Corporate complaints procedure

How to make a complaint

Before making a complaint using the link below, please ensure you have already contacted the service and asked them to put matters right.

If you want to escalate your complaint to stage 2, please contact the address provided in our stage 1 response, or email corporatecomplaints@lewisham.gov.uk.

Complaints procedure

Our complaints procedure has two stages. We aim to acknowledge your complaint or escalation request within five working days of receiving it, to let you know what will happen next.

Stage 1

A service manager will investigate and will aim to send you a response within 10 working days of acknowledgement. The manager will let you know what we can do to resolve your complaint.

Stage 2

If you are unhappy with the response that you have received at stage 1, you can ask for your complaint to be reviewed. The Corporate Complaints Team or the Head of the relevant service will aim to write to you with their decision within 20 working days of acknowledgement.

Next steps

If we have upheld your complaint, and decided to take action to resolve it, we will carry out those actions as quickly as we can. If you disagree with our decision, or think we are taking too long, you can contact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman looks at individual complaints about councils, all adult social care providers (including care homes and home care agencies) and some other organisations providing local public services. It investigates matters fairly and impartially and is free to use.

You usually have up to 12 months contact the Ombudsman, starting from the date you first knew about the matter you complained about. They will normally only consider complaints made within that time but can decide to look at older complaints if there is a good reason to do so.

There are some matters the Ombudsman cannot or will not investigate. In these cases they will explain clearly the reason for its decision.

You can register your complaint through their website - you will need to upload a copy of our responses to your complaint:

• website: www.lgo.org.uk
• telephone: 0300 061 0614
• opening hours: Monday to Friday (except public holidays) 10am to 1pm (4pm Wednesdays)

Send us feedback

Please provide an email address and contact telephone number.

Not all complaints fall under this procedure.

Schools

For more information go to Complaints about schools.

Social Care and health

For more information go to Complaints about care services.

Appeals

Some services related to

• council tax
• housing benefit
• planning
• parking charge notices (PCNs)
• school admissions

have different appeal procedures. If your complaint falls under an appeal procedure, we will not be able to investigate your complaint under our complaints procedure. We will tell you if this is the case.