Our customers are at the heart of what we do. To enable us to deliver a great customer experience we welcome all your feedback, both positive and negative. This helps us to know when we get things right and also where we need to improve.
We understand that sometimes things go wrong. As soon as we're aware that you feel unhappy with the level of service we’ve given, we'll contact you and take the necessary steps to put things right quickly.
If you’re unhappy with the service we’ve delivered you can open a complaint. You can do this by completing the Your Feedback form. Alternatively you can:
We’ll acknowledge your complaint in writing within five working days and take your complaint through our two-stage process. This is set out in detail in our Complaint Handling and Resolution Policy. You can find an Easy Read version of this policy below.
All formal complaints are handled by one team. They work closely with colleagues across the business to make sure we do everything necessary to investigate the issue in detail and keep you informed.
Complaints Policy Easy Read (PDF)
How to tell us if you are unhappy with our service and what we will do.
Here are examples of where we’ve used our customers’ voices to embed lessons learnt into our daily service delivery, identified through the learning from our customer panels and via our complaints process.
We use all feedback as a positive source of information to continuously improve the services we provide and our customers’ experience. We’ll monitor service requests and formal complaints, analysing trends and learning from feedback.
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A customer told us that we’d contacted them about rent arrears, despite already having an arrangement in place with us. The customer also told us that we’d left a voicemail that wasn’t empathetic about the arrears. |
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We completed training with our Income Team to remind them how important it is to update our records when arrangements are put in place. We also emphasised being mindful of the language we use when leaving voicemails of this nature. |
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A customer reported to us that nobody had inspected their smoke alarm in their home for some time. |
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Our Building Safety Team have implemented a new programme to make sure all smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are checked during the annual gas safety checks in customers’ homes. |
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Following feedback, we acknowledged that we didn’t provide regular communication after receiving reports of anti-social behaviour (ASB). | |
We reminded our Districts Team to follow our policy for creating an action plan to investigate the ASB report with detailed next steps, and to maintain regular communication with the customer. |
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Following feedback, we acknowledged that there was no automated process in place for checking on outstanding repairs for our heating contractor, Aaron Services. |
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A report has been created that tells us which customers are without heating or hot water. This is shared with our Repairs Team on a frequent basis so we can better monitor outstanding repairs of this kind. |
The Housing Ombudsman Service is set up by law to look at complaints about housing organisations registered in their scheme. Their service is free, independent and impartial.
The role of the Ombudsman is to resolve disputes, including awarding compensation or providing other remedies when appropriate, and to support effective landlord tenant dispute resolution by others. Residents and landlords can contact the Ombudsman at any time for support.
Find out more about what they do and how they work.
You can read about our handling of complaints in our Annual Complaint Performance and Service Improvement Report for 2023-2024. We assessed ourselves against the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code to produce this report. It tells you how many complaints we received last year, our performance when responding to them, themes, and what we’re doing to learn from them, along with determinations from the Housing Ombudsman when complaints have been escalated. Our Board has reviewed this and here is their response.
From 1 April 2024, landlords are required by law to follow the Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code. This aims to improve how complaints are handled and provide a better service to customers.
We’ve reviewed our complaints process to make sure we’re compliant. You can download our Self-Assessment for 2024 to find out more.
For more information on how we manage customer feedback, please see our leaflet, a guide to giving us feedback.
We aim to provide an excellent service, but recognise that sometimes we don’t meet these standards. If we fail to meet the level of service set out in our published standards, we’ll apologise and aim to put things right. At times this may involve paying compensation to you or making a goodwill gesture. You can read about our approach, when goodwill gestures will be paid, and how an amount is calculated in our Compensation and Goodwill Gesture Policy[pdf] 206KB.
It’s great to hear when we have done well. This means we can make sure to keep doing it and share good practices across our team. We’ll also pass any compliments on to those employees that have given great service, so they know when they’re doing well.
Your feedback
