Complaints & Feedback

Your experience matters to us, so whether we get it right or wrong we want to hear from you. We are committed to providing excellent customer service and we welcome positive feedback from our customers. It's important to understand what we are doing well.

However, we recognise that sometimes things do go wrong and on occasions our services have not been good enough, giving residents cause for complaint. If our services haven't been good enough, let us know. We want to have the opportunity to investigate where we have gone wrong, apologise for any failings and ultimately, improve the service you receive. 

You can view our Annual Complaints Performance & Service Improvement Report for 23/24, here.  

Board Statement, June 2024 - Complaint Handling

"The Shepherds Bush Housing Association (SBHA) Board fully supports the increased emphasis on complaint handling that is influenced by spotlight reports, self-assessment and the delivery of service improvements that are driven by learning from complaints. Addressing this requirement is a clear priority, and this is reflected in our Annual Complaints Report and Self-Assessment against the strengthened Complaint Handling Code that was introduced on 1 April 2024.

Over the last year we have created a Quality Assurance and Service Improvement Team to ensure we are learning from complaints, listening to our residents and working hard to make the improvements that they are telling us are needed.

We are committed to resolving any level of dissatisfaction at the earliest opportunity.  As like many other landlords sometimes we make mistakes, however we are committed to continue improving our services and learning from complaints."

 

How to make a complaint

If you are looking for additional information or are requesting a service, it may not be a complaint. If this is the case, you can:

Report a repair  Report an ASB case   Make a general enquiry

 

If this is not the case, you may want to make a complaint. You can do this by filling in our Complaint Form.

 Make a Complaint

Alternatively, you can:

  • phone us on 0800 9170839 (Freephone) or 020 8996 4200
  • contact us via social media
  • contact us via post
  • visit us in person, but please make an appointment in advance

How to provide feedback or a compliment

If you would like to provide feedback on a service you received, please fill in our General Enquiry Form and select feedback/compliment from the drop down menu. If you received great customer service, don't forget to name the individual so we can let them know. 

Our complaints process

Stage 1
At stage 1, your complaint will be handled by our independent Customer Resolutions Team who have the authority and autonomy to resolve disputes quickly and fairly. They aim to contact you to acknowledge your complaint within five working days, followed by a formal written response to your complaint within 10 working days.

Stage 2
You have the right to escalate your complaint if you are not satisfied with our response and you must do this, in writing, within 14 days of our stage 1 response, explaining how and why you are dissatisfied and what hasn’t been resolved. You are encouraged to also state in your request what you expect from the resolution. We will acknowledge the escalation and consider who is most appropriate to examine the actions and decisions taken at stage 1 to ensure that they were thorough, objective and fair as well as taking into account any additional evidence. The person considering the complaint at Stage 2, will be a Manager or Director who has not considered the complaint at Stage 1. After these two stages are completed, if you still remain dissatisfied, you can escalate your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman.

When you make a complaint

When you make a complaint, we will:

  1. Acknowledge within 5 working days
  2. Investigate what happened
  3. Respond within 10 working days

You can request an escalation to Stage 2 if you remain dissatisfied.

We will also:

  1. Check that we've followed our policies
  2. Check that we responded correctly
  3. Explain your right to external adjudication

Complaints Policy

Who can complain?

Anyone who uses or receives a service from Shepherds Bush Housing Association can complain.

Complaints Policy

You can read our Complaints Policy here:  Complaint Policy

Examples of Complaints:

  • We have failed to respond to your initial enquiries
  • Our staff or contractors were unhelpful or were not polite
  • We gave unclear, misleading or unsuitable advice
  • Our services were not to a good standard and we did not rectify this
  • The length of time taken to provide a service and resolve an issue exceeded our service promise
  • Failure to keep you informed of a decision we made

If we log your enquiry as a formal complaint, we’ll get back to you within two working days via email. We will respond fully to your complaint within 10 working days. If we need more time to carry out an investigation or to gather more information, we will let you know.

What is not covered by the Complaints Policy

We will not log your enquiry as a formal complaint if it is about:

  • A repair, provision of service or action, if the target completion date has not yet passed
  • A request for information
  • A first-time service request
  • Neighbour disputes (please read our Anti-Social Behaviour policy). We will check if our ASB policy and process has been followed correctly.
  • A problem that you have known about for over six months before making a complaint about it
  • Legal action which you are currently taking against us and which has to do with the same complaint you have made
  • Service charge disputes

Going to the Housing Ombudsman

If you've been through our complaints procedure and are still unhappy, you can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service which was set up to resolve disputes involving the tenants and leaseholders of social landlords. The service is free, independent and impartial.

You should be aware however, that in the majority of cases the Housing Ombudsman will only consider a complaint once it has been through our internal complaints procedure.

You can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service at:

In April 2024 the Housing Ombudsman published a new Complaint Handling Code  which provides good practice for landlords on fair and effective complaint handling. The Housing Ombudsman will expect any case coming to their attention to have been managed in line with the new Code which was amended on 1 April 2022 to strengthen the code and reinforce the need for a positive complaints handling culture.

Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code

We welcome the new  Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code . We have worked with input from the Housing Ombudsman on improvements.  Our Resident Scrutiny Panel  has been an active partner in this. It reviewed our complaints performance against the new Ombudsman’s code and the results of this are published  here.

We support how the Ombudsman is actively involving residents in its service and have promoted opportunities to be involved in this to our residents.

Landlords have needed to demonstrated compliance by 1 October 2022. Landlords must carry out an annual assessment against the Code to ensure their complaint handling remains in line with the amended Complaint Handling Code. Our most recent self-assessment, published in June 2024, is available here.

About Shepherds Bush Housing Group

About Shepherds Bush Housing Association

Part of The Guinness Partnership, we have more than 5000 homes, throughout nine boroughs in west London

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