Annual Complaints Performance and Service Improvement Report 2025-2026
Approved by Red Kite Board, July 2026
Board foreword
Provided by Derek Cash, Board Member Responsible for Complaints
The Red Kite Board welcomes this 2025/26 Annual Complaints Performance and Service Improvement Report and self-assessment. It demonstrates our commitment to providing the best possible services to tenants, resolving complaints fairly and effectively, and using tenant feedback to improve service delivery.
We recognise that, at times, things go wrong. When they do, we want tenants to feel confident that they can raise concerns easily, that we will listen, put things right where needed, and learn from any failures.
Our 2025/26 self-assessment confirms full compliance with the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code. This has been externally verified to provide assurance that our complaint handling arrangements and system controls are operating effectively. In May 2026, the Housing Ombudsman also confirmed that Red Kite’s complaints policy meets the requirements of the Code.
Oversight of complaints performance, learning and improvement outcomes is maintained through the Operations Sub-Committee, the Resident Representative Team (RRT), regular reporting to the Member Responsible for Complaints and operational management. This oversight helps identify areas for improvement, prioritise action and hold the organisation to account for delivering change.
Most importantly, the report shows that tenant complaints are leading to action. During 2025/26, Red Kite delivered 266 service improvements, supported by a structured learning framework, dedicated resource and a new digital learning and improvement module. These changes have strengthened oversight, accountability and reporting on service improvement actions. Practical improvements include better management of recurring repairs, improved communication about gas safety appointments, stronger pest control processes and clearer guidance to support biodiversity.
While progress has been made, the Board recognises that this work must continue and that the improvements identified through complaints need to be consistently embedded across our services. The report highlights the importance of maintaining a strong focus on the responsiveness of our repairs service, the quality of communication and effective ownership of complex cases, ensuring that the learning from complaints translates into sustained improvements in tenant experience. We will continue to scrutinise complaint trends, HOS reports, tenant feedback and the delivery of improvement plans, ensuring that learning is embedded, actions are completed and improvements are sustained.
To this end, the Red Kite Board is now working with our recently appointed Executive Team to speed up this creation of a learning track record to ensure improvements are made at pace, once identified from customer feedback, and to prevent regular occurrences of similar mistakes being made in service delivery going forward.
It is hoped that a positive and noticeable impact for our residents will result and that where things do still go wrong in the future, as they still inevitably will from time to time, that resulting complaints from our customers will lead to a much quicker resolution than at times in the past.
Introduction
We are committed to providing high-quality services to our residents and stakeholders, and we welcome complaints as a valuable source of feedback and learning. We aim to resolve complaints as quickly and effectively as possible, and to ensure that complainants are treated fairly and with respect throughout the process. We also seek to identify and address the root causes of complaints and to implement service improvements that benefit all our tenants and reduce recurrence.
This report provides an overview of our complaints’ performance and service improvement activities for April 2025 to March 2026.
The report is prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) and includes our self-assessment against the HOS Complaint Handling Code (the Code), which sets out the expectations and good practice for effective complaint handling by landlords.
This report includes:
a self-assessment against the Code
a qualitative and quantitative analysis of 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 because of the learning from complaints
actions following any annual report about our performance from the Ombudsman
actions following any other relevant reports or publications produced by the Ombudsman in relation to our services
any Equality, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI) concerns.
Self–assessment
We fully comply with the Code and a completed 2026/27 self-assessment is attached as Appendix 2.
Complaint handling performance
There has been a significant increase in complaints received compared to the previous year. We responded to 88.3% of stage 1 and 81.8% of stage 2 complaints within target. Total stage 1 and stage 2 complaints received during the year are detailed below:
Complaint | 2024/2025 | 2025/2026 | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
Stage 1 | 385 | 626 | 63% increase |
Stage 2 | 61 | 151 | 148% increase |
Total | 446 | 777 | 74% increase |
Analysis of complaints received indicates increasing pressure across some core service areas and reinforces areas where further improvement and operational focus are required.
