Complaints and Compliments

How to provide feedback

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 about what we have done well.

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

When you contact us with an issue, we will try to resolve it quickly and informally. However, if you wish to log your issue as a formal complaint, please let us know and we will record it and investigate it in accordance with our formal complaints process.

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 an official 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 deliver a mutually agreed outcome 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 two, you can escalate your complaint to be reviewed. This will be carried out by a more senior manager or by the Mears Group Customer Success Team.

We aim to respond to stage 2 complaints with a mutually agreed outcome 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 remain unhappy with the outcome of our internal complaints process, you have the right to take 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.

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 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 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.

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.