The Housing Ombudsman has urged a social landlord to further strengthen its complaint handling and address the root causes that give rise to complaints in order to extend fairness to other residents and prevent future complaints.

The ombudsman’s investigation into GreenSquareAccord found that the landlord had a 93% maladministration rate for complaint handling in the cases reviewed, against a national average of 76%. It also had a maladministration rate of 79% for property condition, compared to a national average of 54%.

The special investigation was initiated under the ombudsman’s powers to examine whether service failings in a complaint is indicative of wider failures and their impact on residents.

GreenSquareAccord acknowledged many of its failings and has carried out several improvements by creating a new business strategy, revising policies, making changes to governance, undertaking recruitment and working to change its complaints culture.

Following the work between the ombudsman and the landlord, no severe maladministration findings have been reported since August 2023.

However, the ombudsman says the landlord needs to take further steps to ensure these changes are effective and embed, during a monitoring period which follows the report. The report highlights critical areas of concern, namely property condition and complaint handling.

For the first time in a special investigation, the ombudsman surveyed residents to gauge the difference recent changes by the landlord are making and examined the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) to provide further analysis where it had concerns, particularly on repairs. For example, the GreenSquareAccord’s own figures show an 88% satisfaction rate over the past few years for repairs, but its TSMs have it at 51.8%.

In one complaint featured in the report, a resident communicated a number of issues at the property including damp, mould and no hot water over a period of two and a half years. In another case a resident waited more than two years for the landlord to complete plastering repairs. These situations both had significant impacts on the residents’ experience of living in their home, compounded by the landlord’s poor handling of the complaints.

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “The proactive engagement by GreenSquareAccord during this investigation exemplifies its commitment to continuous improvement and learning and to address the root causes of the service failures we found.

“The landlord’s merger was a significant factor in the deficiencies handling complaints, which the landlord has been open about, and it is clear more could have been done to prevent residents having this experience.

“The sector continues to consolidate at pace, and therefore landlords doing so must learn from the experience of this landlord and prioritise complaint handling.

“The landlord’s creation of new policies and procedures is encouraging, and should have a positive impact. But policy and procedure should not be viewed as something to be in place simply because there is a requirement for it to be, and the work involved to embed these changes is not be underestimated.

“The landlord will need to maintain the strong commitment from its leadership to achieve a positive complaints culture, combined with training and supporting its staff through the changes, together with strong quality assurance is in place before it begins to consider the changes successful.

“This report should serve as a catalyst for sector-wide change, promoting a culture of accountability and proactive service improvements, to the benefit of residents and improving the satisfaction with landlords.”

In all special investigation reports, the Ombudsman invites the landlord to provide a learning statement.

In its learning statement, GreenSquareAccord said: “We recognise and accept the findings of this report and will fully comply with its recommendations. We have welcomed this opportunity to work with the Housing Ombudsman Service to share our progress and gain further learning to take forward.

“Getting things right for our customers is our top priority and we will use the learning from this process to drive further improvements and ensure the service our customers receive reflects this fundamental commitment.

“We are pleased the Housing Ombudsman Service has recognised the positive changes we have made since the cases explored as part of its investigation. As the report outlines, we now have a much more robust complaints handling process and many of the challenges identified are now either resolved or are in the process of being resolved. Learning from complaints and sharing lessons with colleagues to avoid future cases is now a fundamental part of our work. We are working hard to improve our knowledge and information management and how we recognise, record and respond to vulnerabilities. We have also made significant improvements to our approach to compensation.

“Many of the cases included in this investigation were more than two years old and many reflected the ongoing challenges we faced following our merger in April 2021, when we were prioritising improvements to building safety and bringing together our operational services. However, we accept the finding that we could, and should, have made some of these changes more quickly.

“We have complied in full with all orders made by Housing Ombudsman Service and will now work alongside them as we comply with its recommendations and provide further assurance that we have a proactive, fair and robust approach to preventing and dealing with complaints.

“We recognise we still need to improve, and our refreshed five-year strategy will see us deliver transformational projects to ensure we simplify and strengthen our organisation, invest in our homes and our people and, crucially, improve our customer offer.”