Complaints and Compliments

We aim to provide excellent service to our customers, but we recognise that sometimes, we may not meet your expectations.

When something goes wrong, or you are not happy with the service you have received from us, we want to know; so that we can put it right, and improve things for the future.

Equally, we'd love to hear from you about what we have done well too so that we can make sure we continue and replicate it across all our operations.

You can provide feedback over the phone, or in writing by contacting your local branch.

How we define a complaint

We have adopted the Housing Ombudsman's definition of a complaint, which 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.

Our complaints process

Stage One

When you make a complaint, we will log it and formally acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days.

Wherever possible, we will try to resolve a complaint during your first contact with us, but if we need to look into it, we will carry out an investigation and provide you with a response and resolution within 10 working days.

If we are unable to meet this timescale, we will let you know and keep you updated on progress.

Stage Two

If you are unhappy with our response at Stage One, you can request your complaint is escalated to Stage Two. This will be carried out by a Senior Manager who will review the investigation at Stage One and your reasons for dissatisfaction.

We aim to respond to Stage Two complaints within 20 working days.  If we are unable to meet this timescale, we will let you know and keep you updated on progress.

Further Redress

We subscribe to The Property Ombudsman (TPO) and the Housing Ombudsman schemes.

If you are unhappy with the outcome of our internal complaints process, you have the right to refer your complaint to either of these bodies.

Both organisations will not normally consider a complaint unless it has gone through all stages of our internal complaints process. They will not consider complaints over twelve months after the internal investigation was concluded, if the complaint is outside their remit or if they have previously issued a judgement on the complaint.

For further information on how to refer a complaint to either Ombudsman services, please click on the links above.

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How we deal with feedback

- All customer enquiries or complaints are taken seriously and are investigated within our policy guidelines.

- Customers are made fully aware of our complaints process and timescales when they raise a complaint and are kept informed of progress through the duration of the complaint process.

- Mears Living aims to investigate and achieve resolution of a complaint at the earliest opportunity and where possible within the agreed service level agreements.

- When communicating, Mears Living will use jargon-free, plain language.

- All complaints are recorded and managed through Mears Living's customer contact management platforms.

- Mears Living will provide clear reasons for any decisions, referencing any relevant policy, law or good practice where appropriate in their outcome response.

- Mears Living will provide details of how to escalate a complaint at each stage of the process

- If a customer is not happy with the outcome of their complaint at stage two, they will be signposted to the appropriate Ombudsman service.

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Keeping records

We will keep records of all customer contact, including complaints and the details of any investigation carried out so that we can deal objectively with complaints when they occur.

We will handle customers’ information sensitively and in line with data protection legislation and will share all relevant information to The Property Ombudsman, the Housing Ombudsman and the Social Housing Regular when requested.

We will analyse complaints data and use feedback to improve our service to customers in the future.

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