Make a complaint

A complaint is where we, West Kent, or someone acting on our behalf:

• gives a poor level of service
• didn’t do something we said we would
• gave out wrong information
• didn’t follow our own processes or procedures
• communicated with someone in an inappropriate way

A complaint isn’t:

• a first request for a service, like a repair
• an antisocial behaviour issue – where you want to make a complaint about a neighbour or something happening in your community this is covered by our antisocial behaviour policy
• a legal dispute
• an insurance claim

We may not accept a complaint if:

• it is about something that happened more than six months ago
• it is about something that’s already been through our complaints process
• about the action of an individual or organisation we have no control over
• about services we are not responsible for
• communicated to us in a manner that we feel is unreasonable

Anyone can make a complaint if they are in receipt of, or are affected by, our services.

This includes:

• residents who live in our homes
• non-West Kent residents who live in neighbourhoods where there are West Kent homes
• people who receive our community and support services

We accept complaints from individuals or from groups.

We will also accept complaints on your behalf from third parties and support organisations, if you give us permission to talk to them and share your information.

If you contact us on our public social media pages, we’ll ask you to contact us directly to protect your privacy.

If you need extra support to complain or you need us to make reasonable changes to our process due to disability, health or any cultural or religious reasons, please let us know.

You can complain to any member of West Kent staff, or contractor, in any way that suits you:

• Use our online form at the bottom of this page
• Email-  help@wkha.org.uk
• Telephone- 01732 749400
• Post-  101 London Road, Sevenoaks, TN13 1AX
• In person- you can tell any West Kent staff member you have contact with about your complaint. Our Swanley Link office is currently closed.

If you contact us on our social media pages, we’ll ask you to contact us directly using one of the above methods to protect your privacy.

If you need extra support to complain or you need us to make reasonable changes to our process because of protected characteristics, including, but not limited to, disability, health or any cultural or religious reasons, please let us know.

If you send a complaint to our Chief Executive or any of our Directors, it will be passed to our customer resolution team who will handle it in line with our normal process. We’ll contact you to let you know what’s happening.

Unreasonable behaviour

We are proud of the open and honest relationship we have with our customers and work very hard to be proactive and responsive to customers’ complaints. However, there are times, where customers behave or act in ways that make it very difficult for us to provide an effective service.

We will not accept violent, aggressive, rude, or intimidating behaviour towards our staff, board members, contractors and representatives, from individuals and groups using our service. When this happens, we will take action to protect the health and wellbeing of our staff who have a right to do their job without fear of being abused or harassed. Read our unacceptable behaviour policy here 

If you're looking for compensation, you should read our compensation policy.

Your complaint will be investigated by a member of our customer resolution team, who will be your point of contact throughout the process. They will contact you to discuss your complaint, understand what the issues are and what outcome you are looking for. You will get a response within ten working days of us receiving your complaint. If we need more time, we will discuss this with you and may extend our response time by another ten working days.

We aim to resolve all complaints at stage one. However, if you are unhappy with your stage one response, you can ask for your complaint to be escalated to stage two. You must ask us to do this within 20 working days of your stage one complaint being closed. Your complaint will be reviewed and any issues you remain unhappy about will be investigated. If you raise a new issue at this stage, we may treat it as a new and separate complaint. You will get a response within 20 working days of your complaint being escalated to stage two. If we need more time, we will discuss this with you and may extend our response time by another ten working days.  We may not escalate your complaint to stage two if:

- you miss the 20 day deadline

- you just want to challenge the level of compensation you’ve been offered

- you’re asking for something that is out of our control to give you

If you aren’t happy with how we’ve handled your complaint or what we’ve decided, you can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service and ask them to look at your complaint.

The Housing Ombudsman Service looks at complaints about social housing providers and resolves disputes between landlords and tenants. Their service is free, independent and impartial. You can contact them at any stage for help about your complaint, but they will usually only look at it once you have completed our two stage formal process.

The Housing Ombudsman Service can be contacted at:

Housing Ombudsman Service, PO Box 152, Liverpool  L33 7WQ

Telephone: 0300 111 3000

Email: info@housing-ombudsman.org.uk

website: www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk 

You can also contact your MP or a local councillor and ask them to contact us about your complaint or they can contact the Housing Ombudsman Service for you.

There is also a government website about social housing complaints that you may find useful.