Service area | Complaints received | Comment |
|---|---|---|
Commercial | 20 | Direct comparison with 2024/2025 performance in service area is not possible due to the implementation of a new complaints feedback module in late 2025. |
Communities | 77 | |
Development | 22 | |
Finance | 23 | |
Feedback | 34 | |
Property | 435 | |
Relationships | 46 | |
Red Kite (general) | 120 | |
Total | 777 |
79.6% of complaints closed during the year were fully or partially upheld, meaning that in most cases complaint investigations identified a failure to act in line with our obligations or policies. This represents a slight increase from 79% in the previous year.
The challenges of increased complaint volumes facing Red Kite reflect a broader sectorwide trend, with housing providers continuing to experience sustained increases in complaint volumes, particularly in relation to repairs, communication and complaint handling. Complaints linked to poor housing conditions and repairs have risen sharply across the sector, with the Housing Ombudsman reporting a 474% increase in complaints concerning substandard living conditions since 2019/20.
Analysis of complaints demonstrates that issues are largely systemic in nature rather than isolated incidents. The most common themes relate to delays in completing repairs, poor workmanship, ineffective communication, missed appointments, and a lack of clear ownership, particularly in complex cases. Root cause analysis shows that complaints are most frequently driven by weak operational oversight and accountability, alongside poor communication and contractor performance issues. These underlying factors contribute directly to both complaint volumes and escalation.
Escalations to Stage 2 are typically driven by a failure to complete actions promised at Stage 1, dissatisfaction with compensation awards, or disagreement with decisions taken in line with policy.
HOS outcome and activity
At the end of our complaints process, if a tenant remains unhappy, they can appeal to the HOS to investigate further on their behalf. The HOS will firstly triage the complaint to identify if an investigation is warranted. The HOS will then either conduct a formal investigation further or take no action.
The determination of any formal HOS investigation may result in findings in the tenant’s favour and lead to actions or orders that the landlord is required to comply with. During 2025/2026 the HOS made four determinations, resulting in seven findings. Further detail is provided below.
Finding | Number | Comment |
|---|---|---|
No maladministration | 1 | Landlord acted in accordance with its obligations |
Service failure | 4 | Minor failing |
Reasonable redress | 0 | Failings identified and acknowledged prior to investigation and taking steps to put things right |
Maladministration | 2 | Service failure that has impacted tenant |
Severe maladministration | 0 | Significant service failure |
All orders issued by the HOS have been complied with, and corrective actions have been implemented.
Whilst there was a 50% reduction in the number of determinations, and a 68% decrease in the number of findings received during 2025/2026 than in the previous year, there was a higher proportion of adverse findings compared to the previous year. There was an 86% maladministration rate in 2025/2026 compared to 77% during the previous year.
The root cause of maladministration findings were:
Inconsistent ownership or oversight controls allowing prolonged avoidable repair delays, especially with complex repairs, without proactively triggering sufficient contractor management or internal escalation
Poor communication, causing tenants to repeatedly chase for updates
Failure to recognise complaints or provide appropriate updates when there are delays.
The HOS findings reflect the same themes identified internally, particularly delays in repairs, poor communication, and weaknesses in complaint handling processes.
Key actions taken to prevent a recurrence of the failures identified include:
A Property Service Improvement Plan has been implemented to strengthen repairs handling
We have improved our contractor management controls to ensure timely repairs or escalation when appropriate
We have implemented improvements to our case management system, including improving data accuracy to allow for accurate and timely end-to-end repair oversight, especially of complex and Awaab’s law repairs
We have delivered a staff refresher on how to recognise a complaint and continue to provide mandatory training to all staff on recognising and handling complaints.
Additionally, in May 2026 the Housing Ombudsman confirmed the complaints policy meets the requirements of the Code.
Learning from complaints
Red Kite has an established and structured approach to learning from complaints, supported by dedicated resource and systems. During 2025/26, 266 improvements were implemented, demonstrating a focus on translating feedback into action.
Every complaint received is reviewed by the Improvement Team to identify learning opportunities and drive service improvements. Learnings are prioritised according to both internal and external prevalence, alongside assessment through the Effort Impact Matrix, ensuring focus is placed on changes that will deliver the greatest benefit for customers and the organisation. The section below summarises recent improvement activity and current outstanding actions.
Improvements are initially managed individually; however, where five or more cases share a common root cause, they are escalated into a formal learning trend project. These projects are managed using a structured, project-management approach to support detailed analysis, cross-team collaboration and the delivery of sustainable service improvements.
