Complaints process

The Housing Ombudsman describes a complaint as: 

“an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the organisation, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting an individual resident or group of residents.” 

You might feel let down by:

• A service we should have provided
• The standard of the service you have received
• The way we’ve treated you
• The attitude of one of our team
• Or maybe we’ve not done something as our policies and processes say we should

These are examples of when you might want to make a complaint.

Repairs: When something breaks, like a boiler, you should report a repair first, rather than make a complaint.

Anti-social behaviour (ASB) and nuisance noise: If you are a victim of ASB or nuisance noise, we will take your report seriously. We have a specialist team trained to help you. Report ASB and nuisance noise.

These are classed as service requests. However, if you are unhappy with how we've handled your repair, ASB or nuisance noise report, then you should make a complaint.

Some complaints fall outside our normal complaints process:

Insurance claims: If you’ve suffered an injury or property damage, our insurance team will handle this separately. An appeal relating to the outcome of an insurance claim may be considered to see if there was a service failure not considered by the insurance claims process.

Legal matters: if an issue is already in court, or has already been heard by a court or tribunal.

Historical complaints: normally, we don’t consider complaints about events over 12 months old unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Resolved complaints: An attempt to reopen a previously concluded complaint, or to have a complaint reconsidered where we have already given our final decision at stage two. 

Unreasonable behaviour: We are here to help. But we may refuse to deal with a complaint, or deal with it differently if you act unreasonably. You can read out managing unacceptable behaviour policy for more information.

Policy related appeals: some policies and procedures have their own right to appeal. You will be informed if this is the case and supported to follow the relevant appeals process

A heat network (communal or district heating) metering or billing complaint: these disputes will be managed by your heat metering and billing agent. The outcome of the complaint will be shared with us.

We follow a two-stage complaints process. You can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service for support at any time. 

Stage one: our priority is to put things right, and if we can at this stage we will. 

You should contact us with your complaint within 12 months of the event taking place. Your complaint will be investigated by a Home Group colleague, who will look after you throughout your stage one complaint.  

How long will it take? 

We aim to: 

• Log and acknowledge receipt of your complaint within five working days after your complaint has been logged. Remember to take the postal service into account if you have written to us
• Send you a response letter addressing your complaint within ten working days

Remember: In complicated cases, this can take longer. We will give you an explanation and a timeframe for when you will receive the response. This will not exceed a further ten working days without good reason. 

Putting things right : what you can expect 

When something doesn’t go right, we will always apologise. We learn from our mistakes, so they don’t happen again. See our accountability framework.

We will also explain what has gone wrong, why, and how we plan to put things right.

If you request compensation as part of your complaint, we’ll review it fairly as part of our complaints handling process. Any payment will first go towards any outstanding arrears or debt, and we’ll pay you the remaining balance. You can find more details in our complaints, compliments, and comments policy. 

For personal injury or damage to belongings, we may refer your case to our insurance team, as these are handled separately.

If you are unhappy, you can:

• Request your complaint is escalated to the next stage for review
• And/or you can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service. They may be unable to carry out an investigation at this time but they may be able to provide you with impartial advice

Taking your complaint to the second stage of the complaints process

You will need to do this within ten working days of us writing to you with your complaint response.

You can let us know you want to go to stage two by:

• Telling the person who is dealing with your complaint
• Contacting us, by phone, email, or live chat. 

Unfortunately, you can't take your complaint to stage two if:

• Your reasons are unrelated to the original complaint. If you have an unrelated issue about something that has gone wrong let us know by making a new complaint. That way we can properly investigate it
• The complaint should not be looked into further because it would compromise legal proceedings
• It has become clear the complaint has previously fully exhausted the complaint process

Sometimes life gets in the way and you may miss the 10 working days deadline. If that happens, we will take exceptional circumstances into account.
 
Stage two: checking decisions are thorough, reasonable and fair 

This is the final stage of our complaints process.

We will confirm your complaint is being reviewed and give you timeframes. A senior colleague will review the original decision to ensure it was fair and reasonable. We will let you know who is looking after you. This is not a reinvestigation. They check the actions and decisions taken at stage one were thorough, reasonable and fair.

How long will this take?

We aim to: 

• Acknowledge receipt of your complaint within five working days. Remember to take the postal service into account if you have written to us
• Provide a response addressing your complaint within 20 working days of the complaint being acknowledged

In more complicated cases this can take longer to provide. We will let you know when we receive it. This should not exceed a further 10 days without good reason. 

If you are unhappy with our stage two final response, you can: 

• Refer your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman Service. If you have been through both stages of our complaints process and you are still not happy, you can ask them to conduct a full investigation into your complaint
• You can contact The Energy Ombudsman if you have a Heat Network (communal or district heating) billing or metering complaint. They handle disputes between customers and energy companies. You can ask for their help eight weeks after making your complaint, or if we have sent you a deadlock letter. They will carry out a full, independent investigation
• Ask a local councillor or Member of Parliament to consider the complaint for you
• Refer it to the Local Government Ombudsman Service, for complaints about our adult care services
• First tier tribunals can resolve disputes between homeowners and ourselves
• Leasehold Advisory Service can also support homeowners