Every Sanctuary customer has the right to live in a safe and good quality home.
Most of our customers are satisfied with their home and the service we provide, but we don’t always get things right. As a learning organisation, when we get things wrong, we want to make sure we learn and improve.
This page sets out our complaint performance and some of the associated service improvements we’ve made to put customers at the heart of our service.
Learning from complaints
Our complaint process is a safety net for customers who feel we’ve fallen short of the service they expect. While we would prefer to put something right before it becomes a complaint, we encourage residents to formally tell us if they feel we’ve got something wrong.
Information about how to complain
We are a member of the Housing Ombudsman Service, an independent body that reviews and investigates complaints when customers remain unhappy with their landlord following the complaint process.
We work closely with the Ombudsman and use the insights from rulings made against us to improve.
The figures shown below give a snapshot of our 2025/26 performance, plus the Ombudsman rulings we received.
We completed 357,853 repairs in total (emergency + non-emergency)
We received 8,366 repairs-related complaints
12 customers affected by severe maladministration
12 counts of severe maladministration against Sanctuary
In quarter 1 2026/27 (April to June 2026), we logged 2,786 new complaints and received three severe maladministration determinations from the Housing Ombudsman.
While severe maladministration findings represent a very small proportion of the complaints we handle, each case matters. In these instances, we did not provide the standard of service our customers should expect, and we recognise the impact this had on those affected.
The three cases related to ongoing repairs and the time taken to fully resolve the issues. We understand the disruption and frustration that unresolved repairs can cause, and every customer has the right to live safely in their home, with repairs assessed and completed promptly.
We have apologised to the customers involved and have reviewed these cases carefully. As a result, we have taken action to improve how our services are delivered, helping us provide a better experience for customers and reduce the risk of similar issues occurring in the future.
Handling complaints
What we learned
Some of our Housing Ombudsman findings in 2025/26 related to how we handled complaints. This included taking too long to respond, not always communicating clearly, not explaining decisions well enough and not always making sure agreed actions were completed.
Complaint numbers also continued to rise, particularly in England, in line with the wider housing sector. Although we responded to more complaints within the Housing Ombudsman’s timescales, we know customers still need clearer, more timely and more consistent responses when they raise a complaint.
We also saw fewer severe maladministration findings than the previous year. This is positive progress, but each finding still represents a customer who did not receive the service they should have had.
What we’ve done about it
- improved how quickly we respond to complaints at both stage one and stage two.
- put a new Quality Assurance process in place to check complaint responses are fair, consistent, clearly explained and meet policy and regulatory expectations.
- introduced resident quality assurance checks, with trained residents reviewing a sample of complaint cases and giving feedback from a customer perspective.
- strengthened how we look at the root causes of complaints, so we can better understand recurring issues and prevent the same problems happening again.
- used complaint learning to focus on priority areas including damp and mould, emergency repairs, gas and compliance, and wider repairs-related concerns.
- reviewed how we explain compensation and complaint closure, especially where repairs or follow-up actions are still outstanding.
- continued to publish complaint handling information every three months on our website.
We have published our complaint insight report for 2025/26 (PDF 153KB) and also our self-assessment (PDF 544KB) against the Housing Ombudsman Service's complaint handling code. The Housing Ombudsman’s Landlord Performance Report (PDF 1.7MB), published as part of its Annual Complaints Review, is also available.