Complaints

When we have completed our consideration of your complaint we will advise you that this is our final position, based on the information we have.

You can now ask the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (the Ombudsman) to review your complaint.  You usually have up to 12 months to do this, starting from the date you first knew about the matter you complained about, not from the date of our communication to you. 

The Ombudsman will normally only consider complaints made within that time but can decide to look at older complaints if there is a good reason to do so. 

The Ombudsman looks at individual complaints about councils, all adult social care providers (including care homes and home care agencies) and some other organisations providing local public services. The Ombudsman investigates matters fairly and impartially and is free to use. 

There are some matters the Ombudsman cannot or will not investigate.  In these cases they will explain clearly the reason for their decision.  The Ombudsman's contact details are below. You will need to provide them with a copy of our last communication to you, and our earlier responses to you, so they can consider your complaint.

Telephone: 0300 061 0614, Opening hours: Monday to Friday - 10am to 4pm (except public holidays)

• Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman

The Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) can sometimes look at complaints if the Council is your landlord. Full details about the process can be found on the HOS website

•  Housing Ombudsman

Alternatively you can contact the HOS on 0300 111 3000

Please note that a council does not need the complainant's consent to share information with the Ombudsman when responding to its enquiries about a complaint. This is because the statutory powers given to the Ombudsman by The Local Government Act 1974 enables them to receive any information which is relevant to the case investigation, no matter from whom. The GDPR does not require consent when an organisation is carrying out a statutory function.

Complaints about councils' nationality checking services can also be directed to the Immigration Service

•  Office of the Immigration Service

The vast majority of complaints can be resolved quickly, through our complaints procedure or through investigation by the Ombudsman once they have been through our internal complaints procedure. However, a small number of people may still be dissatisfied with the outcome of this process, or with the process itself, and continue pursuing the matter. If we consider a persistent complaint of this kind to be unreasonable, we will follow our unreasonable behaviour protocol

  Unreasonable Complainant Behaviour Protocol

We review our procedures regularly to make sure they are up to date and working properly.

Complaints against Councillors and co-opted Members must be referred to the Council's Monitoring Officer, Mario Leo.

• Complaints and Compliments about Councillors