The complaints process explained

We use a two-stage formal complaint process. Our aim is to provide not only a shorter process, but an improved experience overall.

Stage 1 Formal complaint investigation

Responses to formal complaints are managed by our Complaints team.

Within two working days your case will be allocated to a Complaint Officer, who will contact you to discuss your complaint. They will provide a written acknowledgement which sets out a summary of your complaint and what you would like us to do about it.

Your Complaint Officer will work with an investigating manager in the relevant Hyde team to deliver our decision about your complaint. Our aim is to provide this to you within ten working days. In some cases, we may need more time to complete our investigation. If we do, we’ll let you know why and a date when we will provide our response. This will not be longer than a further ten working days.

Our formal complaint response will include our review of what has happened, our decision about the complaint and details of next steps, including what we will do to put things right.

In many cases, the next steps will include commitments to actions which will happen in the period ahead. This could include follow-on repairs, an inspection or a customer meeting, which may require a reasonable amount of time to organise. We will tell you about proposed actions, timescales and responsible people in our complaint response letter.

These commitments, which fall outside our formal complaints response times, will be managed separately to the complaint process by the investigating manager(s). If we fail to deliver against these commitments, the complaint will be reopened and escalated.

Stage 2 Formal complaint (Senior manager review)

If you are not satisfied with our response at stage 1, you can ask for your complaint to be reviewed by a senior manager at stage 2 of our process. In most cases, we will agree to look again at our decision and to consider any additional information provided. In certain cases, we may not be able to do this and, if so, we will explain why.

The stage 2 formal complaint review is not a repeat of the full investigation. The actions and decisions taken at stage 1 will be examined to check if they were thorough, reasonable and fair. We aim to give you our decision on the outcome of the review of your complaint within twenty working days. 

The outcome of the stage 2 formal complaint review represents the end of our internal complaint process. We hope we will have been able to resolve your complaint. If this is not the case, you can at this point ask the Housing Ombudsman Service to review our responses to you.

We will always explain the options to you at the end of our internal complaint process.

Please remember you can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service at any stage for guidance about making a complaint about your landlord.