General complaints

This page is for general complaints. 

There are separate procedures for the following complaints:

• adult social care
• children's social care
• councillors
• data protection
• grounds maintenance or street cleaning
• school admissions
• schools
• waste and recycling

If your enquiry is not a complaint but you need to report an issue, such as a missed bin, visit our report page. 

Before submitting a complaint

We want to resolve issues as soon as we can. Speak to a member of staff in the service concerned if there’s a problem. If the problem isn’t resolved to your satisfaction, you can use our complaints procedure.

If your complaint is related to a service with its own appeal process, you need to use that process. 

If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we will need to check you have their consent to do this.

If the main issues of your complaint have been or are being considered by a court, we will not be able to look at it.

Make sure you complain within 12 months of the issue, or within 12 months of you becoming aware of it. We do not usually investigate complaints that are older than this.

If we have already replied to your complaint at stage 2, or if the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman is looking into it, we will not investigate again.

Complaints process

Our complaints process has 2 stages.

Stage 1

We will acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days. 

We will tell you:

• whether we can investigate your complaint
• who is going to deal with it
• when we will provide our response

If we do not accept your complaint, we will explain why. 

The head of the relevant service, or an equivalent officer, will review your complaint. They will reply within 10 days of acknowledging your complaint. It will be 20 days for complex complaints.

If the process is going to take longer than this, we will let you know the reasons.

Complaints about discrimination, victimisation or harassment will be reviewed by an assistant director, or equivalent, at stage 1. 

Some complaints may go straight to stage 2 if we think a director needs to be involved.

Complaints that use a staff procedure

If we use a staff procedure to investigate your complaint, we will not be able to give you details because they are confidential. 

We will let you know when the process has finished but will not give you an outcome or any more details.

Stage 2

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can escalate your complaint to stage 2. This must be within 20 working days of the stage 1 response. 

Let us know the reasons why you are not satisfied and the outcome you are looking for. If you don’t tell us, we may not be able to do anything more. We may ask why you are not satisfied so we can understand what to do.

We will acknowledge your escalated complaint within 5 working days. 

We will tell you:

• whether we can investigate your complaint
• who is going to deal with it
• when we will provide our response

The assistant director, or an equivalent officer, will review your complaint. They will make recommendations to the executive director. The executive director will reply within 20 working days of acknowledging your complaint. For complex complaints, the time is 40 days.

If the process is going to take longer than this, we will let you know the reasons.

Make a complaint

To submit your complaint, use our online form.

Let us know:

• what the complaint is about
• what has been done so far 
• what you would like us to do about it now

Make a complaint

If you need help filling in the form, phone Customer Services on 01344 352000.

You can also give feedback in person to any member of council staff, who will help you fill in the form.

The Citizen’s Advice Bureau may also be able to help you.

If someone is completing the form for you, make sure you agree with what has been written down.

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO)

You can contact the LGSCO about your complaint. The Ombudsman will usually expect you to have given us a chance to look at your complaint before they investigate. Make sure you have followed our process before you contact the LGSCO.

For more information, visit the LGSCO website or call 0300 061 0614.

You can view the annual statistics on complaints made to the LGSCO on their website.