Complaints

Anyone. Landlords and agents we work with, families living in a property we manage, neighbours, contractors and local authority officers all use the same procedure and get the same response.

You do not need to call it a complaint for us to treat it as one. If you tell us something has gone wrong, we log it.

Use whichever of these suits you.

• –By phone. Call us and say you want to make a complaint, and we will take the details down and confirm them to you in writing.
• –By email. Write to us with “Complaint” in the subject line.
• –By post. Write to us at the registered office.

By phone: 0330 133 1164. By email: info@signature-staycation.com. By post: Signature Staycation LTD, 128 City Road, London EC1V 2NX.

[TO CONFIRM: the name and job title of the person complaints should be addressed to, for the postal route.]

The more of this you can give us, the faster we can deal with it.

• –Your name, and the best way and time to reach you.
• –The address of the property, if the complaint concerns one.
• –What happened, and roughly when.
• –Who you have already spoken to here, if anyone.
• –What you would like us to do to put it right.

If you would rather someone else, such as a relative, a support worker or an agent, deal with us on your behalf, tell us who they are and we will correspond with them instead.

We acknowledge every complaint in writing within three working days, and we tell you who is handling it and how to reach them.

We then investigate. That normally means reading the file, speaking to whoever was involved, and looking at the correspondence, inventory and inspection records for the property. We may come back to you for more detail. If we do, we will explain why we need it.

We respond in writing within fifteen working days of acknowledging the complaint. The response sets out what we found and what we are doing about it. Where we are not doing something you asked for, it gives the reason.

If the matter is complicated and we need longer, we will tell you before the fifteen days are up, explain why, and give you a date.

[TO CONFIRM: these timescales are proposed and need sign-off before publication, checked against any timescale the Property Redress Scheme requires of its members.]

Tell us, and say why. The complaint is then reviewed by a director who was not involved in handling it the first time. They will look at the whole file again, not only the part you have disputed.

We will write to you with our final response, which will say clearly that it is final, explain the conclusion we have reached, and tell you what you can do next if you still disagree.

[TO CONFIRM: the period within which a review must be requested, and the period within which the final response will be issued.]

Take it to the Property Redress Scheme. Signature Staycation LTD is a member, and the scheme lists that membership as active. You do not have to take our word for it: the scheme publishes a public agent finder, and you can search it for our name before you deal with us at all.

Companies offering guaranteed rent commonly argue that they are tenants rather than agents, and so need not belong to a redress scheme at all. Local authorities warn landlords about exactly that, because it leaves very little recourse when an arrangement goes wrong. We are a member anyway. A complaint that only we get to rule on is not much comfort to the person making it.

Refer the matter once you have our final response. The scheme sets its own rules on what it will consider, how to contact it and how long you have to bring a complaint after that response, and it publishes them on its own site. We will give it whatever it asks us for.

[TO CONFIRM: PRS membership number]

If you are living in a property under a local authority placement, you may also raise the matter through the placing authority’s own complaints service. Using this procedure does not take that right away and does not delay it.

If your complaint is specifically about how we have handled personal information, the route is the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK regulator for data protection. We are registered with the ICO as a data controller under reference ZB685600, registered on 27 April 2024, and that entry can be checked on the ICO’s public register. Our privacy notice sets out what you can ask us for first and how to complain to the ICO if our answer does not satisfy you.

Every complaint is logged with what was raised, what we found, what we did and how long it took. We read the log regularly, because a complaint that comes up twice is usually a process that needs changing rather than a person who needs telling.

We will not treat you any differently for having complained. If you feel we have, that is itself a complaint and we would like to hear it.