Complaints Procedure for Gardeners Slade Green

Gardeners Slade Green aims to provide reliable, high quality gardening and grounds maintenance services for all domestic and commercial clients. If something goes wrong, we want to know about it so we can resolve the issue quickly and learn from the experience. This complaints procedure explains how you can raise a concern, how we will respond, and what you can expect from us at each stage.

Our commitment to handling complaints

We treat all complaints seriously and deal with them in a professional, fair and timely manner. We aim to resolve most issues informally at an early stage, but we also offer a clear and structured process if you wish to raise a formal complaint about our gardening services, staff conduct, communication or any other aspect of our work.

We are committed to

Responding to your complaint promptly and acknowledging your concerns.

Investigating what happened in an objective and courteous way.

Putting things right where we have made a mistake or fallen short of our standards.

Using feedback to improve our services, training and procedures.

Who can use this complaints procedure

This procedure is for any customer of Gardeners Slade Green, including one-off and regular clients for garden maintenance, landscaping, lawn care, hedge cutting and related services. It can also be used by anyone directly affected by our work, for example neighbours where our activities may have had an impact.

How to make a complaint

You can make a complaint verbally or in writing. It helps us to investigate if you provide as much detail as possible, including

Your full name and, if relevant, the property address where the work took place.

What happened, including dates, times and the nature of the issue.

Names of any team members involved, if known.

Any steps that have already been taken to address the matter.

What outcome you would like to see where possible.

If you need help setting out your complaint, we will do our best to assist you. You should normally raise your complaint as soon as possible after the issue arises so that we can investigate while events are still recent and clear.

Stage 1: Informal resolution

In the first instance, we encourage you to raise your concern with the team member on site or with the person you usually deal with at Gardeners Slade Green. Many problems can be resolved quickly through discussion, clarification or a simple corrective visit.

We will aim to respond informally within a reasonable timeframe, usually within five working days. Where appropriate, we may offer to revisit your property, correct any work, provide an explanation of what has happened or agree another practical solution with you.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of this informal stage, or if you feel the matter is too serious to be dealt with informally, you can ask for your concern to be treated as a formal complaint.

Stage 2: Formal complaint

When you make a formal complaint, it will be logged and allocated to a senior member of staff for investigation. We will normally

Acknowledge receipt of your formal complaint within five working days.

Review any relevant job sheets, schedules, photographs or internal records.

Speak with any staff who were involved in the work or communication.

Where necessary, arrange a site visit so we can see the issues first hand.

We aim to provide a full written response within 20 working days. If we need more time due to the complexity of the complaint or the availability of staff, we will let you know and provide an estimated timescale.

Our response will explain our understanding of the complaint, the findings of our investigation, any actions we propose to take, and the reasons for our decisions.

Possible outcomes and remedies

Depending on the nature of the complaint and the outcome of our investigation, we may offer one or more of the following

A clear explanation or apology where we find that we have fallen short.

Corrective work or a return visit to address issues with gardening or maintenance tasks.

Changes to future scheduled work to avoid a recurrence of the problem.

Internal training or procedural changes for our gardening teams or office staff.

Any other reasonable steps that we consider appropriate to resolve the matter.

If you remain dissatisfied

If you are not satisfied with our final response at the formal stage, you can let us know that you remain unhappy with the outcome. We will review whether there is any further internal step that is appropriate, for example a review by a different senior person who has not previously been involved.

Once we have carried out any additional internal review, we will confirm in writing when our internal complaints procedure has been fully exhausted. At that point, we may direct you to any relevant external routes that may be available depending on the nature of your complaint and the services involved.

Timescales for raising complaints

To help us investigate effectively, we ask that you raise any complaint within three months of the issue occurring, or of becoming aware of it. We may still consider complaints raised after this time, but it can be more difficult to gather accurate information and evidence.

Confidentiality and data protection

All complaints will be handled in confidence and in line with our data protection responsibilities. Information will only be shared with staff who need it to investigate and resolve the issue. We will retain records of complaints securely for an appropriate period so we can monitor performance and improve our services.

Accessibility and support

If you have any specific communication needs or require support to raise a complaint, please tell us. We will make reasonable adjustments so that you can access this procedure, for example by dealing with a representative acting on your behalf or using alternative communication methods where appropriate.

Learning from complaints

Gardeners Slade Green views complaints as a valuable source of feedback about our gardening and grounds maintenance work across the local area. We regularly review complaints to identify trends, improve training, refine our procedures and raise service standards for all customers.

By following this complaints procedure, you help us understand where we can do better and support our aim of delivering dependable, high quality gardening services.