Your Feedback | Freebridge Community Housing

Tell us what you think

At Freebridge we want you to be happy with the service you receive from us, and to help us understand how we are performing we would like your feedback. We want you to tell us when we do something well, when we get something wrong, or any ideas you have for how we can improve what we do. We monitor compliments, comments and complaints so that we can learn and improve and provide you with high quality services that you are happy with.

More Information

Compliments, Comments and Complaints

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When we get something wrong

Sometimes things go wrong with the service we provide, if this happens, you can make a complaint. We define a complaint as follows:

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.

Examples of complaints include:

When we haven’t met our Service Standards.
When we haven’t done something that we should be doing.
When a customer is unhappy with a decision or action (if this decision or action is outside of an agreed policy to provide a service).
When a customer is unhappy with the attitudes and behaviours of our colleagues or contractors.

We do not treat the following as complaints:

Matters that have already been considered under our Complaints policy.
Complaints about anti-social behaviour or nuisance by Freebridge customers. These complaints will be handled by a separate anti-social behaviour policy and procedure. But, if the complaint is about the way in which the nuisance has been handled, then this will be covered by our policy.
Initial requests for a service or information, for example initial reporting of a repair. But, when we fail to meet our service standards this will be covered by our policy.
Complaints where legal action is already taking place, or a decision has been made by the court.
Complaints about our decision to end a starter tenancy, refusal to offer a tenancy after an applicant has been referred or nominated to us, a tenancy review, refusal of a mutual exchange – these would be dealt with under our appeals policy. But again, if the complaint is about the way in which the process has been handled, then this will be covered by this policy.

In the event that we do not accept a complaint we will let you know why. If you wish to challenge our decision not to accept a complaint you may contact the Housing Ombudsman who will review the matter –and where appropriate will instruct us to take on the complaint.

Our Complaints and Compliments Policy is available for all of our customers and includes shared owners, leaseholders, and applicants for our properties.

Our Complaints Process

Stage 1

Any complaint that is not resolved within the initial period of three working days will be referred to the Complaints Manager.
Within a further two working days you will receive an acknowledgement letter.
Within 10 working days and following investigation, you will receive a full response.
If the investigation takes longer, we will keep you fully updated on its progress. This will not take a further 10 working days without good reason.
As part of the investigation, the manager looking into the matter will contact you to understand the nature of your complaint, the impact the matter has had on you and what you would like us to do to fix the problem.

If you are still unhappy about how your complaint has been dealt with, you can then ask for the complaint to be moved to Stage 2.

Stage 2

At the second stage of our complaints process your complaint will be reviewed by a director at Freebridge who is not directly involved in the original matter.
As part of the investigation, the director will contact you to understand your complaint, the impact it has had on you and what you would like us to do to resolve the problem.
The director will then write to you with their final decision within 10 working days of your complaint moving to this stage..
Where the complaint relates to debt advice or our other Financial Conduct Authority regulated activities, this update will take the form of a final response letter which will be sent to you within eight weeks of the complaint first being received.

If you still remain unhappy with the response following the second stage of our process, the following options are available to you.

Within eight weeks of our final decision, you can ask a ‘designated person’ to refer the matter to the Housing Ombudsman.
Alternatively, eight weeks after our final decision, you can take your complaint direct to the Housing Ombudsman.
If your complaint relates to debt advice or Finance Conduct Authority matters, you will need to contact the Financial Ombudsman.
For leaseholder and shared owner customers, leasehold disputes (such as those about service or administration charges, leasehold management etc.) can also be considered by the first-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber).

Representation

At any stage in our complaints process you can choose to have a representative deal with your complaint on your behalf, including attending any meetings with or for you.

Reasonable adjustments

We want to make sure that all of our customers are able to use our Complaints and Compliments service, and we’ll make reasonable adjustments where necessary.

Reasonable adjustments will depend what’s needed but may include things such as:

Provision of auxiliary aids.
Provision of information in alternative formats (e.g. large print, Braille, coloured paper etc.).
Allowing extra time for customers to make a response.
Use of email or telephone in preference instead of hard copy letters.
Use of plain English or Easy Read service.
Communication through a representative or intermediary.
Rest or comfort breaks in meetings.

You can request reasonable adjustments or extra support at any point during the process; where we are aware that you may require a reasonable adjustment, we will aim to provide these.

Contacting us

Complaints, comments and compliments are important to us as they help us improve our services. Customers can contact us in the following ways:

In person at our Juniper House office
Telephone
E-mail
Writing to us
Via the Tenant Web Portal - once registered, customers can send a comment/complaint directly to us from here as well as report a repair and view their rent statement

ADDRESS

Freebridge Community Housing
Juniper House
Austin Street
King’s Lynn
Norfolk
PE30 1DZ

TELEPHONE

03332 404 444

EMAIL

Email Freebridge

Other contacts

A designated person is:

a Member of Parliament (MP),

a local councillor, or a

recognised Tenant Panel (Freebridge’s Tenant panel is not a recognised Tenant Panel in this instance).

Housing Ombudsman

In addition to making contact with Freebridge you can also contact the Housing Ombudsman Service direct at any time and speak to their dispute support advisors who will provide assistance throughout the life of a complaint.

ADDRESS

PO Box 152
Liverpool
L33 7WQ

TELEPHONE

0300 111 3000

EMAIL

Email Ombudsman

WEBSITE

Housing Ombudsman

Financial Ombudsman

In addition to making contact with Freebridge you can also contact the Financial Ombudsman Service direct at any time.

ADDRESS

Exchange Tower
Harbour Exchange
London
E14 9SR

TELEPHONE

020 7964 1000

WEBSITE

Financial Ombudsman

The First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber)

Residential property: Eastern region

ADDRESS

Cambridge County Court

197 East Road

Cambridge

CB1 1BA

TELEPHONE

01223 841 524

EMAIL

Email here

Appeals

We also operate a two-stage appeals process for when you disagree with a decision we have made. There are only certain types of decision that you can appeal, these are ones that affect your tenancy and that you have no other legal method of challenging. The full range of circumstances are listed in our Appeals Policy which can be found in our Policy & Procedural Handbook.

More Information

Policy & Procedural Handbook

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We will always make you aware when you have the right to appeal a decision, but you can also contact us regarding this.

You can contact us to make an appeal within 10 working days of us making a decision:

In person at our Juniper House office
Telephone
E-mail
Website
Writing to us

Complaints, where you are dissatisfied with a service, will be dealt with under our complaints process. If you are both unhappy about a service you have received as well as a decision that we have made (and it falls into one of the appeal categories), then we will make a decision as to which process is more suitable and contact you to explain why.

TELEPHONE

03332 404 444

EMAIL

Email Freebridge

WEBSITE

Contact page

ADDRESS

Freebridge Community Housing

Juniper House

Austin Street

King’s Lynn

Norfolk

PE30 1DZ

Complaints Performance

HOUSING OMBUDSMAN COMPLAINTS HANDLING CODE SELF-ASSESSMENT

In July of 2020 the Housing Ombudsman published a new Complaints Handling Code that provided ‘a framework for high-quality complaint handling and greater consistency across landlords’ complaint procedures’. As part of this new code the Ombudsman stated that they expect ‘landlords to carry out regular self-assessment against the Code and take appropriate action to ensure their complaint handling is in line with the Code’, and that ‘This assessment should be completed by 31 December 2020.’

Please find our self-assessment here:

SELF-ASSESSMENT

View - 14/01/22

SELF-ASSESSMENT

View - 07/04/21

SELF-ASSESSMENT

View - 11/12/20