Feedback & Complaints

We welcome your feedback

We hope that you will be happy living with us, and we are always happy to hear your feedback.

We run an annual survey which all tenants are encouraged to complete and we use the responses in this survey to help shape our future services, and to find ways to improve.

If you feel you have cause to complain at any point, in the first instance please contact any member of our team, and we will try and put right and address your concerns. Our contact details are contained in the welcome pack you received when you joined Zebra.

We define a complaint as an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by Zebra, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting a resident or group of residents.  

You do not need to use the word ‘complaint’ for it to be treated as such. We will handle all expressions of dissatisfaction equally whether you raise them with us directly or if they come to us from a third party. Please note that if you raise issues anonymously in response to a survey, we will not process these as complaints in their own right.

We will accept all complaints unless there is a valid reason we cannot, and in this case we will explain our reasoning. All complaints will be considered on an individual basis.

Possible reasons we will not accept a complaint include:

• – The issue giving rise to the complaint occurred over twelve months ago (although we may exercise discretion in certain cases);
• – Legal proceedings have started. This is defined as details of the claim, such as the Claim Form and Particulars of Claim, having been filed at court;
• Matters that have previously been considered under the complaints policy;
• – The complaint is not from a tenant of Zebra, or someone acting on their behalf. For example we will not accept complaints from neighbours or commercial businesses.

– We will accept complaints made in any way through any of our staff. We will also make reasonable adjustments to help you with the process where requested.

You may use a representative to support you throughout the complaints process. This includes the right to be accompanied to any meetings. Our Complaints Officer is Steve, our Resident Services Manager, who can support you with any stage of the complaints process. Throughout the process we will remain mindful of our obligations as an accredited member of ANUK. We regularly train all our staff in handling of complaints.

If we fail to respond to your complaint to our member of staff, or our response has been below the standard you would expect, you can then escalate the complaint to our Head of Resident Services, Steve Musham. Please contact Steve by email or writing:

Write to: Head of Resident Services, Zebra Housing Association, 5-13 Glendower Place LondonSW7 3DU

Email: housing@zebrastudents.com

Steve will acknowledge the complaint within 3 days of receiving it and will provide a substantive written response to the you (or you representative) within 10 days or, where matters are complex then, within that 10 days will write to you explaining why a longer period of consideration is necessary, together with an anticipated time when a full response can be provided.

Throughout the process we will remain mindful of our obligations as an accredited member of the ANUK / Unipol National code.

All complaints will be considered on an individual basis.

Complaints to our Chair

If you do not wish to speak to a member of staff or our Head of Resident Services as the complaint is of a confidential nature or about a member of staff, you can complain to the Chair of our Board. This complaint will be treated in confidence and we will ensure that the staff complained about form no part of the consideration of the complaint.

Alternatively, you may wish to complain to the Chair of our Board if you are still unsatisfied after contacting the Head of Resident Services. You can contact our Chair by writing to:

The Chair
Zebra Housing Association
5-13 Glendower Place
London
SW7 3DU

Our Chair will respond within 5 working days.

Representation

You may use a representative to support you throughout the complaints process. This includes the right to be accompanied to any meetings. You may also wish to contact your University’s Student Welfare Officer who may offer a service to arbitrate between you and Zebra independently.

ANUK / Unipol National code

If you remain unsatisfied with our response, or you have not had a response within 28 days, it is possible to contact the National Code of Standards, who help set standards within the Student Accommodation sector. If you’d like to make a complaint to them, you can visit their website. Have a look at the FAQs to check your complaint meets their criteria.  You can find more information about their complaints process here:

https://www.nationalcode.org/national-code-complaints-process.