performance.