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. The updated Code takes effect from 1 April 2022 and landlords have until 1 October 2022 to become compliant.
One of the requirements is for landlords to carry out a self-assessment each year to ensure that their complaint handling remains in line with the requirements set out in the Complaint Handling Code. Landlords are required to publish the results of the self-assessment.
In September 2022 we carried out our self-assessment against the Complaint Handling Code, and we are pleased to confirm that our complaints policy and procedure is compliant with all mandatory requirements.
What changes have we made to the complaints policy?
We have made several mandatory changes to the complaints policy required by the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
There is now a standard complaint definition that all member landlords must adhere to. A complaint is defined as ‘an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the organisation, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting an individual or group of residents’. We have updated the complaint definition contained in the complaints policy.
The Ombudsman wants all landlords to ensure that their complaints process is fully accessible to all customers and that complaint handlers are aware of the Equality Act. We have added a new section into the policy to confirm the support that will be provided to customers to ensure their full access to the complaints process. We also confirm that we will consider all requests for reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 and will implement adjustments where it is practicable to do so.
The Ombudsman wants landlords to be clear from the outset what outcome the customer is seeking to resolve the complaint. This should be noted in the complaint acknowledgement letter. We have amended the policy to note that when a complaint is received, we will ask customers what outcome they are looking for and will record this on the complaint acknowledgement letter.
The Ombudsman requires all landlords to include within their complaints policy how long a customer has to request an escalation of their complaint to the next stage. The policy has been amended to confirm that customers need to notify us within 10 working days of receiving the stage 1 outcome letter of their intention to progress the complaint to stage 2. We will consider extending the timescale for response in cases of complex complaints, or requests under the Equality Act 2010.
You can read the completed 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 access more information about the complaints process here, including a copy of the complaints policy, an overview of the complaint handling process, online complaints forms to complete, and the contact details for the Housing Ombudsman.