You can complain about things like:

• Delays in responding to your enquiries and requests
• Failure to provide a service
• Inadequate standard of service, such as a repair not carried out properly
• Dissatisfaction with a policy or a decision, but only if there is no other way of dealing with the matter such as a formal appeal process
• Provision of misleading, unsuitable or incorrect advice or information
• Unacceptable behaviour by, or attitude of, a member of staff, Board Member or contractor’s staff
• Unfairness, bias or prejudice in service delivery
• Our failure to follow proper procedure

Your complaint may involve more than one of our services or be about someone working on our behalf, for example, a repairs contractor.

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

These include:

• A routine first time request for a service, for example, reporting a repair
• Reporting anti-social behaviour – this is dealt with by a separate procedure
• Requests for compensation
• Where there is a separate right of appeal, for example, you can appeal if you are dissatisfied with the level of priority you have been given when applying for a house or if a request for an alteration has not been approved
• Matters that are in court or have already been heard by a court or a tribunal
• An attempt to reopen a previously concluded complaint, or to have a complaint reconsidered where we have already given our final decision at Stage 2

Normally, you must make your complaint within six months of:

• The event you want to complain about, or
• finding out that you have a reason to complain, but no longer than 12 months after the event itself.

In exceptional circumstances, we may be able to accept a complaint after the time limit. If you feel that the time limit should not apply to your complaint, please tell us why.

Our complaints procedure has two stages:

STAGE 1: FRONTLINE RESOLUTION

We aim to resolve complaints quickly and close to where we provided the service. This could mean an on-the-spot apology and explanation if something has clearly gone wrong, and immediate action to resolve the problem. We will give you our decision at Stage 1 in five working days or less, unless there are exceptional circumstances. If we can’t resolve your complaint at this stage, we will explain why and will agree with you a realistic timeframe in which we will resolve your complaint. If you are still dissatisfied with our decision at stage one, you can ask for your complaint to be investigated further through Stage 2. You may choose to do this immediately or some time after you get our initial response. We can help you with making this request.

STAGE 2: INVESTIGATION

Stage 2 deals with two types of complaint. Those that have not been resolved at Stage 1, and those that are complex and require detailed investigation.

In the Stage 2 process we will:

• Acknowledge receipt of your complaint in writing within 3 working days
• Undertake a detailed investigation
• Give you a full written response to the complaint as soon as possible and within 20 working days

If our investigation will take longer than 20 working days we will tell you. We will agree revised time limits with you and keep you updated on progress.

The SPSO does not normally look at complaints about our factoring service. If your complaint is about our factoring service, and you are still dissatisfied after our Stage 2 investigation, you will be able to go to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber).

The Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) does not deal with individual tenant or service user complaints – these must be raised with your landlord first. However, if a tenant has a serious concern and the complaint affects a group or all of the landlord’s tenants, you can report the issue to the SHR. You can do so where your landlord regularly and repeatedly fails to achieve its regulatory requirements for social housing, and this failure affects a group of the social landlord tenants. A serious concern is when your social landlord:

• has acted in a way which puts tenants’ interests at risk and this affects, or could affect, a group of tenants or all tenants; or

• repeatedly fails to achieve outcomes in the Social Housing Charter or outcomes agreed with tenants; or

• has not reported its performance annually to its tenants or has reported it inaccurately; or

• does not meet our standards for how an RSL should govern itself and manage its finances; or

• has not met any targets we have set it.

Serious concerns of this nature are considered to be Significant Performance Failures. You can ask us for more information about significant performance failures, or you can access information on the SHR’s website and you can download a Complaints and Serious Concerns factsheet.

Please note that a complaint between an individual tenant and a landlord is not a significant performance failure. Significant performance failures are not, therefore, dealt with through our complaints handling procedure.