Welsh Housing Awards 2026
Read all the shortlisted entries into this award category, Excellence in Customer Service, at the Welsh Housing Awards (WHA) 2026 and find out who won the award on the night.
In a rapidly changing environment, the need to deliver excellent service is more important than ever. This award recognises housing teams that go above and beyond to deliver truly outstanding customer service.
Winning project name
How Llanw transformed repairs and maintenance
Winning organisation
Llanw
Partner organisation
Valleys to Coast
Statement of support
Llanw was created in April 2024 to transform the reactive repairs department at Valleys to Coast into a responsive, customer-focused property service. Built with a commercial focus and a social heart, Llanw was designed around the lived experiences, needs, and feedback of customers. Prior to launching, customer feedback showed that tenants valued politeness, reliability, and consistency. This insight inspired the name Llanw, the Welsh word for tide, representing dependable and continuous renewal.
Over the past two years, Llanw has significantly improved service delivery, raising post-repair customer satisfaction from 65% to 95%.
Service flexibility was enhanced by extending the trade team’s working week to 40 hours, offering evening and weekend appointments so repairs fit around the daily lives of tenants.
To address requests for precise arrival times, Llanw introduced Track Our Trades software. Tenants receive a text message containing a tracking link and an estimated arrival time, offering peace of mind and clarity about who is visiting their home.
Equality, diversity, and inclusion are central to service delivery. Following focus groups, operational changes were introduced for visually impaired tenants. Tradespeople now verbally explain repair progress and ensure no materials are left as trip hazards. Llanw also introduced an equality, diversity, and inclusion questionnaire for contractors to ensure high standards across all partner operations.
Llanw actively listens and acts on customer data. Monthly feedback collected from 80 tenants by an external survey provider, Acuity, highlighted a need for better communication and faster repair timeframes. In response, the business support service was restructured to provide greater support to scheduling teams. This change enabled faster logging of follow-on work and hundreds of additional outbound calls each month to arrange outstanding repairs.
Complaints management has been overhauled; what began as 180 complaints now sits at 32. Resulting in a reduction of over 150 complaints. Weekly and monthly root cause analysis sessions allow Llanw to address individual issues while identifying trends, informing colleague training, and preventing recurring problems.
Customer feedback directly shapes operational decisions. After updating telephone options to ask callers to choose specific repair categories, tenants reported that the process was overly complex. Llanw listened and immediately simplified the system to two clear options: new repairs or existing repairs. This change was communicated transparently on social media.
Llanw’s focus on respect and clear communication before, during, and after repairs has achieved a 95% overall customer satisfaction rate and a 92% first-time fix rate. Dedicated scheduling assistants proactively call tenants to confirm or adjust appointments, reducing wait times. Call handling improvements reduced average call wait times to one minute, while an automatic call-back process ensures any abandoned calls are addressed the same day.
To support native language preferences, two Welsh speakers were recruited to the repairs team, allowing Welsh-speaking customers to report issues comfortably in their preferred language.
The post-repair experience has been transformed by combining flexible scheduling, real-time tracking, and Feedback Friday follow-up calls for dissatisfied customers. Feedback consistently highlights the professionalism and consideration of the team, with tenants noting that staff arrive prepared, protect property with shoe covers, tidy up post-job debris, and carry out emergency repairs promptly to ensure minimal disruption to daily life.
Outcomes and achievements
Llanw has achieved significant operational improvements and high customer satisfaction levels since launching in April 2024:
- Post-repair tenant satisfaction has increased from 65% to 95%.
- A 92% first-time fix rate has been achieved across all reactive property repairs.
- Reduced customer complaints by over 150 cases through systematic weekly and monthly root cause analysis.
- Reduced average phone wait times to one minute and introduced a same-day call-back commitment for all abandoned calls.
- Recruited Welsh-speaking staff to the repairs team, allowing customers to report repairs in Welsh.
- Expanded trade working hours to a 40-hour week, offering evening and weekend appointments.
- Successfully launched Track Our Trades live text tracking, enabling customers to track arrival times in real time.
- Simplified call-handling menus based directly on tenant feedback and introduced Feedback Friday follow-up calls to resolve dissatisfaction.
- Enhanced trade protocols for visually impaired tenants and embedded equality, diversity, and inclusion assessments across the wider contractor supply chain.
