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  5. How are we doing? - Your guide to making a comment, compliment or complaint

How are we doing? - Your guide to making a comment, compliment or complaint

Last updated 22 June 2023

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Introduction

We are always looking to improve our services; if you have a comment, compliment or complaint let us know.

Any comment, good or bad, helps us to understand what people do and don’t like about our services and how we can make them better in the future.
 

Comments and Suggestions

If you have comments or suggestions about how our services could be improved, let us know. We will always acknowledge comments and suggestions and pass them to the relevant service, but we may not be able to take action on your suggestion.
 

Complaints

A complaint is a way to let us know if you are not happy with some aspect
of our service.

It is helpful if you explain why you are unhappy and what you
think should be done to resolve the problem. We will investigate and try to put
things right.

If your complaint is about social care services (adults or children’s) there are
different complaints processes.

  • Children’s social care complaints are looked at under The Children’s Act 1989 Representations Procedure (England) 2006
  • Adult social care complaints are looked at under the Local Authority Social

Services and National Health Service Complaints Regulations (England) 2009

When you submit your complaint we will advise you of this.
 

How we deal with complaints

You can fill out an online form, email, write or speak to us over the phone:

  • we will let you know we have received it within three working days
  • we will find out what you want to happen to put things right
  • a manager in the service will investigate and respond within 20 working days
  • if we need more time to investigate your complaint we will write to you to let you know when we hope to provide a final response
  • if we find we have failed to provide the level of service you should expect we will apologise, and look to put things right
  • we welcome your views of what needs to be done to resolve any problem

If things are still not right

We try to resolve most complaints internally, but if you are still unhappy you can refer your complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO), who will carry out an independent review. The LGO will not normally accept a complaint which has not been considered under the council’s internal process first.
 

Other information

This publication can be made available in audio tape, large print and Braille, or alternative languages on request.