Our approach
People depend on the bathrooms we fit every day. So if something goes wrong, we want to hear about it straight away. That could be a delay, a fault, a finish that isn’t right, or the way one of our team dealt with you.
This policy explains how to complain, what we’ll do and when, and where you can go if we can’t sort it out between us.
All our surveyors, fitters and project leads are directly employed, and our own team carries out every repair and remedial job. There’s no subcontractor to chase. We’re responsible for all of our work, and for answering any complaint about it.
Age Care Pro is a trading name of Age Care Bathrooms Ltd.
Who can complain
Anyone affected by our work: organisations we work for such as care homes, councils and housing associations; residents and clients living with an adaptation; their families; occupational therapists and case managers; and neighbours affected by work on site.
Someone else can complain for you, such as a relative, carer, advocate or professional. We’ll check that you’re happy for them to act. If you can’t give that agreement yourself, we’ll accept a complaint from someone with legal authority such as a lasting power of attorney, or from someone clearly acting in your best interests.
What counts as a complaint
Anything that tells us you’re unhappy with our work, our products, our staff or how we’ve treated you. Spoken or written. You don’t have to use the word “complaint”.
Some things are requests rather than complaints, such as a dripping tap or adjusting a shower seat, and we book those in as aftercare. If you’re unhappy with how we handle that, or you tell us you want it treated as a complaint, it becomes one and goes straight to Stage 1.
Complaining is always free.
If you ask us to visit and the fault turns out not to be caused by our product or our installation, your terms and conditions may allow a call-out charge. We’ll always tell you before we visit if a charge will apply.
What this policy doesn’t cover
- A council’s Disabled Facilities Grant decision, or an occupational therapist’s assessment. We’ll tell you who to contact.
- Personal injury or property damage claims, which may go to our insurers. We’ll still look into what happened.
- Concerns raised by our own staff, which have a separate grievance procedure.
How to complain
- Phone: 0808 303 9846, Mon to Fri, 9am to 5:30pm.
- Email: Info@agecare.co.uk, with “Complaint” in the subject.
- Online: the contact form on our website. Please start your message with the word “Complaint” so it reaches the right person quickly.
- Post: Complaints, Age Care Pro, Telford Crescent, Staveley, Chesterfield, S43 3PF.
- On site: speak to the project lead.
If you have hearing or speech difficulties, you can reach us through Relay UK by dialling 18001 before our number.
Tell us what happened, the address, any job or contract reference, and what you’d like us to do. Photos help.
If you raise a problem in a review or on social media we’ll treat it as a complaint, and we’ll reply asking you to contact us directly, because we can’t discuss your details in public.
We’ll look into an anonymous complaint as far as we can, but we won’t be able to reply to you.
Urgent problems
Phone us if a fault means someone can’t wash or use the toilet safely, or if there’s a leak or an electrical problem. We’ll treat it as urgent and agree with you how and when we’ll make it safe.
We don’t operate an out-of-hours service. Our phone line is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. If something urgent happens outside those hours, email Info@agecare.co.uk and we’ll pick it up as a priority when we next open. If you’re in a care home or another managed building, contact your own maintenance team first, because they can usually act sooner than we can.
If there is immediate danger, such as water near electrical fittings, keep everyone clear and, if it’s safe to do so, turn the water off at the stopcock and the electricity off at the consumer unit. Call 999 if anyone is at risk.
Help with complaining
Many of the people who use the bathrooms we fit are older or living with a disability. We can:
- talk it through with you by phone rather than in writing
- send letters in large print
- deal with any advocate, relative or professional you choose
- give you extra time at any stage
Just tell us what would help.
Stage 1: putting it right
We’ll acknowledge your complaint within two working days and tell you who is looking after it. That will never be the person you’ve complained about. We’ll send you a copy of this policy, or a link to it, and confirm what we understand went wrong.
We’ll then investigate. That means speaking to the team involved, checking the survey, design, specification and job records, and visiting site where we need to. If an occupational therapist specified the adaptation, we’ll check the work against their recommendations and invite them to a joint visit.
