The Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code

Here at Red Kite, we're committed to meeting the requirements of the Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code. The Housing Ombudsman is a free, independent and impartial organisation which resolves disputes between tenants and landlords.

From the financial year 2023/24 onwards there has been a requirement to produce a Performance and Service Improvement Report to complement our self-assessment against the Complaint Handling Code.

The report covers the following aspects:

analysis of our complaint handling performance including a summary of the types of complaints we have refused to accept
any findings of non-compliance with the Code by the Ombudsman
the service improvements made as a result of the learning from complaints
our actions following any annual report about our performance from the Ombudsman
our actions following any other relevant reports or publications produced by the Ombudsman in relation to our work
our self-assessment against the Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code for 2024-2025.

The report, which you can view online or download, was approved by our Board in September 2025; here is the foreword, written by Derek Cash, the Board member responsible for complaints:

"The Board welcomes this annual report which reflects the progress of complaint handling within Red Kite Community Housing during the financial year 2024-25, as confirmed by the scrutiny of the underlying data.

Red Kite again experienced high and further increasing demand for its complaints service during the year, driven by a positive culture to attract a greater level of feedback from customers about what we do well and what remains an issue to resolve. Although this report demonstrates more reported complaints in 2024-25, it is important to place in context that the organisation still receives many more compliments each month than it does complaints – albeit that in no way downplays the serious issues that some residents continue to experience.

Externally, this increase in complaints has been driven by factors including government campaigns such as ‘Make things right’ which Red Kite continues to support and promote, highlighting to our residents how they can let us know when there is a problem with our service delivery and how we can resolve issues quickly. There has also been much greater influence from both the strengthened Housing Ombudsman Service and the Regulator of Social Housing, who have reintroduced a major focus on consumer regulation.

Internally, also in response to growing customer expectations, Red Kite has placed a much greater focus on both resolving complaints effectively and in a bid to rectify outstanding issues raised as soon as practicably possible. The complaint-handling service has improved significantly through additional capacity being added within a specialist team, who are headed up by a dedicated head of service, and by a much greater emphasis being placed on complaints performance reporting within the leadership of the organisation – both within a refreshed executive team and at board level.

Increased scrutiny of Red Kite’s complaints performance has therefore come regularly during 2024-25 from the Housing Ombudsman, the Red Kite Board and management as well as from both our internal Resident Representative Team and Operations Sub-Committee.

Our self-assessment against the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code for 2025-26 shows full compliance and has been verified externally to ensure we are following good practice. Red Kite’s feedback and compensation policies have both been strengthened during recent months to include a number of improvement recommendations received from both the Housing Ombudsman Service and the external validation report.

What has been disappointing is that after having reported no Housing Ombudsman determinations against Red Kite and therefore no findings of maladministration during 2023-24, we have received 7 determinations containing a total of 17 maladministration findings in cases issued by the Ombudsman service in 2024-25.

It is important to stress that all those findings relate to cases which occurred before the current internal and external sustained focus on our complaint handling and repairs services (i.e prior to 2024), but nevertheless they were all reflective of past mistakes and poor experiences suffered by a number of customers, which may have been symptomatic of our delivery and culture at that time.

The annual report outlines the common themes and trends that arose in the majority of those findings and what has been done to try and ensure that remedies are in place to prevent similar causes leading to ongoing issues for customers in the future. But one over-riding fact is that of all the services provided by Red Kite, nearly two-thirds of our complaints, and three-quarters of our complaint appeals, received during 2024-25 related to our property services (repairs and maintenance) and their contractors.

Much effort has been placed therefore during 2024-25 on improvement plans to help mitigate such issues in communication, workmanship, record-keeping, and general complaint handling processes in a bid to resolve many of the regularly occurring issues raised by complainants.

Responding to last year’s report, I outlined how we had started to develop our learning from complaints across the organisation in a bid to help improve service outcomes in key areas for our current and future residents. But I added that we needed to ensure during 2024-25 that this learning, along with that from other feedback, was further consolidated and integrated across the organisation in order to bring about continuous improvement.

I am pleased to report, that although this is still a work in progress, much has started to be achieved as reflected in the ensuing report, and a process to regularly scrutinise and report back on the effect of those learning points has now been established.

With the greater internal capacity, increased corporate awareness and the required benefits from a current programme of introducing new technology tools within a modernised ICT system, we hope to be able to demonstrate even further progress in this crucial area of the organisation in the next report for 2025-26.

Certainly, strong building foundations have been put in place to achieve that, but we must never become complacent while some residents are still not receiving the service they deserve, particularly when things go wrong."

Read the full report

Download the full report

Previous years' reports

2024

Red Kite Community Housing Annual Complaints Performance and Service Improvement Report 2023-2024 - webpage and PDF
Red Kite Community Housing Annual Complaints Performance and Service Improvement Report Appendix 1 - HO Self-Assessment 2024-2025 - webpage and PDF

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