East Suffolk Council

Customer feedback

We are committed to providing excellent customer service first time, every time and we welcome feedback, positive or negative.

We know that by listening to our customers, we can learn what we are doing well, and where we need to improve. Understanding the experiences of our customers is an important way for us to continuously review and improve the services we provide to the people who live in, work in, and visit East Suffolk.

Where things have gone wrong, we want to put them right for you as quickly and simply as possible. Before making a complaint, please contact us to see if we can do this.

Send us a compliment, comment or complaint online If you are unable to set up a "My East Suffolk" account you can also send us feedback by email, by phone, in person at one of our Customer Service points, by post or via social media.

How we respond to your feedback 

You can read a brief description below. If you would like more information, please see our Customer Feedback Policy.

Compliments and comments

We log your compliments and comments and send them to the relevant manager. Compliments and comments help us learn what we are doing well and where we can make improvements. We will use your feedback to:

• keep doing what we do well;
• learn where we can make improvements to make services better and easier to access for all our customers;
• make positive changes.

Complaints

Sometimes we make a mistake that can be sorted out quickly and simply. If this is the case you should not need to make a complaint. We will take the details and make sure that we put things right for you. We call this "early resolution".

If we cannot put things right quickly and simply, we will log your complaint. We have a 2-stage complaint process. 

Stage 1 - Investigation

A team leader or manager will investigate and reply to you, usually within 10 working days. If we need to put things right or make improvements, we will let you know how and when we will do this.

Stage 2 - Internal review/appeal

If you are not satisfied with our reply to your stage 1 complaint, you can ask for a review within 3 months of the date of the reply. We will not usually investigate appeals received later than one month from the stage 1 response.

We can only investigate an internal review/ appeal if you give us details of why you are still dissatisfied and what you think we need to do to put things right. 

The Head of Service will either take on the role of reviewing officer or assign this role to a senior team member not connected with the associated stage 1 complaint(s). We will usually reply within 20 working days. If we need to put things right or make improvements we will let you know how and when we will do this. 

There will be some cases where we cannot come to a different conclusion from the stage 1 response. In this case, we will let you know that you have completed our complaints process and that you can contact the Ombudsman without a stage 2 investigation. 

Ombudsman

If you have completed our internal complaints process and feel that we have not resolved your issues you can contact the Ombudsman*:

• For complaints about the council as a landlord (e.g. housing rent, repairs, maintenance) contact the Housing Ombudsman Service
• For all other complaints, contact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman 

Housing Ombudsman Service - Annual self-assessment and governing body report

East Suffolk Council must comply with the Housing Ombudsman's Statutory Complaint Handling Code. It must self assess against the code and ensure policies and practices comply with the code, at least annually.

• Our most recent Housing Ombudsman annual self-assessment
• Our most recent Complaint Performance and Service Improvement report

By assessing ourselves against each provision of the code, we can identify areas of operation or policy where changes are required.

The self-assessment also requires us to evidence how we comply with the code.

Where we are not able to comply with the code, we must confirm this in the self-assessment and set out the actions and timescales for achieving compliance or demonstrate how we have made all reasonable endeavours to meet the intentions in an alternative way. The Ombudsman will assess all reports of non-compliance and may take action to intervene to ensure landlords meet the requirements of the code, even where they have provided reason(s) for non-compliance.

The report and self-assessment provide landlords with an opportunity to be open and transparent with residents on their complaint handling performance. Landlords are expected to provide accurate and complete information about complaint handling and share how they have learned from complaints received.

Data sharing

To investigate properly, we might need to share your complaint, including your contact details, with one of our partner organisations (East Suffolk Services Ltd, Anglia Revenues Partnership (ARP) or Places Leisure).