Listening, learning and improving: our 2025–26 complaints report

We've published our Annual Complaints Performance and Service Improvement Report for 2025–26, setting out what customers have told us through our complaints process, what we've learned, and the actions we're taking to improve services.

The report has been published in line with the Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code and covers our first full year operating under Sparrow's own management.

One of the clearest messages from this year's report is that complaints are helping us become a better organisation. Every complaint gives us valuable insight into where services haven't met expectations and helps us identify opportunities to improve the customer experience.

So, what do the numbers say?

We received 69 Stage 1 complaints this year, down 36% on last year, and responded to 94% of complaints on time. Response times improved at both stages.

But here's the number we're paying most attention to: around half of complaints were upheld or partially upheld. That's better than last year, but it's still too high. When we uphold a complaint, it means we got something wrong. The most common themes were communication, resale delays, service charges, and repairs - so that's where our improvement work is focused.

During the year, we strengthened our approach to complaints handling by improving monitoring and oversight, delivering additional staff training on record-keeping and customer communication, and introducing dedicated support for complex repairs cases involving multiple organisations.

Customer involvement is also playing a bigger role in shaping our services. Our Customer Scrutiny Panel has helped review our complaints policy and wider customer engagement approach, ensuring that customer insight influences decisions and service improvements.

This year we're going further - mapping every key customer journey to find the friction points before they become complaints, and running paid focus groups with our Customer Scrutiny Panel so we hear from you earlier.

Keep telling us

Our aim isn't fewer complaints. It's complaints handled fairly, resolved properly, and used to make things better. So if something's not right, tell us — it works.