Home Safe Complaints Handling Policy

If you have any complaints, queries or concerns, including concerns about data sharing or protection, regarding your interactions with Home Safe then please contact us via email at info@home-safe.org.uk or alternatively by letter at The Castle Mill, Minneymoor Hill, Conisbrough, Doncaster, DN12 3EN. If you have difficulties with writing or do not have access to email please make contact with us by telephone on 0330 6600 282, where one of our team will be able to take the details of your complaint.

This policy explains how to make a complaint to us, how we will deal with your complaint and what complaints it is not appropriate for Home Safe to deal with.

Home Safe will take any complaints about your experience very seriously. If you are not satisfied with any part of the service that we provide or have provided as part of our property licensing related services delivered on behalf of our Local Authority partners then please contact us in writing by email or letter and we will investigate your complaint.

Whichever method you use to make your complaint, if you are a property licence holder, please identify, in the subject box of your email or reference on your letter, the first line of the property address for which you hold a licence or have applied for a licence and either your licence number or application reference number. If you are a tenant whose home has been inspected by us and you have a complaint about the conduct of our inspector then please put the first line of the address of your home in the subject box of your email or as a reference on your letter, along with the word ‘Complaint’. Whether you are a licence holder, licence applicant or a tenant please also provide us with a telephone contact number as we may need to call you to obtain more information to help us to fully investigate your complaint.

When we receive a complaint, we will firstly acknowledge receipt of that complaint, in writing via email, within 3 working days of receiving the complaint.

If your complaint is in connection with a property licensing scheme then your complaint will be allocated to the appropriate licensing scheme manager for investigation and we will contact you again, following that allocation, via email with a formal written outcome of our investigation within 15 working days of acknowledging receipt of your complaint.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of that investigation then let us know and the matter will be reviewed by a Director of the business and, following that review you will be written to again within 15 working days, with Home Safe's final decision on the outcome of the investigation.

If you are unsatisfied with Home Safe's final decision on your complaint then in cases in which your complaint is connected to a Local Authority property licensing scheme related service, you should refer the matter to the relevant Local Authority using the relevant complaints procedure link detailed below:

Peterborough City Council Complaints Procedure

Great Yarmouth Borough Council Complaints Procedure

When contacting Home Safe, correspondents are expected to be polite and professional, at all times, in their communications and correspondence with Home Safe, its Directors, Staff and Independent Contractors. Where Home Safe deems the content of any communications or correspondence received to include inappropriate, offensive, discriminatory or defamatory language (whether or not directed toward Home Safe, its Directors, Staff and Independent Contractors) then Home Safe reserves the right to take any appropriate action, with regard to such communications or correspondence, up to and including referring such communication or correspondence to law enforcement.

If you have nominated or instructed an employee, agent, contractor, corporate/commercial entity or family member to deal with or communicate with Home Safe, its Directors, Staff and Independent Contractors then such a person will be held to the same standards of behaviour as is expected of the property licence holder (or the tenant, where a complaint concerns the conduct of one of our property inspectors). Where such a nominated person’s or entity’s behaviour is deemed by Home Safe to fall short of that which is expected then Home Safe reserves the right to not deal with that nominated person or corporate/commercial entity and in that situation, we will deal directly with the property licence holder with legal responsibility for the relevant licensed property or properties (or with the tenant where applicable).

Where a complaint concerns data sharing or data protection issues, this policy does not prevent the complainant from exercising their right to also complain to the Information Commissioners Office (see https://ico.org.uk).

We cannot deal with licence applicant or licence holder complaints about delays in the issuing of their property licence, refusal by a Local Authority to issue a property licence, a decision by a Local Authority to vary or revoke a property licence or a decision by a relevant Local Authority to take enforcement action against a licence applicant or licence holder. We also cannot deal with tenant complaints about their licensed landlord or that landlord’s managing/letting agent or complaints regarding anti-social behaviour taking place at a licensed property. These types of complaint must be addressed to your relevant Local Authority housing department. Any such complaints received by us will be referred to the relevant Local Authority’s property licensing team for investigation and will follow the relevant Local Authority's complaints procedure.