Tenants report low satisfaction with complaint handling despite performance improvements, says Housemark

Tenant satisfaction with complaint handling remains low in spite of improved performance from landlords, according to Housemark’s latest Monthly Pulse survey.

Data from 132 social landlords revealed overall satisfaction with complaint handling increased 1.5% to a median of 37% between 2024/25 and 2025/26, making it one of the least improved tenant perception measures in 2025/26.

But landlords are increasingly resolving complaints within target timescales.

In the first few months of the 2026/27 financial year, the median landlord resolved between 97% and 98% of complaints in time, whereas this figure was around 84% before the Housing Ombudsman’s complaint handling code came into force in April 2024.

Housemark’s report said: “The sector has become much better at processing complaints. However, it is less clear whether landlords are as effective at learning from them. Despite the complaint handling code’s requirement to self-assess, learning from complaints is often cited by the Housing Ombudsman as an improvement area in severe maladministration cases.

“Lack of visible change following complaint resolution may help to explain why satisfaction improvements have lagged behind operational improvements.”

The data company’s research also showed growing complaint escalation rates, with early tenant satisfaction measures (TSM) findings for 2025/26 showing a yearly 11.6% increase in stage 1 complaints, while stage 2 complaints rose by 32.9%.

Overall, formal complaints increased by 25% month-on-month in June 2026, while median complaint handling performance reached 97.9% resolved within target timescales.

New significant damp and mould hazards reported per 1,000 properties increased by 20.7% between May and June 2026, with the median result for standard investigations of significant damp and mould hazards reaching 100% in June. This means that more than half of landlords submitting data met the timescale requirements of Awaab’s Law every time last month.

Housemark’s report also highlighted the gap between complaints that residents believe they have made and those that landlords formally record.

Analysis of 2024/25 TSM returns shows that the median landlord reported 53.5 stage 1 complaints per 1,000 homes. However, if every resident who reported making a formal complaint in the perception survey had done so, the equivalent figure would be 261 complaints per 1,000 homes, representing a difference of almost 500%.

The landlords being awarded the top C1 consumer grade have a smaller gap between resident reported and formally recorded complaints than lower-rated organisations, according to Housemark.