Glossary

December 19, 2024 | India Ikonomides

Apology	A clear and meaningful statement that acknowledges what went wrong, explains why it happened, and recognises the impact on you.
Compensation	A financial payment or rent credit offered when our service has not met the standard you should expect and where this has caused distress, inconvenience, loss, or extra time and effort for you.
Complaint	An expression of dissatisfaction about our services or actions, where a response or resolution is requested.
Complaints process	The formal way we review and respond to complaints, including investigating what happened, providing our findings, and putting things right where appropriate.
Complaint Handling Code	The Housing Ombudsman’s standards that all landlords must follow to ensure complaints are handled fairly, consistently, and transparently.
Distress and inconvenience	The upset, frustration, worry, or disruption caused when something goes wrong and affects your day‑to‑day life.
Essential facilities	Important services in your home, such as heating, hot water, electricity, or sanitation, which are necessary for health, safety, and basic living.
Goodwill gesture	A non‑financial action, such as flowers or a voucher, offered to recognise inconvenience or upset, where financial compensation may not be appropriate.
Housing Ombudsman	An independent service that provides free, impartial advice and investigates complaints about social landlords if issues cannot be resolved directly.
Loss of service	When a service you should reasonably expect is unavailable, delayed, or not delivered to the agreed standard.
Out‑of‑pocket expenses	Reasonable additional costs you have had to pay because of our service failure, for example, extra heating costs or replacing damaged items, usually supported by receipts.
Remedy	The action we take to put things right. This may include an apology, repairs, financial compensation, reimbursement of expenses, or other practical actions.
Rent credit	A form of compensation where money is credited directly to your rent account rather than paid to you.
Service failure	When our services do not meet expected standards, agreed timescales, or our responsibilities to you.
Third party	Another organisation or individual not acting on our behalf, such as a utility provider.
Vulnerability	Personal circumstances that may mean the impact of a service failure is greater, such as health conditions, disability, age, or other support needs.