Complaints and feedback

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 complaints policy

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. However, if you remain dissatisfied after this time, your case will be escalated (stage 2).

Complaint escalation (stage 2)

If you remain dissatisfied with the solutions offered after 10 days, a senior manager will review your case. They will call you to introduce themselves and will have 5 days in which to resolve your case.

You have the right to escalate your complaint to a designated person, such as your local MP or councillor, if you do not feel that we have resolved the issue satisfactorily.

You may also consider taking your complaint to the independent Housing Ombudsman Service

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

• View our latest Customer feedback and performance

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 new Complaint Handling code in July 2020 setting out good practice to allow us, and other landlords, to respond to complaints effectively and fairly. 

The Code was reviewed last year, and the Ombudsman has updated it with changes being introduced in April 2022 to support a ‘positive complaint handling culture’.

Cottsway fully supports the Code and we are assessing our current practices and implementing any changes needed in response to updated Code in line with the Ombudsman’s required deadline of October 2022. You can find out more about the Code and changes at:

• The Housing Ombudsman Service

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. So far, we have carried out two assessments:

• Our initial assessment was published in November 2020; and
• Our latest assessment was published in November 2021, prior to the Code changes. Read Cottsway’s self-assessment

We are carrying out another self-assessment in response to the Code changes and will publish our findings on this webpage once complete.