Making a complaint

Depending on the complaint, sometimes they do need investigating more thoroughly, and in this case it will be passed onto our Customer Resolution team who will then make contact with you and discuss your complaint and support you through the first stage of our process.

They will carry out an investigation with the information you have provided and keep you informed during the process.

We will do this as quickly as we can and aim to make sure you have a decision and response within 10 working days.*

*sometimes due to unforeseen circumstances a complaint may take longer to investigate and in these circumstances we will let you know and keep you updated.

Once a decision has been made, we will contact you to discuss the outcome, which will also give you the opportunity to ask questions and understand the decision made.

If you are not satisfied with the decision made, you are able to ask for the complaint to be looked at again in stage two of our complaints process.

Click here to see our complaints and feedback policy.

We want to be really transparent and clear with the way we deal with complaints and so we have put together a handy document to show how we’ve dealt with any complaints over the last three months. You can also view our self assessment form here.

Performance reports

• April – June 2023
• July – September 2023
• October – December 2023

The Housing Ombudsman service is there throughout the lifetime of your complaint and if you feel you need further help and guidance on your complaint,

The Housing ombudsman will support complaint resolutions between you and us and will formally investigate a complaint once you have completed our complaints process fully. We will co-operate fully with all requests from the Housing ombudsman to support them in their findings and comply with the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code.

To contact them, see below

Address:
Housing Ombudsman Service
PO Box 152
Liverpool
L33 7WQ

Telephone:
0300 1113000

Email:
info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk

Online:

Online complaint form

What we did

On the 7 July 2020 the Housing Ombudsman published the New Complaint Handling code.

The code sets out good practice to allow landlords to respond to complaints effectively and fairly.

The Housing Ombudsman instructed all landlords to carry out a self-assessment and share the findings with their boards and publish the results.

The ombudsman wanted us to complete a self-assessment before 31 Dec 2020, which is now complete. The reason for this was to ensure that we are compliant against the code and that we use it to improve our complaint handling services for our customers.

Although we were already ahead of the game and our policies and services were mainly compliant, we felt it was a real opportunity to review our services to make sure they are the best they can be for our customers.

We also took the opportunity to ask our involved customers if the exclusions within the policy were fair and reasonable.

What we found out

Overall, we found our services to be compliant and meeting the Ombudsman obligations. These findings were that we already have a very accessible complaint service, where customers can make a complaint through all of our contact methods.

Also the Ombudsman is very keen on the complaint process not having too many stages and recommend a two stage process internally. This is something we had already changed and simplified some time ago.

Below are the areas we will be looking to improve on:

• Create dedicated Resolution Officers to improve our complaint handling services and ensure we are consistent across the whole of our business
• Update our policy to reflect the ombudsman complaint handling code
• Improve accessibility and transparency of complaints information on our website and increase the frequency of complaint information that is shared with our customers

If you would like to know more about the code please see here.

The panel is made up of volunteers who focus on how Ongo deals with complaints.

Their purpose is to drive change across the business and raise standards for tenants and customers who use the complaints service. The panel achieve this by quality-checking all aspects of complaint handling and performance, analysing and understanding themes for complaints, and spotlighting areas for further scrutiny.

Using example case studies, they identify themes and trends to assess whether procedures have been followed or require changing. In addition to this the panel provides their comments on the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code and monitors the self-assessment to ensure we are compliant when dealing with complaints.

The panel meetings take place for two/three hours every three months.

Click here to find out more and sign up.