Regrettably, Trident Group has received its first severe maladministration findings from the Housing Ombudsman.
This determination was made in relation to the handling of a resident’s reports of Anti-Social Behaviour and the handling of the associated complaint.
In response to this finding, the Group provided the Housing Ombudsman with a statement that summarises what we got wrong, what we have learned and the action we are taking to make improvements.
At all stages of this case we reported in to our Board and continued to keep our Board updated throughout.
Our response is detailed below:
“Firstly, we would like to make known our apologies to our customer for the experience they received. Our Group Chief Executive has apologised personally and we have taken steps to make amends, including paying compensation and ensuring they’re happy that reported Anti-Social Behaviour is being handled in line with our policy and procedure and they are receiving satisfactory support from us in relation to the matter.
“We acknowledge we made mistakes and did not appropriately follow the Anti-Social Behaviour Policy and Procedure in place at the time and took too long to acknowledge the complaint and resolve the issues reported to us. We did not communicate well with our customer or deal with their complaint properly as we should.”
“With more attention, the frustration and dissatisfaction our customer experienced could have been avoided, and we take responsibility for these failings.”
“Individually, our colleagues and teams were committed to achieving a resolution for our customer, but collectively, due to poor communication between teams and our customer, we didn’t respond as we should have in this case.”
“We’ve since restructured and implemented a new Anti-Social Behaviour and Community Safety Team that are now in place. We have improved the Complaints Handling process as well as having new Complaints and Anti-Social Behaviour handling modules on our housing system. A workflow chart has been developed that sits behind the Anti-Social Behaviour Policy and Procedure, that provides a visible easy read guide to the Anti-Social Behaviour process. We have a weekly Complaints Meeting and have invested in training our colleagues. We are producing a lessons learnt report and will utilise this for further staff training.”
“We accept the severe maladministration findings, and we are determined to learn from the mistakes we have made. Our customers rely on us to support them when they need us the most, and we need to make sure we get things right.”