Download our complaints policy here.

Suggestions

If you have a comment or suggestion to make about the services we provide or if you have an idea on how we can improve our services, please tell us. We will look at your suggestion and see if we can use it. We will let you know what we have done with it once we have considered it.

Compliments

We welcome compliments about the services we provide and our staff. If you would like to make a compliment, please tell us by emailing ResidentEngagement@innisfree.org.uk. We will acknowledge your compliment and ensure it reaches the staff involved.

Complaints

We aim to give an excellent service to our customers at all times. However, we know that on occasions mistakes can happen or our services will not be of an acceptable standard. As a result you may wish to complain. Wherever possible, we will aim to resolve your complaint at the first point of contact.

We embed the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code into the way that we work; you can find more about the Code, here:

We assess how we handle complaints using the Housing Ombudsman’s annual self-assessment. You can read our assessment for 2022/2023 here:

What is a complaint and who can complain to us?

A complaint could be made when a customer feels;

• Dissatisfied with the standard of service provided by us or our contractors.
• Unhappy with our actions or decisions.
• Unhappy with a situation that they wish to have rectified
• We have failed to do something we should have done or have acted inappropriately.
• We have treated them unfairly or disrespectfully.
• We have failed to respond to their initial enquiries.
• We have failed to meet one of our resident service promises.
• We have failed to follow our policies or procedures.

Anyone who uses our services can complain, including the agreed representative of someone who is dissatisfied with the service.

It’s good to talk

If you have a problem or are unhappy you can start by talking to a member of staff. We may be able to resolve the issue for you quickly if you tell us why you are unhappy and what you want us to do to put things right. Often we can resolve the problem on the spot, without the need to fill in forms or put your complaint in writing. It is much easier to resolve a complaint if you let us know about it as soon as possible. You can help by:

• being clear and specific about your complaint
• telling us exactly what the key issue is and what went wrong
• telling us what it is you require to put things right

Making a complaint

We want it to be easy for anyone to let us know that something has gone wrong for them. We will take a complaint from residents in writing, in person, over the telephone, by email, online via our website and social media channels, or through a third party. With third- party complaints, we will need to ensure that the person has permission to act on the complainant’s behalf before we respond. If we receive a complaint. If we receive a complaint through social media channels we will contact the complainant privately to address their concerns and follow this Policy, ensuring confidentiality and privacy is maintained.

Telephone: 020 7625 1818

Email: complaints@innisfree.org.uk

Post: Innisfree Housing Association, 190 Iverson Road, London, NW6 2HL

Facebook: @InnisfreeHousingAssociation

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_InnisfreeHA

Support

We receive complaints in any language. If you need help to sharing your complaint with us, or need an interpreter to help you make a verbal complaint, we will make the necessary arrangements upon request.

Exclusions – What can’t I complain about?

There are some things we can’t deal with through our complaints procedure. These include complaints that:

• are being dealt with or were previously dealt with by legal proceedings, or where a decision will be decided by a court (such as an eviction)
• have not been raised within six months of the incident occurring
• are about a service that is not Innisfree’s responsibility
• are about neighbour disputes and anti-social behaviour
• are made anonymously
• have already been considered and have not been taken to the next stage within 20 working days (unless there is new information)

How long do I have to make a complaint?

You need to make your complaint within six months of the matter arising.

What you can expect when you make a complaint

We will:

• make it easy for you to make a complaint
• help anyone who requires assistance in making a complaint
• treat you fairly and respectfully
• listen and deal with your complaint in a prompt and courteous manner
• keep you informed throughout the process of your complaint
• take your complaint seriously and investigate it fully and impartially
• apologise when we get things wrong
• put right any mistakes made and learn from them

What happens when you make a complaint

We have two complaint stages.

Stage 1 Your complaint

We believe it is best to get complaints settled as quickly as possible and that’s what we aim to do. Some complaints are more complicated so we have a few steps that we may need to go through to get to a solution. Your complaint will be treated as a formal complaint and given to the appropriate member of staff, who will act as the investigating Complaints Officer for your complaint.

They will aim to:

• Acknowledge the complaint within 2 working days
• Clarify any aspects that we don’t understand
• Investigate the complaint fully, in an impartial manner and with an open mind
• Provide a full response to the complaint within 10 working days – if we need an extension, we will agree this with the complainant
• Explain any remedy offered to put things right, and apologise where appropriate
• Set out any outstanding actions
• Let them know how to escalate the complaint if they remain dissatisfied

Stage 2 Review

If you are still unhappy at the end of Stage 1, you can request that your complaint is reviewed at stage 2 of the Complaints Policy. If this happens we will allocate your case to a member of our Senior Management Team to act as the Complaint Officer at Stage 2.

Housing Ombudsman Service

We are committed to embedding the Housing Ombudsman’s Guidelines for best practice into our policies and procedures. If you are not satisfied with how your complaint is being handled, or are dissatisfied with the outcome of your complaint, you can refer your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman Service at any time.

The Ombudsman can independently and impartially review a complaint and provide a decision that it considers fair in all the circumstances.

We will comply with any orders and recommendations the Ombudsman makes to resolve a complaint.

Their contact details are as follows:

Housing Ombudsman Service, PO Box 152, Liverpool L33 7WQ

Tel: 0300 111 3000

Email: info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk

www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk

Innisfree Complaints Form

Our online Complaints Form can be found here