General service complaints
Most concerns that are raised with us can be resolved without you needing to make a formal complaint.
You shouldn't make a formal complaint when you:
- want us to sort out an issue or problem you consider to be our responsibility. Instead you should report a problem to us.
- have a complaint with non-council services, organisations or individuals. You may want us to enforce something, such as a food hygiene issue, but your complaint isn't actually about a council service.
- want to appeal a decision. Instead, you will find information about making an appeal in the relevant area of the website, for example, Council Tax, planning, housing, benefits, school admissions.
- insurance claims against the council. Claims against our partner organisations and contractors may need to go through their own insurance departments.
All our complaints processes are available to complete online however, there are further options if you can't do it online.
If you are not sure whether or not your concern should follow an alternative process, email customerservicecomplaints@swindon.gov.uk and we will be able to advise you.
If the problem continues or you do not feel the issue has been resolved by local resolution, then you can log a formal corporate complaint.
General complaints process
If logging a service request or talking to the team involved has not resolved your issue, we may be able to progress it under the general complaints process. This is a two-stage internal process, with a third independent stage.
We will acknowledge your complaint within three working days and will let you know if we can progress your concern under Stage one of the general complaints process. If we cannot, we will let you know and advise you if there is another way for your concern to be looked at.
Stage one
A complaint at Stage one will be passed to an appropriate manager in the service that the complaint relates to. They will respond directly. We aim to reply within ten working days from the date your complaint has been acknowledged by the compliments and complaints team. We will let you know within this time if the reply will take longer and the reason why.
Stage two
If you are not satisfied with the outcome you received at Stage one, you may have a right to ask for a review of your complaint at Stage two. If you wish to do this, you should let us know within 25 working days from receiving your Stage one response and include what you feel has not been answered in your Stage one response.
If we progress your complaint at Stage two, the service manager for the service the complaint is about will review the complaint and reply within 20 working days or advise you if the reply will take longer.
In some situations we may refer you directly to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) rather than taking your complaint to Stage two. If this happens, we will let you know why.
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman review
If you have been through both stages of our formal corporate complaint’s procedure, or we have referred you after Stage one and you are still unhappy, you can ask the LGSCO to review your complaint. The Ombudsman investigates complaints in a fair and independent way and does not take sides. It is a free service.
You can speak to the LGSCO at any time, but they would normally expect you to have given us a chance to deal with your complaint before you contact them.
If you have not heard from us within a reasonable time, the LGSCO may decide to look into your complaint anyway.