From 1 February 2024, Bury Council is responsible for managing and maintaining all council homes previously supported by Six Town Housing.
Please use this website and other contact points as usual. Further information is also available on the council’s website.
Find out more here: Six Town Housing Update
Bury Housing Services is committed to delivering the best possible service at all times but if things have gone wrong, you can help us to learn from this and put things right. We will not investigate a complaint where either party has started legal action such as enforcement action as the issues will be resolved by a court.
Any customer of Bury Housing Services including Leaseholders. Anyone may complain on behalf of customers with written and signed permission to discuss by the customer being represented.
Private homeowners may bring a complaint to the attention of Bury Housing Services, but it is not linked to the Housing Ombudsman Service and will receive one response.
A service request is a request from a tenant or leaseholder requiring action to be taken to put something right such as a late appointment. Service requests are not complaints, but must be recorded, monitored, and reviewed regularly. A service request will be sent to a manager to contact the tenant or leaseholder quickly to put it right. If having reviewed this request to put it right you are still not satisfied, then the request could escalate to become a complaint.
A complaint is a response to a service requested and provided by Bury Housing Services that a tenant or leaseholder is not satisfied with. This could be about an unacceptable delay, the quality of the service provided, or about a member of staff. A complaint must be made within 12 months of the situation happening.
Things that can be considered to be a complaint:
Things that cannot be considered as a complaint:
If you have received a service within the past six months that you are not satisfied with please contact us. You can do this by letting us know yourself or someone acting on your behalf. If someone is acting on your behalf, please fill out this permission form and send it to us at housingenquiries@bury.gov.uk.
When reporting your complaint:
1. Please tell us what the problem is and what action you think should be taken to resolve it.
2. Please let us know if you need any assistance to raise your issues.
3. Please let us know if you have any vulnerabilities that you wish us to consider as part of this complaint.
We will always ensure that reasonable adjustments are made to help customers access and use our services. If you have trouble making a complaint or want this information in another language or format, such as large font or Braille, please contact us.
When you first let us know there has been a problem, we will try our best to resolve it by getting an Urgent Action request to a manager to call to discuss your problem and hopefully fix it quickly.
If we are not able to do this to your satisfaction, you can tell us you want to formally complain.
Complaints can be made by yourself, another tenant or a group of tenants you nominate and give authority to act on your behalf to make the complaint.
Please include your name, address, email and contact number. Explain what the problem is and what action you think should be taken to resolve it. You can contact us by:
Stage 1:
We will log and acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days of receiving it. Stage 1 Complaints are investigated by a dedicated Complaints Co-ordinator. As part of looking at your complaint, every attempt will be made to call you and discuss the complaint and agree on the issues to investigate unless you prefer not to.
A Complaints Co-ordinator will investigate your complaint and respond to you within 10 working days from when we receive it. If, for any reason, we are not going to be able to respond within this time frame we will call you to explain why and agreed on a timescale with you and we will confirm in writing the new timescale.
If you have made us aware of reasonable adjustments that you require to support you in making the complaint, we will put that in place and reply in a way that suits your needs such as large-font emails.
Stage 2 - Complaint Appeal:
Hopefully, things can be sorted to your satisfaction at Stage 1 of our complaints process but if they can’t, or if you are still not happy with our response, you can appeal.
You can appeal your complaint by telling us why you remain not satisfied and what you are expecting Housing Services to do to put it right. Your appeal will be acknowledged within 5 working days and be considered by a Business Manager within 20 working days. A Business Manager may call you to discuss the appeal and the issues you remain not satisfied with unless you prefer not to.
If, for any reason, we are not going to be able to respond within this time frame, we will call you to explain why and agree on a timescale with you, confirming the new timescale in writing.
If you still remain unhappy about your complaint, you have the option to take your complaint to The Housing Ombudsman Service. They will usually expect you to have told us about your complaint and have given us a chance to put things right. The Housing Ombudsman Service can be contacted in the following ways: