Corporate Complaints Policy and Procedure
We are committed to providing high quality services to all
our customers. The services we provide are continually reviewed to
ensure they meet the needs and expectations of our customers, to
help us improve we actively seek comments good or bad concerning
all aspects of the services we offer.
If you have a complaint, suggestion or compliment please tell us
using the online form which is available below, if you prefer you
can ring Customer Services on 0845 600 6400, visit any one of our
Customer Service points or you can write to us at the address which
is given below.
What is a
complaint?
A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction by one or more
members of the public about the council’s action or lack of action
or about the standard of a service, whether the action was taken or
the service provided by the council itself or a person or body
acting on behalf of the council.
How to use the Procedure
We will always try to resolve problems as
quickly as possible and to do this we would ask you to contact the
service that you are unhappy with. They may be able to put things
right there and then or at least look into the issue and come back
to you. If you have tried this approach or don't feel that it is
appropriate to contact the service involved directly, you can ask
for your complaint to be investigated formally. To do this you
should complete the compliments/complaints form which is available
here, click here to access our Compliments/complaints
form.
Receipt of your complaint will be acknowledged
within 3 days and the complaints co-ordinator within the relevant
directorate will carry out a thorough investigation, they will
report back to you normally within 15 days although on some
occasions the investigation may take a little longer.
Should you remain dissatisfied with the
findings of the investigation then you have the right to have the
complaint referred to the Council’s complaints Officer and you
should contact;
- The Corporate Complaints Officer
- Transformation Group
- County Hall
- Morpeth
- Northumberland
- NE61 2EF
- Telephone: 0845 600 6400
- email: ask@northumberland.gov.uk
Your complaint will be further investigated
and we will report back to you within 20 days.
Should you remain unhappy with the response
which you receive you have the right to contact the Local
Government Ombudsman at;
A copy of the annual report into complaints
handling is available here Ombudsman's
letter.
Complaints in relation to Schools
Complaints in relation to Schools are not
dealt with dealt with under this policy. For complaints in relation
to Schools in Northumberland you should contact 01670 623978
or click Education Complaints for further
information
Complaints
in relation to Social Care
Complaints in relation to Social Care for
Children and Adults are dealt with under separate procedures. For
complaints in relation to Social Care for Children you should
contact 01670 623978 or click Children's Services Complaints for further
information. For complaints in relation to Social Care for Adults
you should contact 01670 394524 or click here for further
information Adult
Social Care.
Complaints about elected Members Conduct
If you wish to complain about the conduct of
an elected member of the County Council you must submit your
complaint to:
The Monitoring Officer
Legal Services Unit
Northumberland County Council
County Hall
Morpeth
Northumberland
NE61 2EF
Please note that the Monitoring Officer can
only deal with complaints about the behaviour of an elected member
and cannot deal with complaints about things that are not covered
by the members' Code of Conduct. If you make a complaint it must be
about why you think a member has not followed the Code.
The Member’s Code of Conduct is part of the
County Council Constitution - click
here to view the Code of Conduct adopted on 4th July
2012.
If the conduct complained of occurred before
4th July you should refer to the previous Code which can
be found in Part 6 of the published Constitution – Click
here to view the Constitution.
To assist you we have also prepared an
indicative flowchart which set out how the process works for
handling complaints about elected members – click here
to view the flowchart.
Click here
to access information in relation to how the Council handles
complaints about elected members
Click here
to download the complaint form
Click here
to see recent decision notices
Outcomes and remedies
There are several possible outcomes of our
investigations into your complaint. If we do not find evidence of
maladministration or service failure or if we find that the
complaint is outside of our jurisdiction we will write to you and
explain why, we will of course consider any comments that you may
wish to make.
If we do find that our actions have been at
fault there are a range of actions that we may take, these include,
but are not restricted to the following;
- An apology
- Carry out repairs
- Take immediate action that should have been taken earlier
- Reconsider a decision that had been taken earlier
- Improve procedures
- Hold a fresh school admissions appeal
- Compensation in respect of any financial loss