We’ll send you a full response within 10 working days of acknowledging your complaint. It will explain what we found, whether we’re upholding your complaint in full, in part or not at all, what we’ll do and by when, and how to take it further if you’re not satisfied.
If we genuinely can’t reply in time, for example because we’re waiting on a manufacturer, we’ll tell you why and give you a new date, no more than 10 working days later. We won’t hold our response back until remedial work is finished.
Stage 2: director review
If you’re not satisfied, you can ask us to review the decision. Tell us why. It doesn’t need to be formal.
Stage 2 is handled by Sam Davies, Director. We’ll acknowledge your request within five working days and send a final written response within 20 working days of that acknowledgement. If we need longer we’ll explain why and agree a new date with you, no more than 20 working days later.
If your complaint is about Sam Davies, there is no Stage 2. Your Stage 1 response will be handled by a senior member of the team who wasn’t involved, it will be our final response, and it will tell you how to take the matter further independently: to the Information Commissioner’s Office for a data protection complaint, to Which? Trusted Traders’ alternative dispute resolution if you’re a domestic customer, or to the relevant ombudsman if a council or housing association arranged the work.
Stage 2 is the end of our internal process.
Putting things right
Where we’ve got something wrong we’ll say so plainly and apologise. Depending on what happened, we’ll:
- come back to fix, replace or finish the work at no cost to you
- explain what we’ve changed so that it doesn’t happen again
- cover reasonable costs our mistake has caused you, where that’s fair
- offer a financial remedy for serious inconvenience or distress
Any remedial work is carried out by our own DBS-checked, directly employed team, to the same standards and care-setting controls as the original job, and scheduled around the person who uses the bathroom.
If you’re in a care home
Residents, families and staff can raise concerns with us directly or through the home. We’ll tell the home manager about any complaint relating to their home and share what we find for their records, and we’ll plan remedial work with the manager room by room.
If a council or housing association arranged the work
This includes work funded by a Disabled Facilities Grant. You won’t have to go through two complaints processes. You can complain to them or to us. Either way we’ll let them know promptly, work within their process and timescales, and give them whatever they need.
Occupational therapists and case managers
Tell us straight away if a finished adaptation doesn’t match your clinical recommendations. We’ll treat it as urgent, arrange a joint visit if that helps, and agree the fix with you before we start.
You can raise concerns in your own professional capacity at any time. If you’re complaining on behalf of a client, we’ll check that they’re happy for you to act, and we’ll keep you both updated.
Client organisations
Care home operators, councils, housing associations and other clients can use this policy for any part of our service, including programme, communication, documentation, invoicing and workmanship.
Contract leads can ask for a Stage 2 director review straight away, without going through Stage 1.
We can provide a summary of complaints and outcomes on request.
If your contract sets out its own complaints or dispute process, that process applies and this policy works alongside it.
Safeguarding
If a complaint suggests that a resident or client has been harmed, put at risk or treated inappropriately by one of our team, we act straight away rather than waiting for the complaints process to run.
We’ll tell the care home manager, the commissioning organisation, the local authority safeguarding team or the police, as appropriate. We may remove a team member from site while we look into it.
Complaints about your personal information
You can raise a data protection complaint by any of the routes above. We’ll acknowledge it within two working days, look into it without undue delay and keep you updated. If it’s part of a wider complaint, we won’t hold up the data protection part while the rest is dealt with.
Our data protection lead is Sam Davies, Director.
If you’re not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
Complaints about finance
Age Care Pro is a trading name of Age Care Bathrooms Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority as a credit broker, not a lender (FRN 1003031).
If your complaint is about how we arranged your finance, we’ll deal with it under the Financial Conduct Authority’s complaint-handling rules. We’ll acknowledge it promptly in writing and confirm that we’ll send you a written response within eight weeks. That eight-week period runs from the day we receive your complaint, whatever stage of this policy it has reached, and the Stage 1 and Stage 2 timescales above don’t extend it.
Within eight weeks we’ll send you either our final response, or a written explanation of why we’re not yet able to give one and when you can expect it. If we send an explanation rather than a final response, you can take your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service at that point without waiting for us.
