Complaints and improvements update - March 2026

How your feedback is driving improvements

We want to thank all our customers who have shared their experiences with us through complaints, surveys, and everyday conversations. Your feedback is essential in helping us improve our services. Over the past few months, we’ve made significant changes based on what you told us. These are the key improvements now underway.

1. Improving repairs diagnosis and scheduling

You told us that scheduling and fixing your repairs needs to be easier and quicker. In response to this feedback, we’re looking at a few things:

• We’re working on rolling out a new system which will enable you to send us photos when you’re reporting a repair. This will help us diagnose issues correctly the first time. We have now identified a potential supplier for this technology and hope to have this in place within the next for few months.
• We’re recruiting a new team member to help manage our vans and the supplies stored on them. Their role will include making sure our operatives have what they need on their vehicle in order to carry out any repairs relevant to their role, rather than having to arrange a repeat visit.
• All of our operatives are now trained and able to carry-out mould washes, and if they need to they can escalate issues straight to our dedicated DMC (Damp, Mould and Condensation) team when further work is needed.

This means we can act faster, reduce repeat visits and delays, and provide a more consistent service.

2. Acknowledging the pressures created by Awaab’s Law

We want to be open about the challenges we faced late last year.

When Awaab’s Law came into effect at the end of October, we anticipated that we would see an increase in the number of damp and mould reports. However, the demand was far greater than we expected.

To respond to this, we had to divert some of our teams from routine repairs to make sure we were prioritising repairs relating to issues highlighted in Awaabs Law, such as damp, mould and condensation. We acted quickly, but as a result we recognise that some customers experienced delays during this period and continue to do so. 

We’re learning from this, and we’ve introduced a new triage system, increased staff training, and changed our processes to improve coordination between teams. We have also taken steps to increase repairs availability to support recovery of outstanding repairs.

We hope to have minimal repairs that are overdue and back on track by early April. 

3. Clarity on service charges

Most of our customers have variable service charge. This means, when we set service charges for a year, they’re based on an estimate of what we expect to spend. This means that actual spend can vary due to unexpected or unpredictable costs or changes in external charges from services nor provided by NCHA throughout the year.

Some customers have fed back regarding an unexpected increase in service charge or because they were not aware that the original amount quoted was an estimate.

We’re looking at how we can improve our information to customers to make sure it is as clear as possible about what customers can expect to be charged and when.

Have your say

We appreciate customers taking the time to give us their feedback as it gives us the opportunity to improve our services.

If you’re interested in getting more involved in how we do things, we’re always looking for people to join our community of customers. You can find more information about getting involved on our website.