The north of England’s gas distributer, Northern Gas Networks (NGN), has been named the Utilities Complaint Team of the Year at the prestigious UK Complaint Handling Awards in London.

NGN was also named runner-up in the Internal Communication Excellence and Effectiveness category.

The awards ceremony, which took place at the Riverbank Park Plaza hotel on Thursday, rewards organisations that have achieved outstanding performance in the last year, focusing solely on how businesses manage consumer complaints.

NGN fought off competition from United Utilities and Scottish Water to win the team award.

NGN distributes gas to 2.7 million homes and businesses in the North East, Northern Cumbria and much of Yorkshire, covering cities and towns including Leeds, Hull, Carlisle, Bradford, York, Huddersfield, Harrogate, Darlington and Newcastle.

Operating and maintaining a network of underground pipes measuring 37,000km – enough to stretch from London to Sydney and back – NGN is also provides the region’s rapid response team when a smell of gas is reported.

Based at the Doxford Park contact centre in Sunderland, NGN’s Customer Care team is responsible for handling any queries and complaints which may arise across the network.

By putting customers at the very heart of the business, and using pioneering technology such as Rant & Rave and Pingit, colleagues are empowered to go above and beyond to resolve issues.

This year NGN is on target to resolve 90% of its complaints within 60 minutes and Ofgem has rated NGN number one gas distribution network for customer satisfaction since 2014.

Eileen Brown, Customer Experience Director for NGN said: “This is fantastic recognition of the tireless work everyone at NGN continually puts in to go above and beyond for customers on every level.  We do things differently from other utility companies and that’s gaining us a lot of credit.

“This award is testament to the time, dedication and expertise NGN colleagues deliver on a daily basis to keep our customers cooking on gas. It’s amazing to present that and show what we’re achieving; we’re incredibly proud to win this award against some outstanding competition.”

For more information go to www.northerngasnetworks.co.uk or follow @NGNgas on Twitter