If we resolve your finance complaint to your satisfaction by the end of the third business day after we receive it, we’ll send you a short written summary instead of a full final response. It will confirm what the complaint was, that we consider it resolved, that you may be able to refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you’re not satisfied, whether we agree to waive the Ombudsman’s time limits, and the Ombudsman’s website address.
If part or all of your complaint is about the finance agreement itself, or about something your lender is responsible for, we may forward that part to the lender. If we do, we’ll forward it promptly, tell you in our final response that we’ve done so, and give you the lender’s contact details. Where we’re responsible for part of the complaint as well, we’ll carry on dealing with that part ourselves under these rules.
You may be able to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge, if you’re unhappy with our final response or you haven’t had one within eight weeks. If we’ve sent you a final response, you must refer the complaint within six months of the date we sent it. The Ombudsman also can’t normally consider a complaint referred more than six years after the event complained of or, if later, more than three years after you became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, that you had cause to complain.
Financial Ombudsman Service, Exchange Tower, London E14 9SR. Telephone 0800 023 4567 or 0300 123 9 123. Email complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk. Website financial-ombudsman.org.uk.
These Financial Conduct Authority and Financial Ombudsman rights apply to individuals and to smaller organisations, such as micro-enterprises, small businesses, charities and trusts within the Ombudsman’s size limits. Finance arranged for a limited company, a council or another public body falls outside them.
Taking it further
If a council or housing association arranged the work
Once their complaints process has finished, you may be able to go to an ombudsman:
- Councils in England: the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, lgo.org.uk
- Housing associations and council landlords in England: the Housing Ombudsman Service, housing-ombudsman.org.uk
- Councils and housing associations in Wales: the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, ombudsman.wales
We’ll cooperate fully with any ombudsman investigation.
If you contracted with us directly as an individual
If we can’t resolve your complaint, we’ll tell you in writing. Age Care Bathrooms Ltd, which trades as Age Care Pro, is a Which? Trusted Trader, listed under the name Age Care Bathrooms Ltd.
The business has access to an alternative dispute resolution service for our domestic installation, service, repair and maintenance contracts as part of the Which? Trusted Traders endorsement. If you choose to, you can refer your complaint to Which? Trusted Traders’ alternative dispute resolution. You’ll need to contact Which? Trusted Traders on 029 2267 0040, and they’ll tell you whether you’re eligible to use their service. The service is free for consumers and it doesn’t affect your statutory rights. We’re willing to use it.
If you’re a domestic customer and we haven’t resolved your complaint, you can also ask us for a letter of deadlock.
This alternative dispute resolution route covers domestic contracts only. It isn’t available to care homes, councils, housing associations or other organisations.
If you’re a client organisation
This policy doesn’t replace any dispute resolution process set out in your contract, and it doesn’t affect your statutory rights, including, where it applies, the right to refer a construction contract dispute to adjudication.
If you start legal proceedings, we may pause our complaints process while the court deals with the matter.
Our commitments
Complaining will never affect the standard of service or care you receive from us.
We only share complaint details with the people who need them, which may include the commissioning organisation.
We keep a record of every complaint for at least three years from the date we receive it, because the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules require it, and we handle those records in line with our Data Protection & Privacy Policy.
We know that people are often frustrated or upset when they complain. We won’t accept abuse or threats towards our team, and we may agree a single point of contact or ask you to put things in writing, but we’ll still look into your complaint.
Time limits
Please raise a complaint as soon as you can, ideally within 12 months of the problem happening or of you finding out about it. We’ll still consider older complaints where there’s a good reason.
Learning from complaints
We record every complaint, its cause and how it was resolved, and we use that to spot patterns and change how we work.
Policy details
Version 1.0. Reviewed September 2026. Next review September 2027, or sooner if the law or our clients’ requirements change.
Age Care Pro is a trading name of Age Care Bathrooms Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 11252547. Registered office: 36 Market Street, Staveley, Chesterfield, S43 3UT. ICO registration ZA671214.