Shortlisted entries
Valleys to Coast - Transforming Complaints into Service Excellence
Application entry
- Project name: Transforming Complaints into Service Excellence
- Lead organisation: Valleys to Coast
Statement of support
Three years ago, handling complaints at Valleys to Coast felt like climbing an impossible mountain. We faced heavy backlogs, open cases stretching past 100 days, and disjointed processes. In September 2023, we introduced a dedicated complaints business partner (BP) role within the customer service team. Jo Pickup, moving from our Customer Service Hub with a wealth of experience, stepped up to drive this transformation.
Over the past three years, Jo’s consistency, approachability, and relentless focus have transformed our complaint culture. Rather than creating an isolated complaints department, Jo built a strong network across the organisation, empowering team leaders and managers to take genuine ownership of customer concerns. To ensure complete governance, we also established a dedicated Complaints Champion on our board who works closely with Jo and the team, feeding insight and progress directly back to board level.
This model relies on collaborative strength where volumes are highest. In our repairs service, Llanw, complaint handlers Sophie Gannon and Jon Price faced the steepest hill. Together, Jo, Sophie, Jon, and our wider group handlers form a united team that turned our feedback loop into a badge of pride, proving that exceptional customer service and teamwork go hand-in-hand.
Initially, Jo focused on stabilisation by equipping handlers with training and tools to resolve issues in line with policy, tackling our oldest cases, and embedding quality checks. As open volumes dropped, Jo rolled out refreshed procedures, customer satisfaction surveys, and a new recording system requiring extensive re-training. Jo’s continuous focus on root-cause analysis ensured departments fixed systemic issues rather than recurring symptoms.
Nowhere is the customer impact clearer than through Jon and Sophie in Llanw. Managing complex repair disputes, they act as the empathetic voice of Valleys to Coast. When customers feel overwhelmed, Jon and Sophie step in with patience, clear communication, and total accountability. Customers regularly share that Jon "made them feel heard" and kept every promise, while Sophie actively cuts through contractor red tape to resolve repairs.
While progress built steadily year-on-year, 2026 marks the culmination of this journey. The daily grit shown by Jo, Sophie, Jon, and our cross-group handlers delivered two major milestones: an exceptionally positive Housing Ombudsman annual report and a "Substantial Assurance" Internal Audit rating—the highest tier of regulatory confidence. Our Ombudsman figures demonstrate total transparency; while total referrals rose slightly from 38 to 43 (reflecting our commitment to signposting customers to their rights), our performance improved across every single metric.
Building on this success, for the new financial year we are launching the Complaints Escalation Forum to target long-standing cases (>60 days) where complex cross-service issues block resolution. Bringing key operational decision-makers—including the heads of housing, assets, compliance, sustainability, and commercial—to the table monthly, this cross-functional team gives complaint handlers a direct platform to present challenging cases. With a strict four-case agenda, documented resolution paths, and seven-day action targets (escalating directly to directors if unresolved), the forum breaks down operational silos to ensure customers are no longer left waiting.
This team deserves recognition for both Excellence in Customer Service and Team of the Year because they proved complaints aren't a burden to hide, but a vital engine for service improvement. Jo provided the vision and drive; Sophie, Jon, and our group handlers provided the daily frontline dedication; and our leadership and board backed them with cross-departmental accountability. Together, they turned legacy systemic issues into a high-performing, empathetic, and truly customer-centric service.
Outcomes and achievements
Substantial Assurance Audit: Achieved the highest regulatory confidence rating in our May 2026 Internal Audit for Compliments & Complaints, with 100% of sampled cases showing evidence of deep, robust investigations.
100% Ombudsman compliance: Improved response timescale compliance with the Housing Ombudsman from 32% (2024/25) to a perfect 100% (2025/26).
Drastic intervention reduction: Reduced the Housing Ombudsman intervention rate from 22% (8 cases) to 7% (3 cases), with formal recommendations dropping from 19 to nine.
Massive backlog clearance: Reduced total active complaints from 235 down to 55, cutting long-term cases (>6 months) from 61 down to just two.
Faster turnaround times: Cut the average age of active cases from 104 days down to 31 days.
Board and customer alignment: Appointed a board Complaints Champion to feed frontline learning directly to board level, and redesigned procedures to mandate direct customer calls and written updates at key stages.
Complaints Escalation Forum introduced: Established a monthly multi-departmental forum featuring seven key heads of service/managers to resolve complex >60-day cases, assigning dedicated action owners with strict seven-day completion targets and director escalation pathways.
