Complaints Service Standards

We aim to provide you with a high-quality complaints service, we will do our best to resolve your complaint quickly and efficiently and use your feedback to improve the services we provide.

Our commitment

We are committed to continually improve our services. We therefore welcome your views, feedback, or complaints on service delivery, whether good or bad, so that we can learn and implement changes to the services we deliver to you.

Our staff will:

  • Deal with your complaint in a friendly and professional manner.
  • Have access to relevant information and be willing to listen.
  • Respond effectively and sensitively to your feelings and needs.
  • Provide you with a clear explanation of how your complaint will be dealt with.
  • Deal with any dissatisfaction efficiently and effectively.
  • Respond to complaints within timescales.

If you contact us regarding a complaint, we will:

  • Aim to resolve your complaint by putting things right as quickly as possible.
  • Aim to contact you to discuss and acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days.
  • Fully investigate your complaint or comments raised and inform you of the outcome verbally and in writing, including what action will be taken.
  • If we do not resolve your complaint to your satisfaction at stage 1, we will escalate your complaint to the next stage of complaint process.
  • We will provide electronic and written information in formats that are accessible to most customers and can be adapted to meet the needs of all on request.

How will we monitor our performance:

  • By reviewing the outcomes of complaints to identify service delivery improvements.
  • Capturing and recording satisfaction levels with the complaints process, including how complaints have been handled, to ensure a positive experience for customers.
  • Reporting this information through governance channels and the Customer Voice Panel to ensure there is a focus on continuous improvement.

Oversight by our board

From the start of June 2024, our board will permanently have a member responsible for making sure we understand complaints and handle them, so customers are satisfied with the outcomes.

The board member with responsibility for complaints is Jean Mira. Her role is to:

  • Make sure the Board receives regular information on what isn’t working as well as it should be for customers.
  • Help us to learn from any issues and trends so we can improve customers’ satisfaction with how we handle complaints.

Jean will work alongside the existing Customer Excellence officers, our Executive Director of Customer Experience Kelly Webb.

Kelly’s role is to:

  • Check our approach to complaints is clear, simple and accessible for our customers.
  • Make sure we deal with complaints promptly, politely and fairly.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

  • We will ensure that we consider equality, diversity and inclusion in all of our complaint handling. We will ensure that everyone can properly access our complaints service, including making reasonable adjustments as defined by the Equalities Act 2010.
  • This will include publishing an easy read version of our Complaints Policy.
  • We also give customers the opportunity to have a suitable representative deal with their complaint. This could include friends, family, MPs, Councillors, advocates, care/support providers and managing agents working in partnership with FCHO.