Complaints and compliments

Feedback is very important to us and we want to hear from you if you feel we have got something wrong or left you feeling dissatisfied. By sharing your experience, it will allow us to put things right and help us to improve our services. If you feel that we have done a good job, we would love to hear about that too.

Compliments

If you are impressed with something we have done, or you feel a staff member has gone the extra mile, let us know! We will ensure that your feedback is shared with our colleagues at Southern Housing Group. You can find the ways to contact us below.

Complaints

What is a complaint?

We have adopted the Housing Ombudsman’s definition of a complaint as an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the Group, our own staff, or those acting on our behalf, affecting an individual resident or a group of residents. You can find our new Complaints Policy here.

In addition to the new policy we have also introduced a Reasonable Adjustments Policy in line with the Housing Ombudsman Code. 

If you would like to receive support or assistance in making a complaint, please do let us know. For independent advice and support services, please reach out to your local Citizens Advice.

Local aid centres may also be able to provide independent and impartial support. Here is a useful directory of these services Legal Advice Finder. 

Complaints Process

To find out how our complaints process works please read through the Complaints Process Procedure.

If at any point you are unhappy with how we are dealing with your complaint, please let us know. You are also able to contact the Housing Ombudsman Service at any point throughout your complaint for advice. 

Our Supporting and Independence complaints process 

Southern 360’s Supporting Independence and Care service (SI&C) regards all complaints as an opportunity to improve customer service and satisfaction. We will work with you to resolve any complaint or concern you have in an honest and transparent way.

If the complaint or concern is regarding the provision of a care or support service provided by SI&C staff, then the SI&C Complaints Policy and Procedure will be followed.

The Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code

Last year the Housing Ombudsman introduced a new complaint handling code as part of the revised ombudsman scheme. The new code set out to establish some best practices in handling your complaints and covers areas such as making our complaints procedure easily accessible to you, suitable response and improving by learning from complaints.

We had to undertake a self-assessment to see how our existing policies and processes aligned with the requirements within the code.

In December 2020, we published the results of our self-assessment and we are pleased to announce that all actions have now been completed meaning that from 1 April, we are now 100% compliant.

We are currently refreshing the ombudsman’s self-assessment template so that we can make it a feature on this page and accessible to all our customers. We’re aiming to share the new look with you later this month.

Learning from complaints

Listening to and learning from your complaints is important to us. Find out more about how we are doing this, here. 

Contact us about a complaint or compliment:

Call us

This is the best way to contact us with your comments or complaints. We can talk about your concerns in detail and we may even be able to resolve matters while you are on the phone. You can call us on 01403 220440 and our normal hours are from 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday. These hours may vary as we respond to pandemic restrictions, please click here to check for the latest updates. 

Send us an online message

If you would prefer to send us a message, please complete the online form at the bottom of the page and we will ensure that you are contacted directly within 2 working days. 

Write to us

If you’d prefer to send us a letter, please write to us explaining what has gone wrong and how you would like us to fix this. We might need more information to help with our investigation, so it’s also useful to include your contact number and a convenient time to call you.

Please send your letter to:

Customer Relations Team
Southern Housing Group
PO Box 643
Horsham
West Sussex
RH12 1XJ