Making a Complaint About Council Housing

The Housing Ombudsman is an independent organisation that looks at complaints about council housing. In 2020, they made a new set of rules called the Complaint Handling Code. These rules help make sure complaints are dealt with fairly and properly.

We’ve updated our own Housing Complaints Policy to follow these rules.

Why Complaints Matter

If something has gone wrong, we want to know as soon as possible. This helps us fix the problem and improve our service.

A complaint means you’re unhappy with something we’ve done—or not done. You don’t have to use the word “complaint.” If you tell us you’re unhappy, we’ll ask if you want to make a complaint.

How You Can Make a Complaint

You can tell us in lots of ways:

• Fill in our Complaints Form (on our website or ask a staff member)
• Speak to any member of staff
• Email us at councilhousingcomplaints@tendringdc.gov.uk
• Call us on 01255 686868 or the number of the team you’ve been speaking to
• Visit our Reception at Pier Avenue, Clacton (open Monday to Wednesday, 10am–1pm)

Want to Know More?

• Read our Corporate & Housing Complaints Policy
• See our self-assessment of how we follow the Complaint Handling Code
• Visit the Housing Ombudsman’s website to learn more about the Code

The Code helps landlords fix problems quickly and learn from complaints to make things better. Every year, we check how well we’re following the rules.

Annual complaints and service improvement report

We are also required to produce an annual report showing how we have performed in handling complaints and setting out how we have and intend to learn from the complaints we have received.

You can read this report here.

This report was presented to the Council’s Cabinet in May 2024 and their response was as follows:

We thank Councillor Baker for presenting this report to Cabinet today. We fully endorse everything that he has said and warmly welcome the content of the report and its recommendations.

As a Cabinet we recognise the importance of providing good quality housing and that responding to complaints forms an important part of that service.

We fully support and adopt the Housing Ombudsman’s revised complaint handling code and are committed to high quality complaint handling. It is important that we learn from all complaints and provide a positive response.

We support Councillor Baker, as Housing Portfolio Holder, taking on responsibility for housing complaints and he will ensure that we as a Cabinet receive regular information and updates on complaints, in particular, what they tell us about our housing service, what we have learnt from them and what we have done to put things right.

It is notable that the number of complaints received has been increasing and that is something that will be explored over the coming months to see what we can do better as part of a programme of continuous improvement for our housing service.”