Tenants council housing and service complaints

Most concerns that are raised can be resolved without you needing to make a formal complaint.

These include requests for service such as missed appointments, fixing items in your property or reviewing damp and mould in your property. Instead, you should report a problem to us.

Check before you make a complaint to see if there is already a form available.

All our complaint processes are available to complete online however, there are further options if you can't do it online.

If you are not sure whether or not your concern should follow an alternative process, email customerservicecomplaints@swindon.gov.uk and we will be able to advise you.

If logging a service request or talking to the team involved has not resolved your issue, we may be able to progress it under the housing statutory complaint process. This is a two-stage internal process, with a third independent stage.

Tenants council housing and service complaints process

We manage our tenants council housing and service complaints in-line with the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code. 

If we are unable to comply with this code due to exceptional circumstances, we will notify the Housing Ombudsman and add a notification to our website to inform residents of the problem and a solution for rectification.

You can now, at any stage of your complaint, refer to the Housing Ombudsman for advice with your complaint.

Learning from complaints

We have mechanisms in place to ensure that the information we receive from housing complaints is fed into improving services for our customers. Users of the housing complaints process may be surveyed for their views on the handling and outcome of their complaint, to enable us to monitor customer satisfaction with the process and identify any improvements.

Monitoring, review and accountability

We have a responsibility to report on its complaints processes to monitor how they are being used, how satisfied service users are and how the complaints received are being used to improve services.

An annual complaint performance and service improvement report will be published on our website together with our Cabinet response.

Links to this policy will be published on our website and in our tenancy handbook.

Performance on complaints against targets and trends is also reported to the corporate management team to ensure accountability for service delivery.

We will acknowledge your complaint within three working days and will let you know if we can progress your concern under Stage one of the formal housing complaints process. If we cannot, we will let you know and advise you if there is another way for your concern to be looked at.

Stage one

A complaint at Stage one will be passed to an appropriate manager in the service that the complaint relates to. They will respond directly. We aim to reply within ten working days from the date your complaint has been acknowledged by the compliments and complaints team. We will let you know within this time if the reply will take longer and the reason why.

Stage two - review

If you are not satisfied with the outcome you received at Stage one, you may have a right to ask for a review of your complaint at Stage two. This must be done within 25 working days from receipt of your Stage one response.

If you wish to do this, you should let us know what you feel has not been answered in your Stage one response. If we progress your complaint at Stage two, the senior manager for the service the complaint is about will review the complaint and reply within 20 working days or advise you if the reply will take longer.  

In some situations we may refer you directly to the Housing Ombudsman rather than take your complaint to Stage two. If this happens, we will let you know why.

Housing Ombudsman review

This is for tenants and leaseholders when Swindon Borough Council are the landlord.

If you have been through both stages of our formal corporate complaint’s procedure, or we have referred you after Stage one and you are still unhappy, you can ask the Housing Ombudsman to review your complaint. The Housing Ombudsman investigates complaints in a fair and independent way and does not take sides. It is a free service.

You can speak to the Housing Ombudsman at any time, but they would normally expect you to have given us a chance to deal with your complaint before you contact them. 

If you have not heard from us within a reasonable time, the Housing Ombudsman may decide to look into your complaint anyway.

Make a tenants council housing and service complaint

Contacting the Housing Ombudsman

You can contact the Housing Ombudsman in the following ways:

Alternatively, you can write to:

Housing Ombudsman Service
PO Box 1484
Unit D
Preston
PR2 OET

Housing complaints when Swindon Borough Council are not the landlord

This relates to complaints about homelessness and any other housing issues when you are not the tenant or the lease holder. If you are still unhappy or feel your complaint has not been properly dealt with through our statutory complaints procedure, you can take your complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO). They investigate complaints in a fair and independent way and do not take sides. It is a free service.

You can speak to the LGSCO at any time, but they would normally expect you to have given us a chance to deal with your complaint before you contact them. 

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