Complaints, compliments and comments

"Your Views Are Important to Us"

At Shepway District Council, we want to actively encourage you, our customers, to give us your opinions about our services. This can be made in the form of a comment, compliment, complaint, suggestion or any other point of view.

Introduction

We are committed to providing quality services. To do this we have to ensure our services meet the needs of the people who use them or are affected by them.

Comments/Compliments

Your comments are important to us as they help us to shape and deliver services in the future. If you have an idea or suggestion that could help us improve our services, or you would like to congratulate us for something we have done well, please let us know.

Complaints

Shepway District Council is a large and diverse organisation and we know we won't get things right all the time. We have a complaints system that allows our customers to formally complain about any service or issue. We value complaints, as they let us know when things have gone wrong. We can then put them right, learn from them and take action to ensure it doesn't happen again.

The procedure for complaints is listed below:

Stage 1

This will be acknowledged within three days by the Complaints Representative in the service area the complaint relates to and then passed to the Service Manager to be allocated to an appropriate officer for investigation. The full response should be sent to the Customer within 20 working days. In some cases a complaint may raise complex issues and more time may be needed before a full response can be sent. In this instance a ‘holding' response would be sent to the Customer, giving a reason for the delay and revised timescale for full response.

Stage 2

If the Customer is dissatisfied with the response at Stage 1, they can refer it to the Link Officer, who will arrange for the Complaint to be reviewed independently - that is, by a designated Stage 2 Complaints Investigator, who is independent of the service area to which the complaint relates. The Link Officer will acknowledge this request within three days and advise the customer they will receive a full response within 20 working days.  Again, if further time is needed, a ‘holding' response would be sent to the Customer.

Stage 3

If the Customer still remains dissatisfied and feels an injustice has occurred as a result of the Council's actions they can ask the Local Government Ombudsman to investigate their complaint. The Local Government Ombudsman investigates complaints about Local Authorities, including Councils, Fire Service and the Police. When investigating complaints they will consider injustice which may have been caused to the Customer as a result of maladministration.  Local Government Ombudsman Complaints are co-ordinated by the Link Officer in Customer Services. Details of the Local Government Ombudsman can by found by clicking here

The complaints procedure for Shepway District Council is overseen by the Link Officer.

If you wish to make a complaint comment or compliment, please click below

 Complaints, compliments and comments