Complain about the Council Housing Service

We aim to deliver high quality services, but we know that sometimes things go wrong and that you might not always be satisfied with our services.

Try to make your complaint as soon as possible after the problem occurs, as this makes it easier for us to put things right.

How to make a complaint

You can make your complaint in a number of ways:

• telephone our customer services team on 0114 293 0000 (Monday to Friday, from 8am to 5:30pm)
• complete our corporate complaints form
• visit one of our neighbourhood offices
• write to us at: Housing and Neighbourhood Service, PO Box 5967, Sheffield, S2 9GH

How your complaint will be handled

Stage 1

We will aim to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible. Some complaints may be dealt with within 5 working days. In this case we will inform you of the outcome as soon as your complaint has been handled.

More complex issues will take longer, in which case we will carry out a complaint investigation. We will try to complete the investigation and let you know the outcome within 10 working days. If this isn’t possible we will let you know and agree a slightly longer timescale with you.

A manager will contact you during the investigation to discuss your complaint. We will write to you confirming the outcome of the investigation, explaining any actions we will take.

Stage 2: Reviewing our decision

If you are not satisfied with our response you can ask for a more senior manager to review your complaint. Please contact the manager named in our response letter to you, or contact Customer Services. Provide details of why you are not satisfied and what further action you want to be taken.

We will aim to complete this review and write to you explaining the outcome within 20 working days. This review is the final stage of the Council's complaints procedure.

If you remain dissatisfied

If you are still not satisfied with our review response, or you feel we have not handled your complaint properly, you can refer your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman. The Housing Ombudsman will take an independent look at how we dealt with your issue.

The Ombudsman will not normally look into a complaint until the Council has had an opportunity to deal with it. However, you can contact their Advice Team at any time.

The Housing Ombudsman website provides further information about their service and how to refer a complaint to them.

Landlord self-assessment

A Complaint Handling Code was introduced in July 2020 by the Housing Ombudsman and updated in April 2024. It sets out how the Housing Ombudsman expects social landlords to manage customer complaints, describes best practice and supports landlords in responding to complaints effectively and fairly.

The Code requires social landlords to:

• assess their complaints handling, annually, against the Code and
• publish the assessment on their website and in their annual report

We have carried out our own self-assessment and identified areas of improvement that we will be working on over the coming months. You can read the results attached to this webpage.

You can also read the response from our Strategy and Resources Committee to our self-assessment, within the Governing Body Statement on Complaints Handling document, in the appendices and reports section.