1. How many Complaints by anyone/Councillors, have ‘not been upheld’/rejected over the past 3 year period?
The Housing Complaints, Compliments and Compensation policy has been changed in the 3 year period, along with the complaint stages. Please bare this in mind. The Newest and current policy was implemented in May 2022. Complaint investigations and the responding manager, after investigation, may determine that:
• The complaint is upheld
• The complaint is partially upheld (deemed as upheld in our data collection)
• The complaint is not upheld
Complaints are not deemed as rejected. In most cases, a complaint being not upheld can be positive because this means there was no service failure found by the responding manager during investigation. I would suggest that the data requested without overall complaint numbers may be taken out of context, e.g. a smaller amount of complaint not upheld that month may also be due to a reduction in complaints received that month, so please bare this in mind with the data requested.
Data held is annual from April 2019 to March 2022 so I have included an extra time period to cover the request. Since the new Housing Complaint Policy in May 2022, this has been recorded each month. This data is provided monthly to all relevant tenant volunteer groups as well as the Tenant and Landlord Improvement Panel who review this performance with councillors, staff, tenants and Co-optees. The increase in complaints (and those not upheld) below is also reflected in national trends seen by the Housing Ombudsman.
• April 2019 to March 2020: 9
• April 2020 to March 2021: 19
• April 2021 to March 2022: 44
• April 2022: 1
• May 2022 (New Policy implemented: Stage 1, Stage 2 and Tenant Complaint Panel hereafter): 2
• June 2022: 6
• July 2022: 6
• August 2022: 3
• September 2022: 4
• October 2022: 3
• November 2022: 9
• December 2022: 10
• January 2023: 12