A formal complaint is a way to let us know that you are not happy with some aspect of our services. To help us handle your complaint quickly and effectively please read the information on this page before you submit your complaint.

Before you start

Before making a formal complaint you should contact the relevant service first. This gives us an opportunity to resolve the issue you are raising.

This is usually the quickest way to resolve a matter before making a complaint.

We do not investigate complaints about issues that happened more than 12 months before you contact us for the first time or where there’s an appeals process.

You can contact us about issues online, such as:

• report a missed bin collection
• challenge your parking fine ticket
• report antisocial behaviour
• comment on a planning application
• make a complaint about a taxi driver or operator
• report a problem or fault, or tell us about something

View other issues you can report to us.

Other complaint or appeal processes 

We have separate complaint or appeal processes that are different to making a formal complaint, they include:

• antisocial behaviour case review
• BCP Homes complaints
• Blue badge appeals
• Council Tax benefit entitlement disputes
• complaints about councillors
• fixed penalty notice (FPN’s)
• food hygiene rating appeal
• housing benefit entitlement disputes
• insurance claims against the council
• parking ticket appeals (PCN’s)
• planning appeals about the refusal of planning permission
• school admission appeals

Make a formal complaint

If you have already reported the issue and it has not been resolved and you remain dissatisfied about:

• the standard of service
• the actions or lack of action by us
• our staff, or those acting on our behalf
• individual or group of individuals

You can make a formal complaint for most of our services using our main complaints and feedback form.

How we handle your complaints

We have a 2 stage process.

Stage 1: initial response

For stage 1 we will:

• acknowledge complaints within 5 working days
• let you know who will be handling your complaint and make sure we understand what your complaint is about
• find out what you want to happen to put things right
• provide a full response within 10 working days, with extensions communicated if necessary
• apologise if we find we have failed to provide the level of service you should expect and look to put things right
• welcome your view of what needs to be done to resolve any problem

Stage 2: review stage

If unresolved, complaints can be escalated to Stage 2 for a review of the stage 1 process.

As part of stage 2:

• requests to escalate should be received within 20 working days from the Stage 1 response
• an escalation will be acknowledged within 5 working days of receipt of request and a final response will be issued within 20 working days from acknowledgement, with extensions of 20 working days communicated if necessary

If things are still not right

If things are still not right the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) will carry out an independent review.

The LGSCO will not normally accept a complaint which has not been considered under our complaint process first.

Visit the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman website.

You can view or download our complaints handling policy.

Unreasonable Actions by customers

Dealing with a customer is usually a straightforward process, but in a small number of cases people interact with services in a way that is unreasonable.

We have adopted the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s (LGSCO) definition of ‘unreasonable actions’.

Unreasonable actions are those which, because of the nature or frequency of contact with an organisation, hinder the organisation’s delivery of services or consideration of complaints. You can view LGSCO’s guidance.

You can view or download our unreasonable actions policy.