Complaints policy

At Hastoe we aim to deliver excellent services to residents, but we recognise that sometimes things go wrong and when this happens we want to put things right and stop it happening again. We value feedback from residents and will use this to improve our services.

If there is cause for complaint, we want to make sure the process is easy, and our aim is to resolve any issue as quickly as possible. We will thoroughly investigate and review all complaints.

What is a complaint?

A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by Hastoe, our own staff, or those acting on our behalf, affecting a resident or group of residents.

What is not a complaint?

There are some exclusions whereby we will not investigate an issue as a complaint as follows:

The issue that is being complained about happened over twelve months ago. If there is a good reason why the issue wasn’t raised prior to this time we may consider this as a complaint, but this will be at our discretion.
Legal proceedings have started and a claim has been filed at court.
Matters that have previously been considered under the complaints policy.
Formal challenges to the cost or reasonableness of service charges for shared owners and leaseholders, unless the complaint is about the delivery of the service. Home owners who wish to challenge the validity of a service charge should refer to the ‘summary of tenants rights and obligations’ enclosed with their service charge demand.
Issues raised about services delivered in accordance with our policies, service standards, tenancy or lease agreement.

Examples include;

o a repair request raised in accordance with our policies, but the resident is dissatisfied with the timescale provided to complete the repair.

o A tenant, shared owner or leaseholder is dissatisfied that they are compelled to, or prohibited from, doing something in accordance with their tenancy or lease.

o Dissatisfaction with works or services that are in progress. This feedback will be given to the service manager responsible for the delivery of the works or service. If the resident remains dissatisfied following completion of the works or service, then we will consider whether to raise the matter as a complaint.

The issue is a service request

Ways to make a complaint

You can make a complaint in a number of ways:

Telephone
Face to face
Electronically via the Hastoe website or MyHastoe portal
In writing by letter
A third party such as an MP, Councillor, advocate, friend or family member. Although the complainant will have to give permission in most circumstances.

Housing Ombudsman

At any stage of your complaint, you can access the Housing Ombudsman Service by contacting them in a number of ways:

Online: www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk
By phone: 0300 111 3000
In writing to: Housing Ombudsman Service, PO Box 1484, Unit D, Preston, PR2 0ET

Building safety complaints in high-rise buildings

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has legal powers to help make sure high-rise residential buildings are safe. If you live in a building that is more than 18 metres or 7 or more storeys high, then you are able to escalate your complaint to the BSE, if your complaint is in relation to:

the structural safety of the building
the spread of fire, or
the performance of Hastoe in relation to either of these two things.

If you remain dissatisfied following the end of our complaints process. They can be contacted at:

Tel: 0300 790 6787
www.gov.uk/guidance/contact-the-building-safety-regulator

If you are unsure whether your home or complaint falls into this category then please contact us and we can advise you.

Reasonable adjustments

Reasonable adjustments will be made to accommodate a complainant’s needs in accordance with the Equality Act 2010. This may include changes to the complaints policy, procedure or process. When investigating a complaint, the complaint handler will consider whether reasonable adjustments should have been made to policies, procedures or processes relevant to the complaint to accommodate the needs of the complainant.

Learning from complaints

We publish our complaints performance, and any improvements made as a result of the complaints we receive, in our Annual Report for Tenants.

We invite residents to scrutinise our complaints performance. This enables us to learn from resident experiences and to improve our services.

Hastoe also carries out regular self assessments against the Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code and takes appropriate action to ensure complaint handling is in line with the framework.

Member Responsible for Complaints (MRC)

A member of the Board is designated as a lead in complaints. The MRC does not deal with the investigation of individual complaints. They promote the importance of good complaints handling in the organisation, monitor complaints performance and attend resident scrutiny sessions.

Residents' Complaint Scrutiny Group

We have developed a number of groups which enable residents to scrutinise key areas of our service and identify where improvements can be made. This includes the way we manage our complaints process. Board members with responsibility for complaints also join our Residents' Complaint Scrutiny Group. If you are interested, please get in touch.

Find out how to get involved

How we deal with complaints

All complaints will be logged and triaged by our Customer Services team. Any member of staff who is contacted by a resident wishing to raise a complaint will advise the resident on the methods they are able to raise the complaint with our Customer Services team. These will be logged and acknowledged within 5 working days of receipt.

