Complaint handling

The complaints process is managed by the Corporate Services Team which oversees all complaints received into the Council.

Where a complaint contains multiple elements that span across services, the Corporate Services Team will determine the principal elements of the complaint and allocate it to a Head of Service responsible for these to answer. The Head of Service will then take responsibility for drawing together responses to the remaining elements of the complaint from other services, in order to provide the customer with a comprehensive response that encompasses all aspects of their complaint.

The Housing Assets complaints process has two prescribed stages: 

• the process begins with a Stage 1 complaint
• if the issues raised are not satisfactorily resolved, the customer can escalate their complaint to a Stage 2 complaint

If the customer remains discontent with the responses provided by the Council following all stages of the process, they are able to complain to the Local Government Ombudsman and, in the case of landlord duties, the Housing Ombudsman.

Most complaints are resolved at Stage 1:

• stage 1 complaints in 2019/20: 92% resolved
• stage 2 complaints in 2019/20: 8% resolved

Please note, the current two-stage complaint process was adopted in March 2024 for landlord services. If your complaint is not about the housing service it will fall under the council's three-stage process.

What we do as a result of a complaint

We have made improvements as a result of learning from complaints and looking to put things right, so they do not happen again. Improvements may take one or both of the following forms:

• providing additional staff training (for an individual or team as required)
• making changes to processes and procedures

We welcome engagement with residents so we can continually look at improving our services. To get involved please contact us.