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If you are unhappy with the service you have received, we want to know.
We are committed to providing you with a high-quality service. Your feedback helps us to better understand how we are performing and where we need to improve.
What is a Complaint?
A complaint is when someone tells a company, organisation, or person that they are unhappy with something, usually because something went wrong or didn’t meet their expectations. This lets the other party know there’s an issue that needs fixing or improving.
In the case of a complaint made about North Star, this may be about the standard of service, actions – or lack of action – by the organisation, the organisation’s staff, or those acting on our behalf. The issue outlined in the complaint may affect an individual, a resident, or a group of residents.
A customer does not have to use the word “complaint” in order for it to be treated as such.
When a customer informs us that they are not happy about something, we will consider if this is something that we can put right quickly, without needing to go through our formal complaints procedure. These are called service requests.
How to make a Complaint
Complaints can be made in any of the following ways:
You can share your details or leave feedback anonymously.
We have a simple complaints process involving just two stages. Once we have received your complaint, we will write to you within two working days providing you with details of who will be looking into the complaint and when you should receive a response.
What is a Service Request?
If a customer expresses dissatisfaction but the issue can be resolved quickly without needing to go through our formal complaints procedure, this is called a Service Request. We will seek to resolve any service requests within three working days.
The customer will be asked if they are satisfied with the actions taken to resolve the service request and, if the customer remains unhappy, they can continue through our complaints procedure.
Examples of this can include resolving an issue about a repair or an appointment.
A Stage One complaint will be dealt with by a manager who will contact you and discuss how the complaint can be resolved.
We aim to provide a full written response within 10 working days.
If additional complaints are raised during the investigation, we will incorporate these if they are relevant and the Stage One response has not been issued. Where the additional complaints are not relevant, the Stage One response has already been issued, or it would unreasonably delay the response, the complaint will be recorded as a new complaint.
We will keep the customer updated and respond within the timescales set out in our policy.
If we are unable to resolve the complaint in these timeframes, we will contact the customer to set out what we intend to do to resolve the complaint, and by when with new timescales for response. This will be no more than 10 days.
We will seek the agreement of the customer for this. If the customer is not in agreement with this, we will close the complaint and issue our findings in writing. We will provide details on how the complaint can be escalated to Stage Two of our complaints policy. Details of the Housing Ombudsman will also be provided.
If you are not happy with the outcome of Stage One, you can ask for a review of how the complaint has been handled. At Stage Two it will be dealt with by a senior manager or director who will endeavour to resolve the complaint within 10 working days.
We aim to provide a full response within 10 working days but we recognise that some reviews may require a more in-depth investigation.
If we are unable to respond within 10 working days, we will contact the customer to advise when we expect to be able to respond to the request for review.
Where an agreement over an extension period cannot be reached, we will provide the customer with the Housing Ombudsman contact details.
We will write to the customer to issue our findings and the outcome of the review.
The Housing Ombudsman can be contacted for advice and information at any point during the complaint process.
A complaint will be accepted unless there is a valid reason not to do so. There are some specific instances when we won’t accept a complaint, but each case will be considered on its own merits. Some examples include:
If we decide not to accept the complaint, we will write and explain why we are not accepting the complaint, and in our response, inform the complainant that they have the right to challenge the decision via the Housing Ombudsman.
Here you can read our Complaints Policy.
Although we will always seek to follow this policy when dealing with complaints, we reserve the right to use discretion when applying the policy and may deal with a complaint differently where individual circumstances merit it. In these circumstances, any discretion will be applied fairly and appropriately, and the customer will be informed of any departure from this policy.
A complaint will be considered closed when we have written to the customer providing details on what we have done or propose to do to resolve the complaint.
When writing to confirm a complaint is closed, we will clarify:
We will address all points raised in the complaint and provide clear reasons for any decisions.
North Star is committed to being compliant with the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code. The purpose of this self-assessment is to identify where we are compliant and identify any areas where we can make improvements.
The self assessment can be found linked below.
As part of our ongoing compliance with the Housing Ombudsman Code of Practice, and our commitment to resolving complaints and learning from them we have appointed two key people to oversee what we do:
Nicki Clark – Board Member Responsible for Complaints: Nicki has lead responsibility for supporting a positive complaint-handling culture. She will also ensure that the Board receives regular information on complaints that provides insight into North Star’s performance in complaint handling.
Carole Richardson – Executive Director of Customers: Carole is accountable for complaint handling. She assesses any themes or trends to identify potential systemic issues, serious risks, or policies and procedures that require revision.
North Star Board Statement
“We are committed to using feedback from customers to improve what we do. Despite our passion and diligence, we know sometimes things go wrong. When they do, our priority is to work with the customer to resolve the issue in a timely and respectful manner.
The North Star Board received the annual complaints performance and service improvement report, and the annual self-assessment against the Complaint Handling Code on 17 June 2024. Their role is to scrutinise data, performance information and levels of customer satisfaction to provide assurance that North Star are managing complaints in line with our policy and the Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code. North Star’s overall performance when considered against the Complaints Handling Code and our own internal expectations and values is good.
In line with North Star’s continuous improvement culture, a number of new methods, systems and contractors have been introduced which have resulted in improvements in consistency, communication, and the speed with which repairs can be completed. However, as clearly set out in the report, we have identified that more needs to be done to ensure we continue to improve communication and that our repairs service is delivering the best possible service.
The Board has therefore approved a range of priorities including further investment in: contractor capacity, a new IT system to help improve the management of repairs, enhancement of customer feedback methods and analysis of data.”
