With the Housing Ombudsman’s ‘Complaint Handling Code’ coming into force in April, our then Customer Services & Complaints Manager Delroy Wynter, had the idea to set up a free forum for housing associations to come together and share knowledge and experience around dealing with complaints.
Delroy wanted to create a space where housing associations can meet up and share knowledge and lessons learned from complaints. So far we’ve been joined by 12 housing associations of all different sizes at our head office, Futures House. Members range from Orbit which has over 100,000 customers to Derventio which has just a few hundred – and even more organisations have reached out to join since the end of this financial year.
The first session on customers who complain repeatedly showed we were all feeling the same pressures and similar experiences of dealing with the Housing Ombudsman. So, we then set the topic for the next session to be Ombudsman determinations and compensation policies.
Apart from the great relationships built with other housing associations, one of the many positives to come out of the forum is that we feel more confident in dealing with complaints. After each forum we’ve come away feeling reassured, as well as armed with plenty of helpful tips from other members that we can use in our Complaints team.
