What’s the deal?
This guide sets out the service you can expect to receive when you contact us or if you are unhappy with the way we deal with your enquiries. It describes what we do, the standards of service you can expect and how we will check we are meeting them. It also sets out the things we expect you to do to help us ensure you receive a great service.
Accessing our services
We want to ensure you are able to access our services in a variety of ways and at times that suit you. By providing us with information about yourself, we also try to tailor our services to meet your needs.
We always aim to deal with your queries quickly and effectively when you contact us. If we are unable to do this, we will tell you why and keep you updated until your queries are resolved. We will also tell you if we are unable to help you or do not provide a service you want.
Our responsibilities
We will:
- Always treat you with respect, be polite and listen;
- Treat you fairly according to your needs;
- Provide information in ways that are appropriate to you it and tell you when we are unable to offer help;
- Monitor the quality of our responses to your queries to ensure we provide the highest standard of service; and
- Ask you for feedback and use this information to help us improve the services we provide.
Complaints
We always aim to provide an excellent service, but know that we sometimes get things wrong and you might want to complain.
We welcome your feedback and treat complaints seriously. When we get things wrong, we will admit this and try to put things right.
Full details on how we deal with complaints can be found here or you can ask a member of staff for a copy of our procedure.
Things we consider to be a complaint:
- Failure to follow a policy or procedure,
- Failure to provide a service that we are required to provide.
- Failure to provide a service to a standard that could reasonably be expected.
- Failing to provide services within published timescales.
- Staff are rude or do not treat you or your home with respect.
We accept complaints about our staff and those who act on our behalf.
Things we do not consider to be a complaint:
- A request for a service.
- Reports of anti-social behaviour (ASB). See our ASB deal for more information.
- About services that we do not provided or which are provided by other agencies.
- The issues you complain about happened over six months ago (unless they link to concerns about safeguarding or relate to health and safety issues).
- Insurance and personal injury claims.
- Legal challenges or cases.
- Matters that have already been considered under our complaints policy.
If we do not accept your complaint, we will tell you why.
Our responsibilities
We will:
- Publish our complaints procedure and ensure it can be easily accessed;
- If we are unable to deal with your complaint, we will tell you and explain the reasons why;
- Try to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible and apologise if we get things wrong;
- If we are unable to resolve your complaint informally and you remain unhappy, we will investigate your concerns in line with our published complaints procedure; and
- Learn from the feedback we receive and use this information to help improve the services we provide.
What we expect in return
Your responsibilities:
- Where possible, use our website to report routine enquiries or to access information;
- Let us know when we get things right or make a mistake;
- Give us the opportunity to put things right if you make a complaint;
- Be polite and respectful towards our staff (You can view our examples of unacceptable behaviour here);
- Tell us your views about the service. This will enable us to monitor the quality of the service provided and identify any potential improvements;
Measuring success
We will know if we are getting things right by:
- Monitoring and reporting our performance against our agreed performance measures; and
- Asking you how happy you are with the service we have provided.
We will report our performance against these standards in our annual report to tenants. Regular updates will also be provided to our Customer Review Group, who are responsible for reviewing how well we are doing and offering constructive challenge.
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Performance measures
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Target
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Overall satisfaction with the overall service
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96%
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% of complaints resolved within agreed timescales
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100%
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