1 PURPOSE & SCOPE
This policy sets out Folio London’s (Folio’s) approach to receiving and handling complaints and compliments, ensuring that they are dealt with in a consistent and transparent way. We aim to give excellent customer service. We welcome both positive and negative feedback to help improve our services. This policy applies to all complaints and compliments received from residents and other customers (including prospective residents), and third parties making a complaint on their behalf. This policy also applies to MP’s and local councillor queries. The policy does not apply to corporate services such as finance and HR, although we will follow the principles of the policy in responding to these.
2 DEFINITIONS
Complaint – 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 resident or group of residents. It is not a service request or enquiry. Compliment – an expression of gratitude for a positive experience. Quick Fix – a complaint which can be resolved quickly, usually within 48 hours and without the need for a formal response.
3 MAKING A COMPLIMENT OR COMPLAINT
Anyone is able to express gratitude or dissatisfaction at services we provide. Compliments and complaints can be made to any member of Folio staff in a range of ways including: • in person • by telephone • by email • by logging a complaints and praise case via My Account www.nhg.org.uk/residents/my-account/ • by letter to Bruce Kenrick House, 2 Killick Street, London N1 9FL. If you express dissatisfaction on social media, we will contact you privately for further details and treat this as a complaint. Anyone can make a complaint on your behalf. If a third party making a complaint on your behalf is not an MP, local councillor, or a person with power of attorney, we will require written permission from you before corresponding with them. If you report, or we suspect, that abuse or neglect is taking place, we will refer to our Safeguarding policies and procedures. You can also report allegations of abuse and neglect directly to the local authority. If we receive an anonymous complaint that raises a safeguarding or whistleblowing issue, this will be dealt with under the relevant policy. Our ability to fully explore and feedback on the issue may be limited due to the nature of anonymous complaints. We will record, investigate, and monitor anonymous complaints in the same way that we treat other feedback. Complaints should be made within a reasonable period which would normally be within six months of the matter occurring. In exceptional circumstances we may decide to respond to a complaint outside of this timescale. Making a complaint will not result in any adverse changes to the services that you receive from us.
4 EXCLUSIONS TO THIS POLICY
There are some instances where the issue that you raise will not be dealt with via the complaints process, these are: • A complaint relating to an ongoing legal matter. • A first request for service, information or an explanation of our policies and procedures • Reported cases of neighbour disputes, anti-social behaviour, hate crime or domestic abuse, unless you are complaining about how we have handled your reports. • A claim is being dealt with by our insurers. Liability claims should be referred directly to the NHG insurance team at insurance@nhg.org.uk. All decisions made by insurers are final and any complaint in relation to an insurance claim should be made to the insurers through their complaint process rather than to NHG. • A complaint about a Subject Access Request (SAR). This is dealt with under our SAR policy. • We have already responded to the complaint. • The complaint is being pursued in an unreasonable manner in line with our unacceptable behaviour policy.
5 DEALING WITH COMPLAINTS
We will listen to your complaint and carefully consider your expectations and desired outcomes. We will aim to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible. Where appropriate, compensation may be awarded in line with our compensation and goodwill gestures policy. Where possible complaint responses will be made via your preferred method, followed by a written response. The written response will detail any follow up actions that are required to resolve the complaint and a timescale given for when these are expected to be complete. Written responses can be translated into a preferred form or language on request. At any stage during your complaint, you can approach the Property Ombudsman for independent advice around your complaint. Once your complaint has exhausted our internal procedure, you can contact the Ombudsman for a further investigation should you remain unhappy. We are committed to ensuring that our staff are treated with respect. To protect our staff, we will not engage with any threatening or abusive behaviour. We will deal with any unacceptable behaviour under the relevant policies. At Folio we have a two stage complaints process.
5.1 STAGE ONE
At stage one, your complaint will be handled by your Property Manager, Negotiator or Renewals Advisor. If your complaint is about your Property Manager, Negotiator or Renewals Advisor, it will be handled by their manager. We will contact you to acknowledge your complaint within two working days and will discuss with you the outcome you are seeking. Where we can resolve your complaint within two working days we may, if you agree, close it as a Quick Fix. Or, we will investigate your complaint and respond to you with a formal written response within 10 working days. If we are not able to resolve all of your issues in this time, we will send you an action plan within 10 working days detailing the timescales for completing any outstanding actions. In exceptional circumstances the timescales may need to be changed, in these cases we will agree a new timescale with you. If you are unhappy with the outcome at stage one, you can request a review of our response at stage 2.
5.2 STAGE TWO REVIEW
A request for a review should be made within a reasonable timeframe of either receiving the response to your complaint, or the end of the timescales for any actions detailed in the action plan. This would normally be within 20 working days. If a change in the case means that it is now covered by the exclusions laid out in Section 4, we will explain to you why you are not able to escalate your complaint. The review will be carried out by a manager who was not involved in the original decision. They will contact you to discuss your complaint, and the resolution that you are seeking, within two working days. Your complaint will also be reviewed by at least one independent manager from another department of Folio or the wider organisation Notting Hill Genesis who was not involved in the original decision. We will respond to you with a formal written response within 20 working days. The manager carrying out the review will also contact you to discuss the outcome and give you the opportunity to respond and ask questions. In exceptional circumstances the timescales may need to be changed, in these cases we will agree a new timescale with you.
5.3 EXTERNAL REVIEW – THE PROPERTY OMBUDSMAN
If you are not satisfied with the outcome of your complaint after it has been considered at a Review, you can refer your complaint to The Property Ombudsman Service at the address below. Please note, they will usually only examine your complaint once it has been through all stages of our internal complaints procedure. The Property Ombudsman Limited Milford house, 43-55 Milford Street Salisbury, Wiltshire SP1 2BP. Telephone: 01722 333306 Email: admin@tpos.co.uk
6 HOW WE WILL LEARN FROM COMPLAINTS
A customer complaint is a fantastic opportunity to learn about what or how we need to improve our service In order to do this, we will record and monitor every complaint including details such as what the complaint was about, how it was resolved, how quickly it was resolved and what we learnt. We will contact customers after they have complained to find out about their experience of the process, and we will seek to learn from this feedback and to change our processes and approach to reflect customers’ views. We will carry out regular complaint reviews in order to continuously look at how we can improve our handling of complaints and ensure all staff are briefed on the lesson learned.
7 HOW WE WILL MAKE SURE OUR COMPLAINTS APPROACH IS FAIR AND EASY TO ACCESS
We will treat all customers fairly and with respect. We will provide customers with any support they need throughout their complaint; this could include translating information or providing an interpreter if their first language is not English. We will accept complaints from a customer’s advocate or representative when the customer has confirmed they would like that person to act on their behalf. We reserve the right to use our unacceptable user actions and behaviour policy when a customer’s actions or behaviours are deemed to be unreasonable. An example of this could be if a customer uses threatening or offensive language towards staff, then we would ask them to communicate in writing, to a particular manager. We would always try to find a way to work with customers before reaching this stage, but very occasionally have to use this policy in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our staff. Policy is to be used in line with overarching NHG Complaint policy here.
