Gateshead housing boss, coun Chris Buckley, has apologized to council tenants following a decline in the levels of satisfaction recorded on how the local authority has dealt with complaints regarding accommodation. According to a report published last week, satisfaction over complaint handling fell from 26% in 2023/24 to just 18% in 2024/25.
The survey findings were based on a telephone survey conducted by 1,155 Gateshead Council renters.
At this afternoon’s housing and environment committee meeting, cabinet member for housing council Chris Buckley said: “Now the big one, this is the thing that I think has scared me over the past year, complaints handling. Our 18% C-stat score for complaints was just abysmal.
I don’t think there is any getting away from that and I think there needs to be recognition from me that that is nowhere near good enough for our tenants. I would apologise to anybody who had not been satisfied with how their complaint had been dealt with.
“What I would say to them is try us again because we have a new complaints team in place.”
Improvements
The cabinet member responsible for housing went on to state that while the council only responded to 30% of stage one complaints within 10-working back in 2023/24, this has risen as of March to over 92%.
The council’s report on the issues states: “During 2024.25 we reviewed and changed the way we handle Housing related complaints establishing a new Customer Support and Insight team. However, they only took responsibility for responding to stage 1 complaints from January 2025 and therefore It is unlikely that many if any respondents to this question had their complaint handled by the new team.”
Coun Buckely also praised staff, working “incredibly hard” to achieve a significant reduction in overdue repairs, dropping from 5,000 last year to just 1,500 today.
On the subject of complaint handling at Gateshead, the Regulator of Social Housing’s report found: “Landlords must also ensure complaints are addressed fairly, effectively and promptly. We found evidence that complaints responses were poor and there has been particular weakness in the timeliness of Gateshead MBC’s responses to complaints, often with significant backlogs.
“Gateshead MBC also needs to strengthen its approach to learning from complaints and using this information to continuously improve services. Gateshead MBC has taken steps to address this and has plans in place for further improvement, and through our ongoing engagement with the council we will seek assurance that change has been embedded and is delivering improved outcomes for tenants.”
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