Islington Council Addresses Housing Complaint Delays and Performance

Islington Council is taking steps to address delays in handling housing complaints, according to a recent meeting of the Homes and Communities Scrutiny Committee. The council's maladministration rate of 75% for 2024/25, as reported by the Housing Ombudsman, is an improvement on the 82% reported the previous year, and below the national maladministration rate of 80% for landlords of a similar size and type.

The committee reviewed the Annual Housing Complaints Performance and Service Improvement Report for 2024/25, available in the Public Reports Pack, which highlighted several challenges in the council's previous approach to complaints. Prior to 2023, the council lacked a corporate approach to complaints, with fragmented management and unreliable performance data. The implementation of the GovMetric Casetracker system in January 2024 aimed to improve complaints management, but its initial setup focused on operational decisions rather than data and reporting needs.

Key performance data from 2024/25 revealed that 1,807 stage one complaints were received for housing, with an average response time of 17 working days. Only 35% of stage one complaints were responded to within 15 working days, with delays in repairs being the top reason for complaints (387 stage 1 complaints). For context, the housing service logs 130,000 repairs annually, meaning that the related complaints figure represents around 0.3% of the total number of repairs completed. Specific steps being taken to address these repair delays include:

• What Happens Next card provided to residents if repair cannot be carried out first time
• Scripting review and review of individual cases.
• Resident communications to ensure constant updates throughout an open repair.
• Process for communications to be devised with clear escalation lines provided
• Customer satisfaction training. Toolbox talks sessions, post inspections on performance, raising individual issue within check-ins
• Create survey on repairs system to ensure mandatory survey
• Resident Service Improvement Group review of priority times and script. Update to manage expectations. Help Me Fix technology.
• Processing and scripting amendments, specialist team, resourced fully. Implementation of damp and mould surveys posted directly to the residents online account with us
• Before and after photo – post inspections and regular supervisor audits
• Compensation in place. Contractor meetings. Merging of gas materials contract with repairs. Winter Preparedness Plan. Long term responsive repairs procurement.

Additionally, 445 stage one complaints were escalated to stage two, with 92.8% acknowledged within 5 working days and responded to within 20 working days. The increase in Stage 2 complaints is mainly due to the Housing service working through a backlog of cases, with the top reason for escalation from Stage 1 to Stage 2 being delay in service, reflecting the performance at stage 1.

The Housing Ombudsman determined 89 complaints, with 144 findings of maladministration. The categories are:

• Property Condition: 8 Severe Maladmin, 35 Maladmin, 17 Service Failure
• Complaints Handling: 1 Severe Maladmin, 31 Maladmin, 16 Service Failure
• Anti-Social Behaviour: 2 Severe Maladmin, 8 Maladmin, 2 Service Failure

The report also detailed several corporate and local initiatives to improve complaints management. These corporate initiatives include:

• A review of open and outstanding complaints conducted by the Corporate Complaints Unit in January 2025.
• The development of a robust Corporate Improvement Plan to drive further improvements to the way complaints are managed across the Council.
• The establishment of a combined monitoring and governance board set up for Complaints and Member Enquiries.
• The launch of daily, weekly and monthly corporate reporting to support services in tracking and management of complaints including flagging items at risk of exceeding SLA.
• The provision of enhanced staff training including complaint investigation skills and system/reporting training.
• Website improvements to better support residents when seeking to raise issues with the council.

The website improvements include:

• Triage for allocation of incoming complaints. This removes the onus previously placed on residents to know where their complaint should be routed when submitting a complaint via the Council's website. Resident' are triaged centrally and allocated to the right service internally, reducing delays in responding due to misallocation and handoffs
• Addition of 'comment' and 'compliment' options for residents when visiting the website site. In some cases, residents have submitted service requests and comments as complaints, this will enable better targeting of their issue depending on their need.

The committee reviewed the Quarter 1 Performance Report for 2025/26, available in the Public Reports Pack, which tracked progress against key indicators related to homes and neighbourhoods. The report noted improvements in complaint handling, with a decrease in stage one complaints and a high percentage of stage two complaints responded to within timescales. Key performance indicators (KPIs) being tracked in the Quarter 1 Performance Report for 2025/26 include:

• Homes that do not meet the Decent Homes Standard: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Repairs completed within timescale – non emergency: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Repairs completed within timescale – Emergency: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Gas Safety checks: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Fire Safety checks: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Asbestos Safety checks: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Water Safety checks: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Lift Safety checks: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Anti-social behaviour cases (per 1000 homes): Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• ASB cases that involve hate crime incidents (per 1000 homes): Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Complaints relative to size of the landlord - stage 1 (per 1000 homes): Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Complaints relative to size of the landlord - stage 2 (per 1000 homes): Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Complaints responded to within the Complaint Handling Code timescales - Stage 1: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.
• Complaints responded to within the Complaint Handling Code timescales - Stage 2: Target not explicitly stated, but benchmarking against London quartiles is used.

The committee reviewed its work programme for 2025/26, outlined in the Housing Scrutiny Committee Work Programme, which included upcoming discussions on housing associations, homelessness data, service charges, asbestos complaints, tenant satisfaction measures, and tenant management organisation (TMO) performance.

Stage 1 housing complaints investigations are managed directly by the Homes and Neighbourhood Customer Solutions Team. Stage 2 and Ombudsman enquiries, and investigations are managed by the Corporate Complaints Team. In 2024/25, 25.8% (445) of Stage one complaints received were escalated to Stage two.