The Cabinet Member Signing meeting was scheduled to discuss the Haringey Resident Feedback Policy. This policy has been revised to align with recommendations from the Housing Ombudsman Service and to ensure compliance with their Complaint Handling Code.

Haringey Resident Feedback Policy

The meeting was scheduled to consider the revised Haringey Resident Feedback Policy. This policy aims to improve the council's handling of resident feedback, including complaints, compliments, and suggestions. The revisions were prompted by reviews from the Housing Ombudsman Service in July 2025 and February 2026, which identified areas for improvement in complaint handling.

The updated policy seeks to ensure greater clarity on excluded complaints, enhance oversight of Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) complaint handling, and provide more specific details on timescales for Stage 2 complaints. It reinforces principles of fairness, transparency, accessibility, and accountability, and embeds mechanisms for learning and service improvement. The policy also aims to reflect the principles of the Haringey Deal, ensuring that the voices of residents, particularly those often overlooked, inform service revisions.

The report pack indicated that the revised policy aligns with both the Housing Ombudsman and the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman complaint handling codes. It also addresses the council's Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) under the Equality Act 2010, with consideration given to potential impacts on residents with protected characteristics. No negative equality impacts were identified, and the policy aims to provide clearer standards to mitigate inconsistent practices.

The report highlighted that failure to comply with the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code could result in non-compliance with statutory requirements. The Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 empowered the Housing Ombudsman Service to issue a statutory Complaint Handling Code, which came into effect in April 2024. This code mandates landlords to assess their performance against it annually.

The report also noted that the council's self-assessment documentation required updates to reference the revised policy as supporting evidence for specific provisions of the Complaint Handling Code. A second review by the Housing Ombudsman Service in February 2026 identified an additional area for recommendation regarding the policy's inclusion of Stage 2 response timescales, which had been missing from the current version. The Ombudsman had proposed a mandatory meeting or an update to the policy and self-assessment by 4 March 2026 to address these points.