Complaints regarding elected Members are dealt with by our Monitoring Officer who will investigate allegations of misconduct. How to contact.
Complaints and Compliments
We welcome your feedback and encourage your comments or suggestions about any of our services. It may be that your suggestion helps to change the way a service is delivered.
Housing Complaints
There is a separate policy for Housing Related complaints. Details, including how to complain, can be found here: Housing complaint or enquiry
Have we got it right?
If you think we’ve done something well, we’d love to hear from you. We want to learn from your feedback and use it to help us make improvements to our services. We will pass on all compliments to the service or member of staff concerned.
Have we got it wrong?
We want to hear from you if you think we have
- Done something wrong or badly.
- Not done something we should have.
- Treated you unfairly or unprofessionally.
- Been too slow to act.
- Disagree with decision made/not listened to me.
Anonymised information regarding complaints is reported to senior management and elected members as part of the monitoring process with a view to service improvement.
What do we ask of you?
If you make a complaint or pay us a compliment please give us as much detail as possible about the service including dates, times and names of the people you dealt with if known. If making a complaint, please also let us know what you would like us to do to put things right.
If you are making a complaint for someone else, you will need their permission first. Please include your name, address and contact details as we cannot deal with any anonymous complaints.
Please note that we are unable to investigate anonymous complaints.
What can you expect from us?
We want to settle all complaints quickly. If you have contacted us with a complaint, there are two stages to our process.
Please make your complaint to the person dealing with the query. Many issues can be resolved with an explanation, action or apology.
If you aren’t satisfied, you can ask for your complaint to be escalated using our formal complaints procedure.
Complaints Proceedure
Stage 1 - Formal complaint
- We aim to acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days telling you who will be dealing with your complaint.
- Your complaint will be investigated fully by a supervisor or manager in the relevant service area.
- We aim to provide a written response within 10 working days, either by email or letter.
- If you are unsatisfied with the response you can ask that your complaint is escalated to Stage 2 - Appeal. Details of how to do this are included in your response letter.
Stage 2 – Complaint appeal
- We aim to acknowledge your Stage 2 complaint appeal within 5 working days telling you who will be dealing with your complaint.
- An Assistant Director or delegated manager who has not previously been involved in your case will review the details of your complaint.
- We aim to provide a full written response explaining the outcome within 20 working days
- In some circumstances this may take longer. If this is the case, then the assigned officer will notify you as to the expected timescale.
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman
If you are unsatisfied with the response to Stage 2 - complaint appeal then you have exhausted the complaints process. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman will consider your complaint independently from the Council. For more information, please visit www.lgo.org.uk or telephone 0300 061 0614.
What isn't covered by this procedure
Not all issues can be dealt with under this procedure such as complaints about:
How to make a complaint
To register a complaint or compliment with us please complete our feedback form below
Compliments and Complaints Feedback Form
Policy Documentation
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