TIDM44EB
RNS Number : 4069H
London & Quadrant Housing Trust
27 July 2023
London & Quadrant Housing Trust - Response to Housing
Ombudsman Report
The Housing Ombudsman carried out an investigation into
L&Q's complaints handling earlier this year and has now
published a report highlighting their findings and
recommendations.
The report highlights several cases where L&Q let down our
residents and did not deliver the service they deserve. You can
read the Ombudsman's full report including their recommendations
for L&Q on the Housing Ombudsman website.
Responding to the report, L&Q's Group Chief Executive, Fiona
Fletcher-Smith, said:
"We recognise that we've got things wrong, and we welcome this
extremely valuable learning process.
My senior leadership colleagues and I are personally contacting
the residents whose complaints the Ombudsman judged to have
involved service failure or maladministration on our part. We have
apologised for the completely unacceptable service they have
received. L&Q has let them down, and I'm truly sorry for
that.
What really matters to us is putting things right for residents
and using the report's learnings to correct historic failings,
continue building a resident-centred culture, and ensure we deliver
a quality service every time.
The Ombudsman's investigation draws conclusions from complaints
made between March 2019 and October 2022 - a period when our
services were severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. As
the Ombudsman has recognised, when I became Chief Executive in
2021, the Board and I put in place a new five-year improvement and
investment strategy to tackle the problems that had emerged. This
was developed through listening to residents, and resolutely
focused on the safety and quality of existing homes and
services.
I'm pleased the Ombudsman has endorsed these plans, and I
welcome both residents' and the Ombudsman's input on how we can
further strengthen, accelerate and embed the positive changes we're
making.
Central to our approach is putting residents at the heart of our
decision-making, and I wholeheartedly agree with the Ombudsman
about the importance of the resident voice. We published a report
in May 2023 setting out how we will embed resident involvement at
every level of L&Q and put residents in control of the
decisions that affect them. This builds on what we've already done
to place residents at the top of our governance through our
resident-led Resident Services Board, regional committees, and
600-strong body of involved residents.
We've also made significant progress to address the operational
issues highlighted in this report, and these are already delivering
improvements:
Our GBP3 billion, 15-year major works investment programme,
launched last year, is making sure every resident's home is safe,
decent and more energy-efficient, and will also drive down repairs.
In 2022/23 alone we installed over 1,500 new bathrooms, 1,400 new
kitchens, and almost 2,800 new windows. Every resident will
experience improvements to their home or building, and when
completed we will have fitted 42,000 new kitchens and 50,000 new
bathrooms through our programme.
We deliver 400,000 repairs each year, and we're transforming the
quality and responsiveness of this service so we can deliver more
repairs each day, and a first-time-fix whenever possible - this has
already increased by 20% across day-to-day repairs. We're also
progressing further improvements to tackle damp and mould through
our Healthy Homes Project, which has already carried out 20,000
home visits and installed 14,000 humidity sensors.
The new, localised housing management approach we implemented
last year is putting 30% more front-line colleagues in local
neighbourhoods where they're better placed to proactively support
residents and communities and be more responsive to the needs of
vulnerable residents. We've also established an extensive training
programme for resident-facing colleagues to help us deliver an
empathetic and responsive resident experience and manage poor
performance.
We are overhauling our complaints handling, investing in
additional staff, training and other resources, prioritising
efficiency and good communication, and embedding learning from
complaints in our process. We're already seeing a reduction in the
time it takes to resolve complaints and in the number progressing
to stage 2. The Ombudsman's report acknowledges the improved
quality of our complaint responses.
Underpinning these changes is a GBP40m investment in a new
housing management system and other technologies that will improve
how we manage our data and information, and how we communicate with
residents, and in particular vulnerable residents who may need
different types of support.
We have a clear plan, a dedicated and committed team to deliver
it, and we are confident that the changes we're making will ensure
residents receive the quality homes and services they deserve. We
are grateful to the Ombudsman for their work, and we look forward
to ongoing collaboration to make further improvements."
For further information, please contact:
investors@lqgroup.org.uk
James Howell, Head of External Affairs 020 8189 1596
www.lqgroup.org.uk
END
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