Corporate complaints process

Our corporate complaints process ensures that customer concerns are handled fairly and as quickly as possible. It has 2 stages, providing a thorough review and clear responses at each point in line with the Local Government and Social Care Complaint Handling Code (opens new window) and Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code (opens new window).

Stage 1 - investigation of the complaint

When we receive your complaint:

• we will acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days of receiving it
• our aim is to provide a full response within 10 working days of acknowledgement of your complaint

If your complaint is complex and we need more time, we may extend the deadline by up to an additional 10 working days. We will let you know if this is necessary.

If you tell us about new issues while we are investigating:

• we will include them in your stage 1 response if we have not already sent it
• if we have already sent the response, or adding new issues would cause a long delay, we will record the new issues as a separate complaint with a new timescale

Stage 2 - review

If you are unhappy with the Stage 1 response, you may request your complaint is escalated to Stage 2 for a review.

Requests to escalate complaints to Stage 2 of the procedure should be made within 10 working days of receiving the Stage 1 response. However, we recognise that this is not always possible, and we will carefully consider all Stage 2 requests submitted after this point.

Though not required, it is helpful to tell us why you are unhappy with the stage one response and what outcomes you are seeking from a Stage 2.

When we receive your Stage 2 escalation request:

• we will acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days of receiving it
• our aim is to provide a full response within 20 working days of our acknowledgement

If your complaint is complex and we need more time, we may extend the deadline by up to an additional 10 working days. We will let you know if this is necessary.

Any new concerns that were not previously considered at Stage 1, may not form part of the Stage 2 investigation and may be considered as a new Stage 1 complaint.

Your request will be referred to the Corporate Complaints Team and Stage 2 complaints are investigated on behalf of the Chief Executive by a nominated officer independent of the service area being complained about.

Ombudsman

If you are not happy with the way your complaint was handled, you can contact the Local Government Ombudsman (opens new window) or the Housing Ombudsman (opens new window). This is an independent national service which investigates complaints against councils.

They will not normally carry out an investigation until your complaint has been through the 2 stages of our complaints process.