How to complain about our service

This section tells you what to do if you are unhappy with our service.

Please note that there's a different process to follow if you are unhappy with the decision that our complaints reviewer has made on your complaint.  If you're unhappy with that, please go to 'Asking for a review of an SPSO decision'.

We know that we can't please everyone all of the time – and our decisions can disappoint those who don’t get the outcome they had hoped for. But whatever the outcome of your case, we hope you will be satisfied with the quality of the service we provide.

We know that, as in any organisation, things can sometimes go wrong. Please tell us if this happens, so that we can put things right and learn from any mistakes.  We'd like to hear from you if you are not satisfied with any part of our service, for example if you think we have:

• treated you unfairly or rudely
• failed to explain things clearly
• caused unreasonable delays 

You should tell us about your concerns as soon as you can.  You should contact us within three weeks of the incident or issue you are unhappy with. If your concern is about a member of staff, we will tell that person that a complaint has been made about them, and we will ask them for their views.  They will not be involved in looking into the issue in any other way.  If we find that your concern about our service is justified, we will apologise and tell how we will deal with the problem. Where relevant, we will also tell you how we plan to make sure the mistake does not happen again.

We take complaints about our service very seriously.  We want to know if things go wrong so that we can put them right and improve our service in the future.

Unhappy with our service?

Step 1: Manager
You should first contact the manager of the member of staff whose service you are unhappy with.  They will contact you within three working days to let you know they have received your complaint.  They will provide a clear response, setting out any action we need to take, within 10 working days.  Most problems can be dealt with at this stage.

Step 2: Director of Corporate Services
If you are still unhappy, you can write to our Director of Corporate Services, setting out your concerns.  Please clearly mark your letter ‘Service Delivery Complaint.’  They will contact you within three working days to let you know they have received your complaint, and will aim to send a full response within 20 working days.
 
Step 3: Independent Service Delivery Reviewer
If you have given us the opportunity to respond to your concerns about our service and you are still not happy, you can contact the Independent Reviewer.  We will provide you with contact details for them in our final letter to you.  They will contact you within three working days to let you know they have received your complaint.  They will let you know within 10 working days what they can consider and will aim to provide you with a full response within 40 working days.

Complaints Statistics
We keep a record of all complaints made about our service and the outcome of each complaint. We produce statistical information about these each year.  Statistics dating back to 2003 can be downloaded from our website.

From April 2007 we've produced quarterly reports about service delivery complaints. You'll find links to these below.

Information, recording and monitoring
If we identify shortcomings in our service through a complaint, we use this information to review and improve the service we provide.

We'll tell you about any administrative action that we take as the result of learning from a complaint about our service .  But we will not provide information about any action taken against individual member(s) of staff.

We keep a record of all complaints made about our service and record the outcome of each complaint. We produce statistical information relating to these each year.

A table of statistics back to 2003 can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking here

From April 2007 we've produced quarterly reports about service delivery complaints. These can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking the relevant links below.

Year end Review, 2009-10
Quarter 3, 2009-10
Quarters 1-2, 2009-10

Year end Review, 2008-09
Quarter 3, 2008-09
Quarter 2, 2008-09
Quarter 1, 2008-09
 

Year end review, 2007-08
Quarter 3, 2007-08
Quarter 2, 2007-08
Quarter 1, 2007-08

Freedom of Information
In August 2008 the Scottish Information Commissioner published his decision regarding our handling of a Freedom of Information request relating to Service Delivery Complaints up to December 2006.

To see the Commissioner’s Decision Notice, reference 080/2008, please click here.

To see the information that has been recommended for release by the Commissioner, please download the PDF file below. We have also published information that is of the same type as that covered by the Commissioner's Decision, but that has been produced since December 2006. If you have any trouble accessing the information in this format, please contact us.

up to December 2006 
December 2006 to August 2008 
September 2008 to February 2009
March 2009 to September 2009
October 2009 to December 2009
January 2010 to March 2010

We will publish Service Delivery Complaints Decision Letters for each quarter within six weeks of the end of that quarter.

Last updated 04 May 2010