Learning from complaints
We believe that every piece of feedback, whether it’s a compliment or a concern, is an opportunity to learn and improve.
When you submit a complaint, you're not just highlighting something that’s gone wrong and needs fixing, you're helping us to see where we can make meaningful and lasting improvements.
Our Customer Complaints Learning Panel (CCLP) is an important part of this.
The CCLP brings together customers and Stonewater colleagues to look closely at complaints - reviewing anonymised complaint cases and discussing openly what caused the complaint. They explore the investigations completed, alongside reviewing the actual complaint response, and then make recommendations to make sure complaints lead to real service change.
The Customer Complaint Learning Panel is just one of the ways we’re making sure Stonewater is a place where everyone feels heard, respected and supported.
Earlier this summer, the panel met with colleagues from Stonewater and Mount Green to look at some complaints we’d received about delayed repairs, communication gaps and challenges with contractors.
Customers told us they value a more personal, tailored approach and shared how important it is that we make sure that everyone’s voice helps to shape improvements. From this review, the CCLP made eight recommendations. These are helping us to make several improvements, including:
- Better communication with contractors so customers get clearer and more timely updates.
- Clearer processes and timelines for council enquiries, so requests are tracked from start to finish.
- More training for our teams, so they have the skills and confidence to respond with empathy and accuracy.
In October, the panel reviewed five detailed complaint cases about rent and service charges, leasehold issues and staircasing limits for shared owners. They wanted to understand why customers felt communications were unclear and difficult to understand, why customers were notified of miscalculated annual breakdowns of accounts and why some customers were incorrectly informed that they were able to staircase (increase the stake in their home) to 100% ownership.
The CCLP made 11 recommendations. They recommended that we:
- Review and improve our letters to make our information clearer and easier to understand, including cost breakdowns.
- Look again at some policies, such as the 80% staircasing cap, and make our internal processes more consistent.
- Always provide a named contact in our replies.
- Be open when things haven’t gone well - for example, unclear service charges or communication delays - and show how we’re learning from this.
- Continue creating customer-friendly resources, like fact sheets and handbooks.
The collaboration between our teams and the CCLP has already contributed to clear improvements, including a 10% decrease in complaints compared to the previous year! This shows us that learning from complaints and feedback is really driving positive change.
Homeownership handbooks
From listening to your feedback and reviewing the most common complaints and queries to our teams, we saw a need for clearer information about homeownership.
We created two brand-new handbooks to help you feel more informed and better understand your rights, responsibilities and options. These guides, full of useful advice for both new and existing customers, including first-time buyers and those who have owned before, were designed to take the mystery out of leasehold living and help you feel more confident in managing your home.
If you’d like to help us improve our services, why not consider getting involved?
We have many different engagement opportunities available – from the CCLP, to our Scrutiny panel, to surveys. You don’t need any special skills, just an interest in helping make things better!
Find out more about getting involved.
We’ll share our complaint learnings for September to December 2025 in the spring edition of Here to Help.
Making a complaint
If something has gone wrong, and we haven’t been able to put it right, get in touch.
You can make a complaint by:
- Completing the form on our website here
- Emailing us at customers@stonewater.org
- Calling us at 01202 319 119
- Writing to us at: Stonewater, Suite C, Lancaster House, Grange Business Park, Enderby Road, Whetstone, Leicester, LE86EP
- By sending us a private message on Facebook