Breaches of the supplier standards

A breach of the supplier standards happens if you don’t meet a standard while a client is staying with you.

We'll know you may have breached the supplier standards if:

• you tell us you've not met the standards, or
• we receive a complaint that claims you've breached the standards.

If your accommodation or services have minor or short-term issues, this may not mean you've breached the standards. It depends on the circumstances.

You tell us you've not met the standards

If there's an issue with your accommodation that means you may have, or will, breach the standards, you should, as soon as possible: 

• contact our Regional Housing team
• take action to fix or resolve the issue and let us know what your plan is, and
• let us know if and how clients will be impacted.

How emergency housing suppliers contact us

We receive a complaint that you've not met the standards

Your Regional Housing team is responsible for investigating any complaints about breaches of standards.

If the complaint isn't about a breach of standards, we'll follow our normal complaints process.

Concerns or complaints about emergency housing

You have minor or short-term issues

If your accommodation or services have minor or short-term issues, this may not mean you've breached the standards.

To help avoid a breach, it's important that:

• there is good communication between you, the client and us
• you take steps to fix the issue as soon as possible, and
• you keep us informed of what you're doing to resolve the issue.

If you have regular minor issues, this may not mean you've breached the standards for each issue. However you may breach the standards if they keep going and are not addressed. 

We'll follow these steps if we think you might have breached the supplier standards.

Step 1 - We'll determine if there has been a breach

We'll contact you to discuss the possible breach and we may:

• collect information from you and any other parties to determine if there is a breach
• review relevant documents, including:
  • your opt-in form and declaration
  • your evaluation checklist, and
  • any previous complaints received about your accommodation
• meet with you at your premises to discuss the breach with you
• consider if you can meet the standard in another acceptable way.

If we identify there has been a breach, it's important we can communicate directly with you in a timely way.

Step 2 - Tell us your action plan

We'll ask you to tell us your plan for fixing the issue. This will need to be done in a reasonable timeframe.

Some issues might be a one-off and there is no need to fix anything. In those circumstances, we'll ask you to tell us your plan for making sure the issue doesn't happen again.

Step 3 - We'll review your plan and determine next steps

We'll consider if your action plan is reasonable.

If we think it:

• is reasonable, you'll keep your opted-in status. However if you need time to fix the issue, we may need to suspend your opted-in status until it's fixed. It depends what the issue is.
• is not reasonable and we find there has been a breach, we'll remove your opted-in status.
  We'll send you a letter to let you know what we are looking at changing your opted-in status to.

Breach poses a health and safety risk

If this is the case, we may need to start moving clients to alternative accommodation.

If you don't agree with the change to your opted-in status

If we're proposing to remove or suspend your opted-in status, you may disagree. If so, you'll have an opportunity to respond to us within a reasonable timeframe.

We'll consider your response and make a final decision about your opted-in status. We'll send you a letter to let you know our final decision.

If your opted-in status is removed

You'll be able to request to opt-in to the standards again after:

• you have fixed the issue, and
• you meet all the standards.

Please contact our Regional Housing team if you disagree with us about a decision:

Regional Housing team

• that there was a breach, or
• to remove or suspend your opted-in status.