Telling us about a complaint

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We value complaints and pride ourselves on having a positive complaint handling culture, where we learn from any mistakes we make.

We aim to provide a quality service and use findings and data from all feedback and contact to proactively make positive changes, that will benefit all residents.

We report these to our Board, through social media, in our newsletters, in our annual report, and on our performance webpage.

A formal complaint

Is an expression of dissatisfaction about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by us, our own staff, or those acting on our behalf, affecting an individual customers or group of customers.

A service request

Is a request from a customer to the landlord requiring action to be taken to put something right. Service requests are not complaints, but must be recorded, monitored, and reviewed regularly.

A complaint must be raised if a customer expresses dissatisfaction with the response to their service request, even if the handling of the service request remains ongoing. We will not stop our efforts to address the service request if the customer raises a formal complaint.

Each complaint will be considered on its own merit. There are some things that aren’t dealt with through our complaints process. These include:

• When it's the first request for a service from us (for example if your boiler breaks for the first time, this would be a repair request, not a complaint).
• When the issue happened, or the customer was aware of the issue over 12 months ago, and the customer didn't report it at the time. We will consider whether to apply discretion to accept complaints made outside this time limit where there are good reasons to do so.
• Where the underlying issue is not within our remit or control.
• When it's an anonymous complaint. We would be unable to respond to the complainant as part of this process, however, we would carry out an investigation of the reported issues and action accordingly.
• When it's an Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) / neighbour nuisance complaint - these should be dealt with in accordance with our ASB Policy and Procedure. If, however, the complaint relates to the process, or our failure to deal with the concerns raised, it should be dealt with under this policy.
• When legal proceedings have started. This is defined as details of the claim, such as the Claim Form, Particulars of Claim, having been filed at court. A disrepair claim will be actioned in conjunction with a formal complaint.
• When the matters have previously been considered under the complaints policy.
• We sometimes receive complaints that are vexatious (aggressive, abusive, or unreasonable). If we believe this is the case, we will contact the customer and explain why we have reached this decision. We may also restrict contact in accordance with our acceptable behaviour policy.
• Any personal injury claims. These should be referred to our insurance company.

We will consider a complaint and/or escalate it, unless there's a valid reason not to. If we decide not to accept a complaint, an explanation will be provided to the customer setting out the reasons why the matter is not suitable for the complaints process and their right to take our decision to the Housing Ombudsman. If the Housing Ombudsman does not agree that the exclusion has been fairly applied, the complaint will be investigated.

Our Complaints Policy is applicable to anyone who receives or requests a service from us, for example tenants and shared owners.

We will also accept complaints from family members, local councillors or other advocates, providing the customer has given authorisation for them to do so.

External stakeholders

Complaints received from other stakeholders, for example a parish council, will be dealt with under the same principles applicable to other complaints. However, the review meeting representatives may differ and there is no right to refer the complaint to the Housing Ombudsman.

Closing your complaint

If at any stage of the process we've given a full response to a complaint and there's been no contact from the customer regarding the complaint, by the date stated in our response, the complaint will be closed.

How satisfied were you with the process?

Once a complaint is closed, we'll send you a link to complete a one question questionnaire. It will ask you: "Were you satisfied with how your complaint was handled?"

This is to review the complaints process, it does not reassess the decision made during the process.

The Housing Ombudsman can support both you and us at any point during the formal complaint process. This will be entirely based on encouraging an early resolution.

If you remain dissatisfied after you’ve been through our complaints process, you can pass a formal complaint to the Housing Ombudsman for investigation.

You can contact the Housing Ombudsman in the following ways:

• Online: Housing Ombudsman website
• Email: info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk
• Phone: 0300 111 3000
• Post: Housing Ombudsman Service, PO Box 1484, Preston PR2 0ET

No, customers don't have the right to withhold rent during the complaints process.

Customers do have the potential to undertake existing minor repairs themselves and deduct the cost from future rent payments. If you're considering this, there's a strict process that needs to be followed by customers and all the steps must be followed.

Read the process on the Citizens Advice website >

We understand that the circumstances leading to someone contacting us may have been upsetting or distressing, and that behaviour may be out of character. However, actions of customers who are aggressive, persistent, abusive or unreasonable may result in unacceptable demands on, or unacceptable behaviour towards, our colleagues. These are known as vexatious complaints.

If we consider a customer is being abusive or aggressive, has unreasonable demands or is being unreasonably persistent, we will contact them and explain why we have reached this decision. At our discretion, we may give the customer the opportunity to act in a more reasonable manner or we may refuse to progress the complaint.

What is considered unreasonable, abusive or aggressive?

• Unreasonable demands include: requesting large volumes of information, asking for responses within a short space of time, refusing to speak to an individual or insisting on speaking with another
• Unreasonable persistence includes: refusing to accept the answer that has been provided, continuing to raise the same subject matter without providing any new evidence, continuously adding to or changing the subject matter of the complaint
• Abuse, aggression, violence includes: actual physical or verbal abuse, derogatory remarks, rudeness, inflammatory allegations and threats of violence
• Overload of contact: this could be via letters, calls, emails or social media and could include the frequency of contact as well as the volume of correspondence or length of phone calls

Full details are in our Determining Unreasonable or Vexatious Complaints Policy (link below).

The quickest way to contact us to raise a complaint is to complete the online complaints form:

Raise a complaint >

Other ways to complain to us:

• Online: on MyHomeOnline
• Email us
• Write to us at: Memorial House, Whitwick Business Park, Stenson Road, Coalville, Leicestershire, LE67 4JP
• Call us: 0300 1234 009
• On Facebook
• In person: Contact us by email or call on 0300 1234 009 to make an appointment
• Using an advocate: Permission must be given by the customers. (If a solicitor has been appointed to act on behalf of the customer, this will be referred to the Association’s solicitor and not dealt with as part of this policy.)

Housing Ombudsman

Any time during the process you can contact the Housing Ombudsman, who provide advice and support to customers.

The Housing Ombudsman service is set up by law to look at complaints about the housing organisations registered with them. Their service is free, independent and impartial.

We monitor and publish our complaints every quarter, so that our customers know how we're doing.

You can see an easy to read summary of how we're doing with our complaints  on our performance pages.

This shows:

• how many complaints have been made
• whether they are formal or informal
• what service areas they relate to
• how many are resolved at stage one of the complaints process
• how many are escalated to stage two of the complaints process
• how satisfied the person who complained was with our process

The Housing Ombudsman has a complaint handling code, and it's a legal requirement for all social landlords, like WRHA, to comply with the code.

As part of this, we're required to complete an annual assessment against the Code as part of our annual complaints performance and service improvement report.

Find out more about our annual self-assessment.