Introduction - Council housing complaint report 2025 to 2026
This is our third annual Complaints Performance & Service Improvement report, which is published in accordance with the requirements of the Housing Ombudsman, alongside our self-assessment against their Complaint Handling Code, our governing body’s response to this report, and the Housing Ombudsman’s annual report for the Council (once received). This report aims to inform residents of our performance with complaints handling, demonstrate our compliance with the Code, and evidence how we have used what we have learned from complaints to improve our services.
The Housing Ombudsman was granted statutory powers and duties by The Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, so it is more important than ever that we ensure we are compliant with the Code and strive to be transparent and accountable.
We also adhere to the Regulator of Social Housing’s Consumer Standards, and our complaints handling is specifically guided by the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. We are required to demonstrate that we have a robust approach to handling complaints, a culture of learning from them, that we implement improvements, and that we publish the data around this.
This report covers the period from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, and encompasses all complaints relating to the services Oxford City Council (or those acting on our behalf) provides as a landlord. This does not include complaints regarding homelessness, housing benefit, or any other Local Authority functions that would come under the remit of the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman.
These complaints have come from tenants, shared owners, leaseholders, private residents, or third parties acting on behalf of any of those. The data included in this report will differ from the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM) already published for the same period. This is because the TSM data only includes complaints from tenants or third parties on their behalf, whereas the statistics in this report cover all those mentioned above.
The complaints were handled by either the Housing Customer Care & Complaints team or, where appropriate, by our contractor, Oxford Direct Services (ODS), on our behalf.
Key takeaways
- There has been an overall reduction in the number of Stage 1 complaints received, however the number of Stage 1 complaints handled by the Council have increased.
- There has been an increase in the number of Stage 2 complaints received.
- There have been significant issues with responding to complaints within timescales. This is across Stage 1 and 2, and includes complaints handled by both the Council and ODS on our behalf.
- The increase in the number of Stage 2 complaints and delays in getting responses to enquiries resulted in a backlog of Stage 2 complaints for the Council. Additional resource was added to the team in January 2026 and the backlog was cleared by February 2026.
- Measures have been put in place to ensure we can respond to complaints within timescale, alongside more robust complaints reporting and oversight measures both within the Council and for ODS.
- Compensation offers have risen, due largely to compensation offered for the delay in responding to a complaint, regardless of whether the substantive issue was upheld or not.
- We have continued to use the learning from complaints to drive service improvements and are looking to strengthen how we do this in the coming year. We have also launched our Resident Complaints Panel, holding our first meeting in quarter 1 of 2026/27.
More information
For more information about housing complaints handling see:
