Greenwich Council has released its annual complaints performance and service improvement report for 2024/25 for its Housing and Safer Communities Department.
The report outlines complaints the council received from its social housing tenants over the past financial year and it revealed a 47.5 per cent increase in total complaints when compared to 2023/24.
Most of the complaints were also upheld at 76.9 per cent, with the majority of them concerning home repairs such as incomplete repair jobs, plumbing problems, leaks, damp and mould issues and more.
Greenwich Council justified the increase in the number of complaints by saying that tenants were more satisfied with their service this year when compared to last year, and so more complaints were received because “people are more aware of the options they have, not because our service is getting worse.”
The council referenced its own tenant satisfaction measures (TSMs) which are performance indicators measured through tenant surveys. Satisfaction with overall service with the council had increased over the year, from 63.5 per cent in 23/24 to 66 per cent in 24/25.
Satisfaction with repairs had also increased from 71.7 per cent to 75 per cent. The only decrease within the TSMs was satisfaction with anti-social behaviour case handling, which dropped from 60.4 per cent to 59.9 per cent.
Within the annual report, Greenwich Council identified a number of areas to improve within its social housing services and laid out the steps it would be making to do so.
It said it wasn’t always “completing repairs within our target timescales to a satisfactory standard” as a significant number of complaints concerned long standing unresolved problems.
The council has reminded its staff to keep residents updated on the status of repairs and it has implemented a new telephone line which will better link the council to tradespeople so that repair jobs can be completed quicker.
A new data dashboard has also been created which tracks the state of repairs. The council has said that this dashboard has already contributed to an increase in tenant satisfaction of repairs from 71.4 per cent to 80.4 per cent as repairs are being carried out more swiftly.
The report also stated that there were gaps within the council’s tenancy service that created an “inconsistent” service at times. Greenwich will be reviewing its internal procedures here, as well as intending to deliver customer service training for all staff in that department.
The council also identified water leaks as a problem as at least a third of complaints were linked to leaks within or into properties through either external water ingress or leaks from neighbouring properties.
The council is pooling several of its resources together into a specific workstream to try and combat the frequency of leaks within its properties. This new approach will be going live in the second half of 25/26.
Greenwich Council also said it would be reviewing its complaints performance due to the increase, with the hope of being more prompt and responsive to complaints that are made. The capacity at which the council can handle complaints has been increased as well.
As well as an increase in complaints to the council, there was also an increase in Housing Ombudsman determinations from 33 to 44 over the last year.
However, according to the report most of the determinations made by the Ombudsman this year related to issues occurring in 2021/22 due to a national backlog caused by the pandemic.
