Help to Buy complaints procedure
How to make a complaint about Help to Buy and the Help to Buy Customer Charter
Applies to England
Help to Buy complaints
Do not use this process to complain about Homes England. Follow the Homes England complaints process instead.
Direct your complaint to the right place
To help you get the fastest and most appropriate response to your complaint, you need to know who to contact. We work with service delivery partners, our Help to Buy agents and our equity loan administrator, to provide our Help to Buy service.
What to do if you have a complaint about our partners
If you have a complaint about any of our partners, please talk to them first. They each have their own complaints process, and they will raise your complaint with us if needed.
If you contact us before them, it could result in delays to resolving your complaint, in this situation we will refer your complaint to the appropriate partner for them to investigate, and we will inform you of this.
If your complaint is about one of our Help to Buy agents, please raise it with them first. You can find contact details for agents on our scheme website.
If your complaint is about Target, our equity loan administrator, you can complain to them using the details below.
Email: Target.HCA@targetgroup.com
Telephone: 0345 848 0235
Making a complaint to Help to Buy
If your complaint isn’t about one of our service delivery partners, you can contact our Help to Buy customer relations team.
Here are some examples of the types of complaints you can make to us:
- Delays in responding to reasonable timescales set by Help to Buy
- Not answering reasonable questions or providing misleading information
- Our staff treating you unfairly, rudely or disrespectfully
- If we haven’t followed our own policies and procedures
- Overlooking or missing information when making decisions about your property or your Help to Buy product.
If your complaint does not fall under our definition, such as complaining about how Help to Buy works, we’ll write back to you, explaining that we’re unable to investigate and no further action will be taken.
How to make a complaint
Please be advised that we will review your complaint and may redirect it to one of our delivery partners if they are best placed to respond to your complaint. In this circumstance we will advise you of this.
Homes England as an entity and Help to Buy: Equity Loan as a product are exempt from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) authorisation and regulation. But we believe in clear, fair and transparent handling of complaints that align with the industry standards.
Stage 1
We aim to acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days, give you a case reference number and aim to resolve it quickly if we can.
But as some complaints are more complex, it can take time to respond to you fully. If you raise a complaint that we can put right quickly, we’ll aim to resolve it as soon as possible.
Raise your complaint within 3 months of being aware of the problem. If we need to consult with others to investigate your complaint, it can take more time to resolve.
We aim to resolve complaints and send our final response within 40 working days (8 weeks). If your complaint is regarding an ongoing issue, please be aware that we may not be able to provide a final response until the matter is resolved.
We investigate all complaints to make sure we fully understand the situation. This may mean that we ask you questions about what has led to your complaint. We may also need to consult with our internal teams and external partners.
If we don’t deliver our service as expected, we’ll learn from your feedback and put this right as fast as we can. If we don’t uphold your complaint, we’ll explain why in our final response.
You can complain via email, telephone or in writing.
Email: helptobuycomplaints@homesengland.gov.uk
Telephone: 0300 1234 500
Write to:
Help to Buy Customer Relations
Homes England
One Friargate
Coventry
CV1 2GN
Stage 2
If you’re not happy with our final response, you can refer it to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).
You will need to fill in a PHSO complaint form and ask your MP or their office to sign it. Raise your complaint within 12 months of being aware of the problem.
Please note that in some cases we will contact you by phone to try and resolve your complaint. If you agree to close your complaint over the phone, then you will not receive a final response letter or be able to refer your case the PHSO. In all cases we will confirm this in writing.
Help to Buy customer charter
Our promise to you
We want to make your experience with our people, products and service, as helpful, straightforward and honest as we can. We will always aim to treat you fairly.
This means we will:
- Supply information that is clear, simple and reliable
- Be open and transparent
- Protect your personal information
- Be fair and impartial when talking to you
- Listen and learn from what you tell us
- Make it easy for you to comment, compliment or complain
- Point you to others who can help if we cannot.
What we ask of you
To get a swift and correct response, we ask you to:
- Always provide your Help to Buy account number, your contact details and a case reference if possible
- Treat all our staff with courtesy, respect and patience
- Supply true, exact, and prompt information
- Give us time to get the best outcome.
Together, we can get better outcomes for all. There are times when we all feel overwhelmed, upset or frustrated.
We will not tolerate threatening, abusive or violent behaviour. In these circumstances, our staff are not obliged to deal engage with a customer by letter, phone, on email or social media.