Our complaints procedure

If you make a complaint, we will:

• Acknowledge your complaint.
• Ask you at the start what outcome you are hoping for.
• Inform you of what action we will take to bring your complaint to a satisfactory conclusion.
• Resolve your complaint quickly and fairly. You will have the chance to discuss this in person with us and can bring a relative, friend or advisor if you wish.
• Phone you once we have resolved your complaint to ask you how satisfied you are with how we handled it. This call is made by an independent organisation who has not previously been involved in the process, so you can speak freely and honestly.

Read our:

• Customer feedback and complaints factsheet
• Customer feedback and complaints policy

How we will respond to you

Feedback

A customer service advisor will log your comments and share your feedback with the relevant service manager as soon as you get in touch.

Feedback with investigation

Our customer services advisors have up to 48 hours to investigate your concerns and will either offer a resolution or pass the matter on to one of our complaint handlers. If after 48 hours you are still dissatisfied with the way that your concerns have been handled, we will then begin our complaint process.

Complaints (stage 1)

If applicable, we will inform you who has taken over your case and give you a courtesy call on day 5 to update you on progress.

Our aim is to reach a satisfactory conclusion within 10 working days of you first raising the issue.

If new issues are raised during this stage of the investigation, the complaint handler will try to incorporate these (if relevant) into their investigation and subsequent response. However, if the new issue(s) will cause an unreasonable delay to the stage 1 response, it will be logged as a new complaint.

If you remain dissatisfied with the solutions offered at this stage, you have 5 days in which to tell us you wish to escalate the complaint (stage 2).

Complaint escalation (stage 2)

A senior manager will call you to introduce themselves and have a further 5 days in which to review and resolve your case.

Unresolved issues

If you do not feel that we have resolved the issue satisfactorily, you have the right to escalate your complaint to your local MP or councillor.

You may also consider taking your complaint at any stage of your enquiry to the independent Housing Ombudsman Service

What we do with your feedback

We value all feedback and use this to help us improve our services.

• View our latest Customer feedback and performance

The Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code

We work closely with the Housing Ombudsman Service, the official body set up by law to look at complaints about housing organisations that are registered with them. Their service is free, independent and impartial for our customers to access.

They introduced a Complaint Handling Code in 2020 setting out good practice to allow us, and other landlords, to respond to complaints effectively and fairly. This was reviewed and updated in 2022 to support a ‘positive complaint handling culture’.

Cottsway fully supports the Code and we assess our practices against this to ensure we are complying. Find out more about the Code:

• The Housing Ombudsman Service

Our self-assessment

We are required to carry out a self-assessment against the Code and present our findings to the Board every year. Cottsway does this annually, or whenever we introduce major service changes that may affect customer’s satisfaction.

• Read our latest self-assessment (published September 2023)