Compliments and complaints

We define a complaint as:

‘an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by Home Group, our staff, or those acting on our behalf, affecting an individual resident or group of residents.’

You can complain about things like:

• Failure to provide a service
• Our standard of service
• Treatment by or attitude of a member of staff
• Our failure to follow Home Group’s policies and procedures

Your complaint may involve more than one of our services or be about someone working on our behalf.

Home Group treats all complaints very seriously. If you do make a complaint, we guarantee that we will not treat you less favourably in the future.

If you’d like to complain to us about a noisy neighbour or other anti-social behaviour, please contact our customer service centre on 0345 141 4663 or report your issue online.

You can make your complaint in the following ways:

• In person
• On the phone: 0345 141 4663
• In writing: Home Group, Gosforth Park Way, Newcastle upon Tyne NE12 8ET
• By email: contactus@homegroup.org.uk

There’s a number of ways we can help you to raise a complaint:

• We can give you information in other languages and in different formats such as large print
• By helping you if you have problems with reading or writing
• Offering you an interpreter or translator
• Helping you find independent advice

If you don’t want to make a complaint yourself you might want to ask someone to do it for you. That could be a friend, relative or an advocate, just so long as you have given them permission to do so.

We’ll always tell you who is dealing with your complaint. Some issues, such as injury or damage to property, will be handled by our insurance team outside of our complaints process. Most complaints however follow these two key stages:

Stage one

Contact us with your complaint within six months of the event taking place. We will always try to resolve your complaint quickly, at first point of contact if we can. Sometimes it’s appropriate for us to issue a first and final response to a complaint at this stage. This will not prevent you from escalating your complaint to the next stage although the response you receive might be the same if no new information is brought to our attention.

Our aim is to provide you with a decision on your complaint within ten working days. In some cases, we may need more time to complete our investigation. If we do, we’ll let you know why and give you a date when we will provide our response. This will not be longer than a further ten working days.

Our complaint response will include a review of what has happened, our decision about the complaint and details of next steps, including what we will do to put things right.

In many cases, the next steps to fully resolve your complaint will include commitments to actions which will be future dated. This could include an inspection of your property, repair work and/or working with outside agencies such as your local council. These actions may require a reasonable amount of time to organise. We will tell you about proposed actions, timescales and responsible people in our complaint decision letter.

We will keep your complaint open until we have fulfilled our commitment to you.

If you are dissatisfied with our response at stage one, you can ask us to consider your complaint at stage two. Please let us know if you wish to escalate your complaint within eight weeks of your stage one outcome.

To assist us with the review of your stage one complaint we will ask you to provide the following:

• What part of your stage one complaint remains unaddressed or outstanding?
• What part of our response you disagree with and why?
• What would you like the outcome of your complaint to be (what would you like us to do)?

Stage two

This is the final stage of our complaints procedure.

If you’ve asked for your complaint to be escalated to stage two then it will be passed to a senior member of our team.

They’ll review the actions taken at stage one and look into any additional information relating to your complaint. The stage two formal complaint review is not a repeat of the full investigation.

The actions and decisions taken at stage one will be examined to check if they were thorough, reasonable and fair. We aim to give you our decision within 20 working days.

Where we need longer to explore any new evidence provided and it looks like we won’t be able to do this within 20 working days, this can be extended by a further 10 working days and we’ll contact you to explain why and do everything we can to resolve it as soon as possible.

We will always update you with the progress of your review and agree timescales with you for any outstanding actions to be completed.

We are here to help but we may refuse to deal with a complaint or deal with it differently if you act unreasonably, or if the circumstances mean it is not possible to deal with it within our normal complaints procedure. If this happens, we’ll discuss this with you in more detail.

If you’ve gone through both stages of our complaints process and you’re still not happy then you can:

• Refer your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman Service if your complaint is about a housing matter and you are a customer of Home Group services. You’ll need to wait eight weeks following our final response, or you can refer it sooner by asking your local MP to forward the complaint for you. Find out about the Housing Ombudsman complaint handling code.
• Take your complaint to the Independent Complaints Panel. This is made up of Home Group customers who have had no prior involvement with the complaint and is recognised by both Home Group and the Housing Ombudsman
• Ask a local councillor or Member of Parliament to consider the complaint for you
• Refer it to the Local Government Ombudsman Service if your complaint is about one of our adult care services

First tier tribunals can be used to resolve disputes between homeowners and ourselves. Find out more about First Tier Tribunals on the Government’s website. 

You can also visit the Lease Advisory Service.

Requests for discretionary compensation will be considered as part of the complaints handling process, in line with our complaints, compliments and comments policy. If compensation is awarded and you have any outstanding arrears and/or debt, your compensation award will be offset against either or both and any balance paid to you.

The panel is made up of Home Group customers who will review each stage of the complaint on an independent basis. Customers on the panel will have had no prior involvement in the complaint.

Get in touch with us...

Email us: independentcomplaintspanel@homegroup.org.uk 

Call us: 0191 594 8808

Write to us: Home Group Independent Complaints Panel, Care of The Involvement Team, Home Group, 76 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 2AY

The Housing Ombudsman Service can be contacted at any time throughout the complaint process for advice and support. You can find out more about how Home Group works with the Housing Ombudsman.

If you have followed all of the stages of our complaints procedure and you are still not happy you can ask the Ombudsman to conduct a full investigation into your complaint. Please note that the Ombudsman is unlikely to investigate your complaint fully until you have exhausted all stages of our complaint’s procedure. You must also wait 8 weeks after receiving a final response from Home Group before referring your complaint to the Ombudsman.

You can contact the Housing Ombudsman at:

Telephone: 0300 111 3000
9.15am-5.15pm: Mon, Thurs, Fri
9.15am-1.15pm: Tues, Weds

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

Email: info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk

In some cases, for example, if your complaint is very complicated or if we need to work with other organisations we may need a little longer. We will explain the reasons for the delay and let you know when you can expect a full reply.

We will not normally consider complaints about things that happened more than six months ago. In exceptional circumstances, we may be able to accept a complaint after this time limit. If you feel that this applies to you, please telephone our Customer Service Centre on 0345 141 4663 to discuss this matter further.

There may also be occasions where it is appropriate to issue a first and final response to a complaint at stage one. If this is the case we will discuss this with you. This will not prevent you from escalating your complaint to the next stage, although the response you receive at stage two of our complaints handling process may be the same response you received at stage one, if no new information is brought to our attention.

As mentioned earlier some issues such as injury or damage to property will be handled separately outside of our complaints process through our insurance team.

We may refuse to deal with a complaint or deal with it differently if you act unreasonably or if the circumstances mean it is not possible to deal with it within our normal complaint’s procedure. If this applies, we will discuss this with you in more detail.

Age UK provide free information and advice and have trained advisors who can guide you through your situation.

Post: Age UK, Tavis House, 1-6 Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9NA

Telephone: 0800 169 6565

Citizens Advice Bureau

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