Complaints process

Stage one

When you make a formal complaint, we will pass your complaint to the relevant service who will investigate and respond within 10 working days.

If you feel a part of your complaint has not been answered or you need more information, you should contact the author within two weeks for an update.

If you have received a response and/or update and you are still dissatisfied, you can ask the Corporate Customer Service team to look at your concerns at stage two of the complaints process (Chief Executive stage).

Stage two (Chief Executive stage)

The Corporate Customer Service team will consider your complaint and, if necessary, carry out an independent review on behalf of the Chief Executive. You can expect a response within 20 working days.

These investigations are carried out at the discretion of the principal complaints officer who will make a decision based on:

• what you are unhappy about with the stage one response
• information you provide that will help us to make a decision
• whether we will be able to achieve the result you want
• if it would be better to ask the service to look at your concerns again.

Full details can be found in the Corporate Complaints Policy.

Make a complaint

Not all complaints follow this process.

• Adults social services complaints process
• Children social care complaints process
• Complaints about councillors

Managing unreasonable customer behaviour

Sometimes people may pursue their complaints or requests for information in an unreasonable way, even if nothing more can realistically be done to help them or solve their problem.

In these situations, we may have to class the customer as ‘Unreasonable’ or an ‘Unreasonable Persistent Customer’ who may also display unacceptable behaviour.

Find more information about this in our unreasonable behaviour policy.

Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code - self assessment

The Complaint Handling Code, introduced by The Housing Ombudsman, sets out good practice for social housing landlords to enable landlords to resolve complaints raised by their tenants quickly, and to use complaints to improve services.

Read Islington Council's self-assessment for our social housing service's complaint-handling.