Compliments, Comments, and Complaints Policy

This Policy should be used to express a complaint, a comment, or give a compliment about Health and Independent Living Support’s (HILS’) performance, services, or its team members. We want to provide an excellent and caring service to all our clients, and feedback from service users, family, friends, neighbours, and other stakeholders in the form of compliments, comments, and complaints help us make sure that we do that consistently. We will use all compliments, comments, and complaints to review what we do, how we do it, and how we can improve and develop our services to better the meet the needs of the people who we are proud to serve. 

 A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction about the standard of service, actions, or lack of action by HILS or its team members. If you are not happy with the way we are working, we would like you to tell us so that we can make improvements.  

If you would like to send us a comment or compliment: 

  • Thank you! We value your feedback about our services;
  • If your compliment is a member of staff, we will ensure that this is passed on to them;
  • We will pass your comment on to the relevant Service Manager who can use your comment to develop, improve, or change our services;
  • If you want us to respond to your compliment or comment, we will do so.

If you make a complaint (whether informal or formal), we promise to: 

  • Listen to you to understand the problem
  • Take it seriously
  • Deal with your complaint professionally, and in a timely manner
  • Give you feedback, once we have investigated your complaint
  • Learn from your complaint and take measures to improve our services 
  • Abide by our Equal Opportunities policy and respect your confidentiality throughout the process

What to do if you are not happy with something we are doing

As a first step, we would encourage you to inform the relevant HILS team using the contact details below:

Contact details for meal services:

Including meals on wheels (all locations), lunch clubs, emergency food bags, and pop-in visits (Hertfordshire only)

Phone

All locations: 0330 2000 103

Email

Hertfordshire

West Sussex

Hampshire

___________________________

Contact details for community services:

(Hertfordshire only)

Dementia clubs (Kingfisher Clubs)
Keysafe installation service
Nutrition & Wellbeing service
Advocacy service
Wellbeing Hubs

______________________________________________

General e-mail: info@hils-uk.org

General phone number: 0330 2000 103

You should complain to the Manager of the service. The Customer Service Team at your local site will be able to take your details and arrange for a manager to call you back at a time suitable for you. Alternatively, you can contact the team using the details below: 

Telephone number: 

01462 347026 (direct line to Management Team office). 

 

Email address: 

senior.team@hils-uk.org (this email address is only monitored by Managers and emails sent to this address will not be viewed by operational team members). 

 

Postal address: 

Management Team, Health & Independent Living Support, 16 Green Lane One, Blackhorse Road, Letchworth, SG6 1HB. 

Please provide the following details: 

  • The name and address of the service user 
  • Your relationship to the service user (if you are not the service user) 
  • Your preferred contact details 
  • Details about your feedback, issue, or complaint 
  • Details about how you would like your issue to be resolved, if possible 

 

A Manager will contact you within 3 working days to let you know that we have received your complaint. A Manager will then contact you within 10 working days with a full response to your complaint, wherever possible. 

If you are still unhappy you should write to the Chief Executive via the following address:  

Postal address: 

Chief Executive, Health & Independent Living Support, 16 Green Lane One, Blackhorse Road, Letchworth, SG6 1HB 

 

The Chief Executive will write to you within 10 working days with a response to your complaint.

If you are still unhappy you should then write to the Chair of Health & Independent Living Support via the following address: 

Postal address: 

Chair of the Board, Health & Independent Living Support, 16 Green Lane One, Blackhorse Road, Letchworth, SG6 1HB 

 

The Chair of the Board will contact you within 10 working days with a response to your complaint. 

If you are still unhappy with the response from HILS, you can complain to the local council.  

 

Hertfordshire County Council: 

Postal address:  County Hall, Pegs Lane, Hertford, SG13 8DQ 

Telephone number:  0300 123 4040 

Website: www.hertfordshire.gov.uk  

 

West Sussex County Council: 

Postal address: County Hall, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1RQ 

Telephone number:  01243 777100

Website: www.westsussex.gov.uk

 

Hampshire County Council: 

Postal address: The Castle, Winchester SO23 8UJ 

Telephone number:  0300 555 1375

Website: www.hants.gov.uk