Make a complaint

Our definition of a complaint is:   

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.  

This could include where we, or any organisation acting on our behalf:   

• provided a poor service or failed to meet our service standards  
• failed to follow our own policies and procedure appropriately  
• gave someone incorrect or misleading information 
• failed to do something we said we would 
• communicated with someone in a rude or inappropriate manner.

A complaint isn’t:

• a service request, like a repair
• an antisocial behaviour issue – where you want to make a complaint about a neighbour or something happening in your community this is covered by our antisocial behaviour policy
• a legal dispute
• an insurance claim

Our definition of service request is:

A request from a resident to the landlord requiring action to be taken to put something right.

This could include: 

• a repair being reported to us for the first time or that is within the specified timescale for completion 
• a missed appointment that can be rebooked
• a report of anti-social behaviour  
• a request for information  
• a request for support service.

We may not accept a complaint if it is:  

• about an issue being reported to us for the first time   
• made 12 months after the incident occurred
• about an issue that has already been considered through our complaints process   
• where there is a more appropriate route such as first tier tribunal for rent or service charge concerns or a referral to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for any concerns about the way we manage data   
• covered by an alternative process in one of our policies, such as antisocial behaviour or mutual exchange
• already subject to legal proceedings where a claim has been submitted to court
• about one of our policies, unless it is about how our policies have been applied  
• about the actions of one of our residents or service users  
• about the action of an individual or organisation that we have no control over  
• about services that we are not responsible for   
• communicated to us in a manner that we feel is unreasonable, threatening, or abusive.

Anyone can make a complaint if they are in receipt of, or are affected by, our services.

This includes:

• residents who live in our homes
• non-West Kent residents who live in neighbourhoods where there are West Kent homes
• people who receive our community and support services

We accept complaints from individuals or from groups.

We will also accept complaints on your behalf from third parties and support organisations, if you give us permission to talk to them and share your information.

If you contact us on our public social media pages, we’ll ask you to contact us directly to protect your privacy.

If you need extra support to complain or you need us to make reasonable changes to our process due to disability, health or any cultural or religious reasons, please let us know.

 

You can complain to any member of West Kent staff, or contractor, in any way that suits you:

• Use our online form at the bottom of this page
• Email-  help@wkha.org.uk
• Telephone- 01732 749400
• Post-  101 London Road, Sevenoaks, TN13 1AX
• In person- by arranging a meeting with us or if you live in a scheme, via the staff onsite.

If you contact us on our social media pages, we’ll ask you to contact us directly using one of the above methods to protect your privacy.

If you need extra support to complain or you need us to make reasonable changes to our process because of protected characteristics, including, but not limited to, disability, health or any cultural or religious reasons, please let us know.

If you send a complaint to our Chief Executive or any of our Directors, it will be passed to our customer resolution team who will handle it in line with our normal process. We’ll contact you to let you know what’s happening.

Unreasonable behaviour

We are proud of the open and honest relationship we have with our customers and work very hard to be proactive and responsive to customers’ complaints. However, there are times, where customers behave or act in ways that make it very difficult for us to provide an effective service.

We will not accept violent, aggressive, rude, or intimidating behaviour towards our staff, board members, contractors and representatives, from individuals and groups using our service. When this happens, we will take action to protect the health and wellbeing of our staff who have a right to do their job without fear of being abused or harassed. Read our unacceptable behaviour policy here 

The Housing Ombudsman Service investigates complaints and resolves disputes involving the tenants and leaseholders of social landlords.

You can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service directly about your complaint. They can provide you with advice and guidance at any stage of your complaint.

Once you have completed our complaints process you can also approach the Housing Ombudsman Service should you remain unhappy with the outcome of your complaint.

You can find out more about the Housing Ombudsman Service by visiting their website, or watching their video: 

There is no Ombudsman for private tenants. You should seek advice from Shelter or Citizens Advice.

If you're looking for compensation, you should visit our compensation page.

Your complaint will be investigated by a named member of our dedicated customer resolution team.

We will contact you to discuss your complaint within three working days of receipt to understand what issues you want to raise and what outcome you are looking for.  

We will formally acknowledge your complaint within five workings days of receiving the complaint. The formal acknowledgment of your complaint will list the details of your complaints, the outcome you are looking for and the date we will respond to your complaint.

We will complete our investigation and provide you with a response within ten working days from the acknowledgment of your complaint.

If we require more time to complete our investigation, we will discuss this with you and may extend our response time by a further ten working days.

In exceptional circumstances we may need to extend your complaints further.  We will seek your agreement should this be needed and agree a timescale for further contact. We will also provide you with the details of the Housing Ombudsman Service should you wish to take further advice from them.    

We aim to resolve all complaints at stage one. However, if you are unhappy with your stage one response, you can ask for your complaint to be escalated to stage two.

You must request the escalation of your complaint within 20 working days of receiving your stage one response. If there are exceptional circumstances that mean you are unable to escalate your complaint within 20 working days, please let us know and we can consider these.

A member of the customer resolution team not previously involved in your complaint will carry out an independent review of your stage one response and investigate any issues that you remain dissatisfied with.

New issues raised at this stage may be treated as a new and separate complaint and investigated at stage one.

We will contact you within three working days of receiving your request for escalation to stage two to ensure that we fully understand your concerns and the outcome you are looking for. 

We will formally acknowledge your complaint within five workings days of receiving your request for escalation to stage two. The formal acknowledgment of your complaint will list the details of your complaints, the outcome you are looking for and the date we will response to your complaint.

We will complete our investigation and provide you with a response within 20 working days of the acknowledgment of your complaint. 

If we require more time to complete our investigation, we will discuss this with you and may extend our response time by a further 20 working days.

In exceptional circumstances we may need to extend your complaint further. We will seek your agreement should this be needed and agree a timescale for further contact. We will also provide you with the details of the Housing Ombudsman Service should you wish to take further advice from them.

If you aren’t happy with how we’ve handled your complaint or what we’ve decided, you can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service and ask them to look at your complaint.

The Housing Ombudsman Service looks at complaints about social housing providers and resolves disputes between landlords and tenants. Their service is free, independent and impartial. You can contact them at any stage for help about your complaint, but they will usually only look at it once you have completed our two stage formal process.

The Housing Ombudsman Service can be contacted at:

Housing Ombudsman Service, PO Box 1484, Unit D, Preston, PR2 0ET

Telephone: 0300 111 3000

Email: info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk

website: www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk 

You can also contact your MP or a local councillor and ask them to contact us about your complaint or they can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service for you.

There is also a government website about social housing complaints that you may find useful.