Complaints Procedure

How to raise a concern

Email info@severnskylightsgloucester.co.uk. Put the site address in the subject line so it can be matched to the job straight away.

Everything is handled in writing from the first message onwards. That is deliberate, and it is in your interest: it means there is a dated record of what was raised, what was said in reply and what was agreed, held by both sides rather than by one. Where a conversation on site is quicker, it happens, and a written summary of what was agreed follows it by email the same day or the next working day.

If the concern is that water is entering the building, say so in the first line. Making the roof watertight comes before any discussion of cause or cost, and that part is not held up by this procedure.

What to include

The more of the following you can give at the start, the fewer rounds of email it takes to get to an answer.

• The address the work was carried out at, and the date of completion or the date of the visit in question.
• What has happened, described plainly, and when you first noticed it.
• Whether it is constant, or whether it appears in particular conditions, such as heavy rain, wind from one direction, or cold mornings in winter.
• Photographs where the concern is about the work itself. A photograph taken while a mark is wet is worth more than one taken after it has dried.
• What you would like done about it. Sometimes that is obvious and sometimes it genuinely is not, and saying so is helpful either way.
• The best email address to reply to, and whether anybody else is authorised to deal with it on your behalf.

Nothing here is a condition of being heard. A short email saying that something is wrong will start the process, and the missing detail can be gathered afterwards.

Acknowledgement, and what happens first

Every concern is acknowledged in writing. The acknowledgement confirms what has been understood from your message, names the person dealing with it, and says what the next step will be and when you can expect it.

We aim to acknowledge every complaint within three working days, so you know it has reached the right person and is being dealt with.

Where the acknowledgement can already answer the point, it does, and the matter is closed there with your agreement. Most concerns raised during a job are settled at this stage, because they turn out to be a question about sequence, access or what happens next rather than a dispute about the work.

Stage one: looking at the work

Where the concern is about the installation itself, the next step is to look at it. A visit is arranged at a time that suits you, and where possible it is attended by the person who carried out the work, because the fastest route to an honest answer is usually the person who knows what is under the covering.

At that visit the installation is inspected against the record taken at the time: the survey notes, the stage photographs of the opening, and the specification in the quotation. Further photographs are taken. If access to the outside of the unit is needed and cannot be had safely from a window or from ground level, a tower or scaffold is arranged and the cost of that is not yours to carry while the cause is still open.

You are told what was found, in writing, with the photographs it was based on. Where the finding is that the workmanship is at fault, the next section applies and no further stage is needed.

Putting matters right

Where the finding goes against Severn, the position is straightforward: the work is put right at no cost to you, and a date is agreed for returning to site. What that involves depends on the detail at fault. It may mean the covering taken back and flashings re-set with a longer lap, an upstand rebuilt, underlay re-dressed around the frame, a reveal opened up and insulation reinstated tight to the frame, or a unit lifted out and reinstalled into a corrected opening.

Making good the internal finish disturbed by that work is included, and so is the scaffold or tower needed to reach it. You are told before the visit what will be done and roughly how long it will take, and told in writing afterwards what was actually done.

Where the concern is about something other than the work itself, for example a missed date, an invoice line you did not expect or the way a visit was handled, the remedy is agreed with you rather than assumed. That might be a correction, an explanation, an apology, an adjustment to what is due, or a change to how the rest of the job runs.

Stage two: a formal review

If stage one has not settled the matter, ask in writing for a formal review. The review is carried out by someone other than the person who made the original assessment, and it starts from the file rather than from the earlier conclusion: your original message, the survey notes, the quotation, the stage photographs, the inspection findings and all the correspondence since.

A second site visit is arranged where the review needs one, and you are welcome to have your own surveyor, builder or roofer present. If you have already obtained an independent report, send it in, because a specific technical opinion is far easier to engage with than a general dissatisfaction, and there is no objection to being told that a third party disagrees.

We aim to give you a full response within fourteen working days of acknowledging the complaint. Where a review is going to take longer than that, for example because a manufacturer’s technical department is involved or because the weather is preventing an inspection, you are told so before the period expires, given the reason, and given a revised date.

The final response

A review ends in a written final response. It states what was considered, what was concluded and why, what is being offered if anything, and the fact that it is final so far as this procedure goes.

It is written so that somebody outside the business could follow the reasoning, because that is the point at which it may be read by somebody outside the business. Where the conclusion is that the cause sits outside the guarantee, the final response includes a price for putting the matter right should you want it done, kept separate from the finding itself so that neither influences the other.

If the outcome is unsatisfactory

You are not bound by a final response. Several routes remain open, and they run in parallel rather than in sequence.

Your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 are unaffected by anything in this procedure or by any conclusion reached under it. Those rights include requiring a service to be performed again where it was not carried out with reasonable care and skill, and an appropriate price reduction where that is not possible within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to you.

You may seek independent advice at any stage, including from a consumer advice service, from a solicitor, or from your own surveyor. Where a matter cannot be settled between us, a claim may be brought in the county court, and lower value claims are dealt with under the small claims track without the need for legal representation.

Beyond that you have routes that do not depend on us. You can seek advice from Citizens Advice, which gives free guidance on consumer issues, and depending on the nature of the work you may be able to refer the matter to an alternative dispute resolution scheme or pursue it through the courts. No scheme is named here, because naming one the business does not belong to would mislead you at the exact moment you most need accurate information.

A claim under the guarantee, and how it meets this procedure

A guarantee claim and a complaint are different things and it is worth keeping them apart. A claim under the ten-year workmanship guarantee is a request to look at an installation and put a detail right, and most are settled without anyone treating them as a complaint at all.

This procedure engages when you disagree with the outcome of such a claim, when a claim has not been dealt with in a reasonable time, or when the handling of it rather than the finding is the problem. In that case start at stage two above, because stage one has in effect already happened in the form of the guarantee inspection, and say plainly that you are asking for a review of a guarantee decision.

Complaints about conduct on site

A concern about the conduct of anybody working at your property is dealt with separately from anything technical, and it does not wait for an inspection. Email the address above with what happened and when. It is acknowledged, taken up directly with the person concerned, and you are told the outcome in writing.

Where the concern involves damage to your property or belongings, include photographs and an approximate date, and say whether the item can be inspected. Damage caused by the work or by somebody working on it is a matter for the business and its insurance rather than for you, and it is dealt with through the business’s public liability insurance rather than by you.

What is recorded, and for how long

Every concern raised is recorded with the date it arrived, what it was about, what was done and how it ended. That record exists so that patterns are visible: the same finding on three roofs in a year is a method problem, not three coincidences, and it is worth being able to see it.

The record includes your name, the site address and the correspondence. How that information is handled, and the period for which it is kept, are set out on the privacy policy page, where the retention period is stated.

A note about this page

This procedure has been written as a clear and honest starting point. It describes what actually happens rather than a set of promises nobody could keep, and where a figure would have to be invented to fill a gap it has been left as a marker instead.

The timescales above are commitments the business expects to be measured against, not aspirations.

The contract terms these complaints sit under are on the terms and conditions page. For anything that is not a complaint, email info@severnskylightsgloucester.co.uk and it will be answered in the ordinary way.

If your difficulty is with using this website rather than with the work itself, the accessibility statement sets out what the site is built to, what has been tested and how to report a problem with it.