3. Housing complaints process
Who can make a complaint?
You can make a complaint or someone can make it on your behalf.
Anyone making a complaint on someone else's behalf will need authorisation. Please see our ‘Choosing someone to act on my behalf’ section for more information.
Anonymous complaints cannot be accepted as official complaints as they cannot be responded to and may be impossible to substantiate. However, these are recorded and reviewed as feedback.
Vulnerabilities and individual or household needs
We are committed to making our services work for all of our residents. We will ask you:
- your preferred method of contact to help us so that we can stay in touch throughout the complaints process
- any adjustments or additional support that you may need
- any vulnerabilities within your household
Stage One Complaint
We will acknowledge your housing complaint within five working days. An officer will then investigate and respond within 10 working days from the acknowledgement. We may extend this by a further 10 working days if the investigation is complex.
Where additional investigation time would take the complaint outside of the extension period, e.g. beyond the extended deadline date, an agreement would be made by both parties.
Where agreement over an extension period cannot be reached, we will provide you with the Housing Ombudsman’s contact details so you can contact them directly.
If you are unhappy with our response at Stage One, you can escalate your complaint to be considered by another person at Stage Two.
Stage Two Complaint
If you remain dissatisfied following our Stage One investigation, you can request to escalate your complaint. A new senior officer will conduct an independent review. We will acknowledge your escalation within five working days. Your request to escalate must be made within three months of the conclusion of the Stage One complaint. We will complete a Stage Two review within 20 working days of your acknowledgement email and send you a final response. This timescale may be extended by 20 working days if the investigation is complex. We will normally respond within the additional 20 working day extended deadline unless there are exceptional circumstances.
Where additional investigation time would take the complaint outside of the extension period, e.g. beyond the extended deadline date, an agreement would be made by both parties.
Where agreement over an extension period cannot be reached, we will provide the Housing Ombudsman’s contact details so you can contact them directly.
We can only escalate a complaint to Stage Two once it has completed Stage One of the Complaints process.
We will not investigate a complaint at Stage Two if it was not part of the original Stage One complaint, but we would either open a new Stage One complaint for any additional elements raised or it may be deemed a service request and will go through a different process.
We will not refuse a reasonable request to escalate to Stage Two unless they fall within our exclusions for example legal proceedings have commenced.
Stage One and Stage Two Responses
When responding to complaints we will use plain language, include the reasons for any decisions made and, where appropriate, provide details of any remedy to put things right and details of any outstanding actions.
We will issue our complaint response when the answer is known, or by the deadline provided and not wait until any outstanding actions required to address the issue are completed.
If a complaint response is handled by a third party (e.g. a contractor) at any stage, it will form part of the two stage complaints process set out in the Complaint Handling Code.
When responding to a complaint about an individual, we refer to staff members by their title in our communications.
Legal Obligations
Where key issue of a complaint relates to the parties’ legal obligations, we will clearly set out legal obligations of all parties concerned.
Complaints made in a vexatious manner
When is a complaint considered to be vexatious?
- Complaints which are obsessive, harassing, abusive or repetitive
- Insistence on pursuing non-meritorious complaints and/or unrealistic, unreasonable outcomes
- Insistence on pursuing what may be meritorious complaints in an unreasonable manner
- Complaints which are designed to cause disruption or annoyance
- Demands for redress which lack any serious purpose or value.
This list is not exhaustive.
Exeter City Council takes each complaint seriously and will always raise genuine issues and concerns for its residents. However, we will follow our internal processes when dealing with vexatious complainants.
When a service-user demonstrates persistent and vexatious behaviour, we invoke our ‘Acceptable Behaviour Contract’ which manages communication in line with the Unacceptable Customer Behaviour Policy.
After your complaint
If you remain dissatisfied at the end of our complaints process you have the following options available to you:
- Use the Housing Ombudsman’s Early Resolution Service. This is an alternative process to formal investigation where they will work with you and us to resolve the dispute as fairly and quickly as possible
- Refer your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman to be formally investigated.
Putting things right
There are lots of things that we can do to put things right if they go wrong. We can:
- Say sorry and give you an explanation
- Make sure that any repairs needed are carried out
- Learn from your complaints to improve our service
- Make sure our staff have extra guidance and support to help other residents
- Consider compensation, and we use the Housing Ombudsman’s guidelines to help us make fair and transparent decisions