Responding to initial housing complaints within its own target timeframe remains challenging for Gateshead Council.
According to a local authority report on the levels of council tenant satisfaction with complaint handling, only 26% were recorded as satisfied with how their complaint was handled in 2023/24. This marks a 5% increase from 2022/23.
Additional figures also revealed the authority responded to just 57% of ‘stage one’ housing complaints within the target of 10 days in the second quarter of 2024/25. This amounts to 65 first-time reported complaints.
When quizzed by councillors, Martin Poulter, business, performance and customer services manager at Gateshead Council said: “We are not performing well, we have demonstrated that. We have a report on that later coming on.
“Truthfully, we don’t compare well. Most of it is we just aren’t where we want to be as a local authority and a social landlord. But the important thing we have plans and we putting things in place to address those issues.
“Hopefully , we will continue to work with tenants and with with reference to the housing ombudsman’s complaints handling code., we will see improvement, absolutely in our performance.”
However, the report went on to describe “significant progress” on the number of outstanding complaints. At the time of writing, there are currently 30 outstanding complaints, 11 of which are outside the 10 day target.
Councillors were informed a specialist housing complaint team was currently being trained up to help the authority respond to stage one issues.
Cllr Dott Burnett said: “This is probably the main thing we deal with as councillors. What people say to us is ‘we’ve been here, we’ve been there, I’ve reported it again, and again’. I’m glad that you’ve appointed this team because at every meeting I’ve been to in the last two years, I’ve said there must be a point where people know who they are dealing with, and they’ve got the own a repair.”
