Poorest performing social landlords 'worst at handling tenant complaints' - research

The standard of complaint handling by social landlords is 'variable' and gets worse in line with their overall performance, according to new research published today.

The report by Phil Morgan (pictured), former Executive Director of Tenant Services at the TSA, looks at the 20 most recent inspections for housing associations, ALMOs and local authorities and takes into consideration their star rating and the Audit Commission's commentary on the landlord’s approach to complaints.

According to Mr Morgan, the findings of the research exposes concerns about the current review of social housing regulation.

These include:

• The ability for all landlords to maintain effective handling of complaints.
• The ability for tenants, landlords and government to have confidence in complaints processes where landlord performance is at its weakest.
• How government, funders, tenants and landlords will be able to gauge the effectiveness of complaints handling in future without the ability to inspect.

"Overall handling of complaints is variable with under half of social landlords recently inspected doing well. However all bar one of poorly performing landlords handle complaints badly," Mr Morgan explained.

“If the landlord processes for complaints are increasingly poor for weaker landlords then the tenants with the most legitimate concerns about their services will also get the poorest response for those concerns.”

The review is timely given Housing Minister Grant Shappss view that “where tenants are dissatisfied with the service they need to see things change” and the emphasis given to complaints in the current review of regulation.

This also follows a 42% increase in complaints to the Housing Ombudsman.

Phil Morgan added: “There will need to be a step change in terms of complaints handling and nowhere will that be more marked than the poorest performing landlords.

"A key question remains about how that step change can be enforced to meet the minister's aspirations."