Complaints & Compliance Procedure

We Value Your Feedback: How to Share Compliments and Complaints

At Abbeyfield Bristol and Keynsham, we are dedicated to providing the highest quality of service. Your feedback, whether it’s a compliment or a complaint, is essential in helping us achieve this. We want to make it easy for you to share your thoughts and ensure that any concerns are addressed promptly and effectively.

Why Your Feedback Matters

• Continuous Improvement: Your suggestions and comments help us identify what we’re doing well and where we can improve.   
• High Standards: We use your feedback to maintain and exceed our standards, ensuring a positive experience for everyone.   
• Effective Resolution: When things don’t go as planned, our complaints procedure provides a clear pathway to finding solutions.   

Understanding the Difference

To ensure we handle your feedback correctly, it’s helpful to understand the difference between:

• Complaints: These are expressions of dissatisfaction about our service, actions (or lack of action) by Abbeyfield or our staff, that affect a resident or group of residents.   
• Service Requests: These are requests from residents for a specific action to address a service issue, such as a repair.   
• Concerns: These express worry or doubt about a potential issue, where reassurance is needed.   

How to Share Your Feedback

Compliments:

We love to hear when we’ve done something well! Please share your compliments with any staff member, or feel free to contact us directly.

How to complain

If you have a complaint, we want to address it efficiently. We encourage you to first raise the issue with the relevant manager or staff member. Often, concerns can be resolved quickly at this stage.   

If you need to make a formal complaint, you can do so in the following ways: 

1. Put your complaint in writing to the House Manager.   
2. Ask a staff member or volunteer to write it down for you, and then pass it to the House Manager after you’ve approved it.   
3. Speak to any staff member and inform them you wish to make a complaint.   

Complaints About the House Manager

If your complaint concerns the House Manager, please contact our Central Office directly:

• Call us at: 0117 973 6997
• Write to us at: Central Office, 43-49 Westbury Rd, Westbury on Trym, Henleaze BS9 3AU
• Email us at: e-mail@abbeyfield-bristol.co.uk

What Happens Next (Our Complaints Process)

We aim to handle complaints fairly and efficiently. Our process involves:

• Acknowledgement: We will acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days.   The acknowledgement will set out our understanding of your complaint and the desired outcomes you are seeking. We will also provide you with the name of the manager who will be investigating the complaint at Stage 1 of our process, known as the Investigating Officer.
• Response: We will provide a full written response within 10 working days of acknowledging your complaint. This response will explain our findings and any actions taken.   
•  
• If you remain dissatisfied following this response, you can ask for your complaint to be escalated for a review by a Director at Stage 2 of our complaints procedure.
•  
• See our full Making a Complaint Guide for residents and their representatives for full details.
• Escalation: If you are dissatisfied with the initial response, you can ask for your complaint to be escalated for a review at Stage 2 of our complaints procedure. 

What to include in your complaint

When making a complaint, please tell us what went wrong; how you would like the matter to be resolved; and your name, address and contact details (so we can keep you up-to-date as we investigate and provide you with our response).

See our full Making a Complaint Guide for residents and their representatives for full details.

All complaints will be treated confidentially, and information will only be shared with staff as necessary to the investigation.

Our Commitment to You

• Fairness and Confidentiality: We handle all complaints fairly, consistently, and with respect for your privacy.   
• Accountability: We ensure the right people are responsible for addressing your complaint at each stage.   
• Improvement: We learn from every complaint to improve our services.   

If You Are Still Dissatisfied

If you have gone through our complaints process and remain dissatisfied, you can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service for an independent review. You can find their contact details on their website: https://www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk/residents/make-a-complaint/.