We’re sorry to hear that something hasn’t gone as expected. We understand that issues can come up, and we’re here to put things right as quickly and simply as possible.

Our complaints procedure is here to be straightforward and fair. If anything is unclear, please don’t hesitate to contact us, we’re here to help.

Where possible, we aim to sort your issues out informally, as this is often the quickest way to sort things out. If this is the first time you’re raising the issue, it may be quicker to call us and have a chat through the issue.

You can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service at any time for advice or support. However, they will usually only investigate your complaint once you’ve completed both Stage One and Stage Two of our complaints procedure.

• The Ombudsman may be able to support you during the complaints process.
• If they decide to investigate your complaint, we will fully cooperate and accept their decision.
• Once the Ombudsman has made a decision, we will not reopen the same complaint.

We are committed to the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaints Code and publish a self-assessment against the code at least once a year.

You can view our latest Self-Assessment Code for 2025 here.

While we aim to sort all complaints fairly, there are some issues that don’t sit within our complaints procedure. These include:

• Legal matters – Issues where legal proceedings have started, or a court, tribunal, or other legal body has already made a decision.
• Issues outside our responsibility – For example, fly-tipping on council land, which should be reported to your local authority.
• Service requests – Such as reporting a repair or requesting a service. However, you can complain about how a service or repair was handled.
• Anti-social behaviour – These cases are managed under our Anti-Social Behaviour Policy. You can still complain about how we handled an anti-social behaviour case.
• Historic issues – Incidents that occurred more than six months ago.
• Resolved complaints – Matters that have already been through our complaints process and received a final response.
• Appeals – Disagreements with housing management or policy decisions are handled under our Customer Appeals Policy. You can request a review through that process.

If you’re unsure whether your issue qualifies as a complaint, please contact our team, we’re happy to help clarify and guide you to the right process.

To investigate your complaint properly, we may need to ask you for more information.

What Happens If You Provide New Information?

If you share new details that change the nature of your complaint, we’ll continue investigating at the current stage rather than moving it forward. This helps us focus on resolving the issue thoroughly. If you raise a new, unrelated issue, we’ll start a separate complaint to ensure it’s handled properly.

Getting Help with Your Complaint

You’re welcome to have someone support you with your complaint. We’ll just need your permission before we can share any personal details with them, to protect your confidentiality.

Our Complaints Annual Report sets out our performance from the previous year, this year’s report is from April 2024 – March 2025. You can find the report here

As well as producing our Annual Report we also publish a response from our board which can be found below:

We as a Board want to acknowledge that the Housing Ombudsman’s audit, which covers complaints from 2022/23, highlights areas where we did not deliver the level of service and support our customers deserve. We recognise the areas for improvement and are working hard to improve the service we provide and to ensure we maintain compliance with the Ombudsman Code.

Since these complaints were raised, we have already taken significant steps to ensure these issues do not happen again. This year, we have invested in our complaints service and team and are committed to delivering a high quality service for our customers. We have reviewed and improved our complaints process, including appointing a dedicated Complaints Assistant to support customers throughout the process and working to reduce the time it takes to investigate complaints.

We take complaints from our customers very seriously and we are committed to doing better and to continually improving the service we provide. We are a learning organisation and want to hear about the experiences of our customers, using complaints to drive improvements and be open to hearing the feedback on where we have not met customer expectations. The changes we have already put in place will help to improve our service and continue to be an anchor organisation within our local community