Making complaints count
We are committed to a positive complaint handling culture, making it simple and easy for you to get your concerns resolved.
Our complaints policy sets out our commitment to you and our local Tenant Voice Teams are on hand to support you throughout the complaint process. Find out more below.
What we promise
- You (or your representative) can tell us about your complaint in a way that is convenient to you (see below).
- We will acknowledge and log your complaint within five working days of receipt.
- Our Tenant Voice Team, will talk to you to try and agree a fair resolution to your complaint within 10 working days (or advise you if they can’t).
- We will regularly communicate and monitor any outstanding actions through to completion.
- A simple two stage process means you’ll have the opportunity to escalate if you are unhappy with our response to your complaint.
- We will advise you if and why we are unable to deal with your matter as a complaint.
What's excluded?
- Complaints where the issue occurred over twelve months ago
- Something we have no control over such as Local Authority property allocations
- Complaints that have already been considered under our complaints process
- Insurance claims for damages and/or legal proceedings (associated complaints regarding service failures are not excluded in these cases)
- Matters already being dealt with by the Ombudsman service
- A service request; when we have been asked to take action and put something right (which we have not previously failed to address)
Our commitment to complaints
We are committed to a positive complaint handling culture and are members of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme. The Housing Ombudsman Service is a fair and impartial service which was set up by law to look at complaints about housing organisations that are registered with them.
The Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code 2024 sets out requirements to ensure we respond to complaints effectively and fairly.
We have carried out a self-assessment against the Complaint Handling Code and produced an Annual Complaints Performance and Service Improvement report.
How to make a complaint
If you have a complaint about the standard of our service, actions or lack of action, our staff or those acting on our behalf we will deal with your issue as a formal complaint.
We want to make it as easy as possible, and you can do it in a way that suits you, and we will make any reasonable adjustments to help make things easier.
Report a neighbourhood issue
If you'd like to report or complain about something happening in your community, your neighbours or anti-social behaviour, please don’t use the complaints form. Click the link below to be taken to our ASB form so we can help you with these issues.
You can also let us know about domestic abuse happening in your home or in your neighbourhood here.
Contacting the Ombudsman
Your complaint can be referred to the Housing Ombudsman once it has exhausted our two stage complaints process, but further guidance and advice on their services can be found here (https://www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk/residents/)
Contact details for the Housing Ombudsman are:
- Online complaint form: www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk/residents/make-a-complaint/
- Phone: 0300 111 3000
- Email: info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk
- Postal address: Housing Ombudsman Service, PO Box 1484, Unit D, Preston, PR2 0ET
How we're doing
We measure our performance on an ongoing basis, and below you can find our quarterly complaints performance results.
January - April 2024
A total of 216 complaints received (January - March 2024)
This is 28 less than last quarter
Delay in service
Lack of communication
No show for booked appointment
97.8% were responded to within 10 working days
1.4% less than last quarter
19 complaints were escalated to stage two
That is nine more than last quarter
The top theme for escalated complaints was delay in service/action
We received one determination
Learning & improvements driven by complaints and customer feedback
Improvements have been made to our text messaging service to make sure you know when we're coming to complete a repair. This includes messaging you when we've needed to rearrange your appointment as well as messaging you to let you know that our engineer is on route.