Customer complaints
Selwood Housing takes all complaints seriously. We are sorry when things go wrong, and we want to hear from you if you are unhappy with us in any way.
This page explains how our complaints process works and includes Frequently Asked Questions.
What counts as a complaint?
You can make a complaint if we:
- fail to provide a service when agreed
- provide a poor standard of service
- make a mistake in the way we’ve provided the service
- fail to meet our existing service standards
- fail to follow our policies correctly
We accept complaints made to us within 12 months of the issue arising or of the complainant becoming aware of the issue.
There are a few circumstances where we can’t accept a complaint. This is where it might be better dealt with under another policy, such as our antisocial behaviour policy. Additionally, complaints about a member of staff are dealt with by their line manager and complaints about policies are dealt with by the policy owner. Complaints about our financial services are considered regulated complaints and must be dealt with in a particular way.
See our complaints and compliments policy for full details.
The complaints process
We’ve summarised below the different stages of our complaints process. Our complaints procedure explains this process in detail.
Stage one
We acknowledge complaints within 5 working days of being received. The complaint is assigned to the staff member with the most relevant knowledge and expertise, usually a team manager. They hold an investigation and issue a full response within 10 working days of the complaint being acknowledged.
If you are unhappy with the response, you can request that the complaint is escalated to stage two.
Stage two
We acknowledge the request within 5 working days of being received. We ensure the matter is dealt with by a different person to stage one. We issue a final response within 20 working days of the complaint being escalated.
If you are still dissatisfied with the outcome, you can escalate the matter to the Housing Ombudsman Service.
Completion
A complaint is closed 28 days following our response or earlier if you have confirmed you are satisfied with the outcome.
Housing Ombudsman
You can contact the Housing Ombudsman at any stage of our complaints process for advice and to help find a resolution. However, the Housing Ombudsman cannot make a formal decision on a case at this stage.
After completing our complaints process, if you are still unhappy with our response you can ask the Housing Ombudsman Service to investigate how we dealt with the matter.
Contacting the Housing Ombudsman
- Online complaint form: www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk/residents/make-a-complaint/
- Website: www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk
- Phone: 0300 111 3000
- Email: info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk
- Postal address: Housing Ombudsman Service, PO Box 1484, Unit D, Preston, PR2 0ET.
Further information
- Read the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
- Read our self-assessment against the code.
- Read our response to a maladministration finding.
Learning from complaints
We record a learning outcome from every complaint to help us improve our services. These learnings are published in our annual compliments and complaints report alongside information about disrepair claims and service improvements we’ve made to address identified shortcomings. Our 2024-25 annual report was presented to the Board in May 2025. The response was that they noted the report.
A group of our customers also meets quarterly to review how we handle complaints at the customer complaints forum.