This year we have also designed, built and launched an online module to track learning and improvement. The module has several benefits including:
Efficient processing of learnings
Management of actions through Dynamics
Improved record keeping and audit trails
Greater flexibility and efficiency for reporting.
Below details some examples of our improvement work, demonstrating how we are upholding our values as a tenant-led organisation. The steps taken will improve the services provided to our tenants, reduce the need to raise or escalate complaints and reduce repetition of the same service failures.
Theme | What went wrong | What we did about it |
|---|---|---|
Resolving recurring repairs | We have had several complaints this year whereby we visited the same or a similar issue multiple times before we reached a comprehensive, lasting solution. This was understandably a real inconvenience to tenants and caused frustration that similar repair issues kept recurring. | We updated our escalations process and trained staff in the changes. Staff are now required to thoroughly check repair history when receiving a repair request, and if the same or similar issue has occurred three times or more within the last six months, we request a desktop assessment by a Technical Officer. We will still raise the repair through the normal channels to prevent delays; however, this extra layer of visibility offers us the chance to assess the need for a joint inspection and possible alternate resolutions more efficiently. |
Communicating gas check appointments | A Landlord Gas Safety Record (LGSR) is a legally required document where landlords must prove annually the safety of all gas appliances, fittings and flues within tenants’ homes. Previously a letter was generated with an appointment in 7 days. Through complaints we identified that tenants were not receiving the letter ahead of time and the text reminder was the first notification of the appointment they received. | As we are reliant on the postal service to get letters delivered, we adjusted our process to send a letter with an appointment 14 days from that date rather than 7, giving the chance for letters to arrive and tenants to make arrangements. Since implementing this change year on year over a 4-month period we recorded 52 fewer ‘letter 2’ appointments, meaning that more appointments have been completed on the first visit. In addition, across all lettered appointments, there were 140 fewer no-access incidences over the same timeframe, indicating tenants are more aware of appointments and making sure they are available. This improvement has ensured a more positive experience for our tenants and reduced waste for our staff. |
Approach to pests | Historically we would close down jobs if access was denied when inspecting & treating pest issues. This was a problem for both tenants and us as a landlord as if a pest problem exists it’s likely to only escalate without treatment and so the longer left untreated the risk of health hazards to our tenants and damage to our homes. | In December 2025 we published our updated Pest Policy which adjusted our approach to not close any pest related jobs until all reasonable attempts to arrange access had been made and any ongoing no access cases referred to tenancy management. |
Supporting tenants to encourage biodiversity | Previous learning around garden and outdoor spaces raised the topic of rewilding amongst tenant gardens. Red Kite has an untidy garden policy as part of our tenancy breach process; however we opened untidy garden cases where in fact tenants were trying to encourage biodiversity within their gardens. As an environmentally conscious organisation we recognise the benefits of rewilding for both nature and our tenants. | We updated our website with clear guidance on rewilding and added functionality for tenants to apply online to be able to indicate that they are rewilding. We created a framework for decision making which considers access, maintenance, health & safety and boundary impacts. Letters with decisions are sent to tenants and we introduced rewilding signage for approved outdoor spaces, helping staff clearly identify intentional rewilding when visiting our estates. |
HOS Annual Landlord Report
The most recent year for which HOS Landlord Performance Reports are available is 2024/25. The HOS reports for 2025/26 are not yet published.
The Red Kite 2024/25 HOS Landlord Report noted a higher maladministration rate than the sector average, due to a 77% maladministration rate in 22 findings, compared to a 70% maladministration rate for landlords of a similar size and type. The improvement areas identified reflect the same themes identified internally, which are actively improving.
Other relevant reports/publications
HOS regularly publishes several reports to improve standards across the industry. In 2025/26 these reports were relied on when resolving complaints, developing policies, improvement projects and understanding best practice.
Housing Ombudsman Annual Landlord Report
As of 30 April 2025, the most recent year for which Housing Ombudsman Landlord Performance Reports are available is 2023-2024. The Housing Ombudsman reports for 2024-2025 are yet to be published.
Due to receiving fewer than 5 findings in 2023-2024, the Ombudsman did not publish an individual landlord performance report for Red Kite covering 2023-2024.
Equality, Diversity, Inclusion
No EDI complaint handling concerns were identified in 2025/26 through analysis of both access to and satisfaction with the service received.