Did you know that LiveWest is a member of the Housing Ombudsman Service, a free and impartial service set up to investigate complaints made by customers about their housing provider?
Being a member of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme means that you can ask the Housing Ombudsman for advice and support at any time, including accessing their website which has lots of useful information.
You can also ask the Housing Ombudsman to carry out a formal review of how we have handled your complaint once we have concluded our investigations.
In July 2020, the Housing Ombudsman introduced a Complaint Handling Code which sets out good practice to allow landlords to respond to complaints effectively and fairly. The Code sets out mandatory requirements where landlords must comply, and best optional requirements which are at the landlord’s discretion to adopt.
In April 2022, the Code was updated, and several requirements were strengthened to support positive complaint handling. These new requirements are reflected within LiveWest’s Customer Compliments, Complaints and Feedback policy.
Landlords must carry out an annual assessment against the Code to ensure their complaint handling remains in line with its requirements.
In September 2023, we carried out our self-assessment against the Complaint Handling Code, and we are pleased to confirm that our Customer Compliments, Complaints and Feedback policy is compliant with all mandatory requirements.
What changes have we made to our complaints policy?
The Housing Ombudsman confirms that landlords must respond to stage 1 complaints within 10 working days of the complaint being logged. There is one exception to this policy, where landlords may take up to 20 days to respond; in this circumstance, landlords must provide an explanation and a clear timeframe for when the response will be received.
We have amended our Customer Compliments, Complaints and Feedback policy to match the Housing Ombudsman’s timescales for responding to complaints at stage 1.
You can read our self-assessment here.
Contact us
If there is an issue that you would like us to resolve, please contact us as soon as possible by calling our Customer Service team on 0300 123 8080, completing on online enquiry form or sending us a private social media message.
You can find a copy of our complaints policy, an overview of our complaint handling process, online complaints forms to complete, and the contact details for the Housing Ombudsman on our compliments and complaints webpage.