Stage 1

All complaints received will be triaged by the Customer Services team. If the issue isn’t accepted as a complaint the Customer Services Advisor will thank the resident for their feedback, log the feedback and advise why the issue hasn’t been accepted as a complaint. In these circumstances, a detailed explanation will be provided to the complainant and the right to take the decision to the Ombudsman

If this issue is accepted as a complaint, it will be raised as a stage one complaint. These will be logged and acknowledged within 5 working days of receipt. The acknowledgement will clearly detail what the complaint is about and what the complainant would like as an outcome to their complaint. The acknowledgement will also include which aspects of the complaint Hastoe is and isn’t responsible for.

The complaint will ordinarily be investigated by a member of staff from the department responsible for the service being complained about, who hasn’t been involved in dealing with the issue previously, has received training in complaint handling and has the authority to effectively resolve the issues raised.

The complaint handler will make personal contact with the complainant to introduce themselves, reiterate the subject of the complaint, confirm the ideal outcome and the date by which the complaint will be responded to. This contact should be via telephone where possible.

A full written response to the complaint should be made within 10 working days of the complaint being acknowledged. The complaint handler must decide whether an extension to this timescale is needed when considering the complexity of the complaint and then inform the complainant of the expected timescale of the response. Any extension must be no more than 10 working days without good reason, and the reason(s) must be clearly explained to the resident.

If the complaint response falls outside of the extended period of response, the complaint handler must agree with the resident suitable intervals for being updated on their complaint. When extending the timescale, the complainant must also be provided with the contact details for the Housing Ombudsman.

The response to the complaint must be provided to the complainant when the answer to the complaint is known, not when the outstanding actions required to address the issues are completed. Outstanding actions must be tracked be tracked by the complaint handler until all issues are resolved. The complaint handler must provide regular updates to the complainant.

The complaint response must address all points raised in the complaint and provide clear reasons for any decisions, referencing the relevant policy, law and good practice as appropriate.

Where the complainant raises additional complaints during the investigation, these must be incorporated into the stage one response if they are related and the stage one response has not been issued. Where the stage one response has been issued, the new issues are unrelated to the issues already being investigated or it would unreasonably delay the response, the new issues must be logged as a new complaint.

The complaint response letter will be clear and contain the following information:

The complaint stage
The detail of the complaint and what the complainant requested as an outcome.
The decision on the complaint
The reasons for any decisions made
The details of any remedy offered to put things right.
Details of any outstanding actions and,
Details of how to escalate the complaint to stage two if the complainant remains dissatisfied

Stage 2

If the complainant remains dissatisfied following the stage one response then it must be escalated to stage two of the process.

We will accept escalations to stage two of the process within three months of the stage one response.

We will not escalate a complaint to stage two of our process if any of the circumstances set out in section 4.3 of this policy apply. In these circumstances, a detailed explanation will be provided to the complainant and the right to take the decision to the Ombudsman

The stage two complaint must be acknowledged and logged within five working days of the request to escalate being received. The acknowledgement must be clear on what the complaint is in relation to and what the complainant is requesting as an outcome.

The complainant is not required to explain their reasons for escalating the complaint, but the stage two complaint handler will try to contact the complainant to understand why they remain unhappy, if this isn’t clear from the request to escalate the complaint to stage two. The acknowledgement will also include which aspects of the complaint Hastoe is and isn’t responsible for.

The stage two complaint response will ordinarily be from the Director responsible for the service area complained about, but this may be any Director from the organisation. The investigation of the stage two complaint may be undertaken by the Director responding to the complaint or another Hastoe employee who has not been involved in the stage one complaint or the issue complained about.

The stage two full response must be made within 20 working days of the complaint being acknowledged. The complaint handler must decide whether an extension to this timescale is needed when considering the complexity of the complaint then inform the complainant of the expected timescale for response. Any extension must be no more than 20 working days without good reason, and the reason(s) must be clearly explained to the complainant.

If the complaint response falls outside of the extended period of response, the complaint handler must agree with the resident suitable intervals for being updated on their complaint.

When extending the timescale, the complainant must also be provided with the contact details for the Housing Ombudsman.

The response to the complaint must be provided to the complainant when the answer to the complaint is known, not when the outstanding actions required to address the issues are completed. Outstanding actions must be tracked by the complaint handler until all issues are resolved. The complainant must be provided with appropriate updates.