Severe Maladministration finding against Longhurst Group

Regrettably, Longhurst Group has received its first severe maladministration finding from the Housing Ombudsman.

This determination was made in relation to the repairs service one of our customers received and the way we handled their subsequent complaint.

In response to this finding, the Group provided the Housing Ombudsman with a statement that summarises what we got wrong, what we’ve learned and the action we’re taking to make improvements.

Our response is detailed below:

“Firstly, we’d like to publicly apologise to our customer for the experience they received.  We’ve apologised in person and taken steps to make amends, including paying compensation and ensuring they’re happy that repairs have been completed to a high standard. 

“We acknowledge we made mistakes and took far too long to resolve the issues reported to us. We didn’t communicate well with our customer or deal with their complaint properly and we failed to hold our contractors to account strongly enough.    

“With more care and attention, the frustration and distress our customer experienced could’ve been avoided, and we take full responsibility for these failings. 

“Individually, our colleagues were committed to achieving a resolution for our customer, but collectively, due to poor communication between teams and with our contractors, we didn’t respond as we should’ve.  

“We completely accept the severe maladministration finding, and we’re determined to learn from the mistakes we’ve 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.”

“We’ve since invested additional resource to meet the increase in demand, restructured customer facing teams and enhanced the training our colleagues receive. We’ve also appointed new repairs contractors and changed processes to better manage their performance.  

“We need to get better, and we will, but we also acknowledge that all the improvements we need to make won’t happen overnight. We're continuing to deal with a backlog of repairs that built up during the pandemic and as we transitioned to new contractors, and still have a high number of complaints to resolve.   

 “We completely accept the severe maladministration finding, and we’re determined to learn from the mistakes we’ve 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.”