If you are a tenant of the Sly Trust and wish to make a complaint in relation to your tenancy or regarding property that is let, please contact your Savills representative in the first instance. For any matters in relation to the Sly Trust charity work, please follow the complaints procedure below.

How to complain about our conduct or standards of service

If you wish to complain about our conduct or standard of service, you must do this within three months. If you delay any longer, this could affect our ability to consider your complaint. In some cases, a long delay will mean that we will not be able to consider the matter at all.

We will acknowledge a complaint about our service within 14 calendar days. In most cases, we will aim to respond in full within 30 calendar days.

You need to tell us:

● what you think went wrong

● how we should put it right

● the impact on you

If someone is complaining on your behalf, we need you to tell us in writing that they are acting for you.

You can contact us by email at chair@slytrust.co.uk or write to us at:

J W Sly & Sons (Northleach) Charitable Trus
Wheelwrights
West End
Northleach
GL54 3EZ

What you can expect from us

The Trust takes complaints about conduct and standards of service seriously.
The Chair of Trustees will deal with your complaint. They will check that we can deal with your complaint, by looking into the issue that you have raised.

They will:

● treat you with courtesy and respect

● listen to you, to make sure they understand your complaint

● explain how we handle complaints

● gather and evaluate all the information they need before they reach a finding

● acknowledge your complaint either by telephone or in writing within 14 calendar day

● explain their findings and recommendations (if any are made) and how they have reached them

If you are not happy with the way that the Chair of Trustees has dealt with your complaint, please let us know within 30 calendar days of our response. The Vice Chair will then review the response you received to ensure that:

● the decision was fair

● all the issues you complained about were addressed

● any shortfalls in our service were put right

● the outcome was explained clearly to you

Our Vice Chair will aim to respond to you, by telephone or letter, within 30 calendar days.

External review

If you are still unhappy about the way we have dealt with your complaint, you can contact an external body, depending on your complaint.

Fundraising complaints

Contact the Fundraising Regulator to complain about:

● the way you’ve been asked for donations
● how fundraisers have behaved

Their contact details are:

Fundraising Regulator
Eagle House
167 City Road
London
EC1V 1AW

Telephone number: 0300 999 3407

Other serious complaints

Complain to the Charity Commission if you believe the Trust is, for example:

● not doing what it claims to do

● losing lots of money

● harming people

● being used for personal profit or gain

● involved in illegal activity

Their contact details are:

Charity Commission
PO Box 211
Bootle
L20 7YX

Telephone number: 0300 066 9197

Unreasonable demands and vexatious complaints

Customers might make requests that we cannot reasonably accommodate. This may include but is not limited to:

● the amount of information they seek

● the nature and scale of service they expect

● the volume of correspondence they generate

● a remedy or outcome that cannot be achieved

We accept that someone who is persistent is not necessarily guilty of unacceptable behaviour. What is seen as an unreasonable demand will depend on the circumstances of each case. We will always consider each complaint on its own merits.

However, the behaviour of someone who persistently contacts us about the same issue, when that issue has been dealt with in line with the Trust’s usual processes, can, in some circumstances, amount to unreasonable demand. Such behaviour may take up a disproportionate amount of our time and resources and can affect our ability to provide a service to others.

Communication restrictions

If customers continue to behave unacceptably, a Trustee can put in place a temporary or permanent communication restriction. If we decide to do this, we will tell you that we are doing, so setting out:

● why we consider the behaviour to be unacceptable

● what action we are taking and if there is a time limit on the restrictions

Concerns raised about a charity by someone who works or volunteers for it

These are dealt with under our Whistleblowing policy.

Complain about Freedom of Information (FOI)

If you ask us for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, we will review your request and provide you with all of the information we are able to release.

We may not always be able to release all of the information you have asked for. This might be because certain information is exempt from release to the public. We may also be unable to disclose information if it would be too expensive for us to gather the information you are seeking in the form you have requested.

If you are not satisfied with our response and your case isn’t older than 3 months you can ask us to conduct an internal review.

Tell us why you think our decision is wrong and exactly what additional information you would like us to release.

Adopted by the Board of Trustees : 14th May 2023

Signed by the Chair : C Hancock