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Renfrewshire Council Plan 2008 - 2012 Complaints
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Renfrewshire Council are committed to providing the highest standards of service to our community. If we do not meet these standards let us know as quickly as possible so that we can put things right.
How to make a complaint
You should follow this procedure if we have made a mistake and you are unhappy with the way we have delivered a service.
Do not follow this procedure to make routine enquiries about our services (such as asking for a repair to your home or letting us know about a public health or trading standards concern). Please make enquiries like these by phoning, writing to or visiting the relevant department.
Step 1 - informal complaints
If you are unhappy with the service you have received, please do the following:
- Contact the relevant council department or the closest local office of that department.
- Briefly explain your concern and ask to speak to a member of staff who can help you or, if you prefer, contact the Customer Services Officer for the relevant department, you can find their contact details in the related content menu on the right.
- We can usually solve problems quickly and easily at this stage. However, if you are still unhappy with our service, or you are not satisfied with our response at step 1, you can go on to make a formal complaint at step 2.
Please use the online form below to provide us with all the details of your complaint (include any relevant dates, times and locations).
If you would prefer you can download our pdf version of the complaints form:
Complaints form (pdf - 158KB)You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this document. Download Acrobat Reader here.
We will use the information you give us to deal with your complaint. We may need to check the information you have given with other council departments. We will not give the information to anyone else unless we are allowed to by law:
- Within three working days of receiving your complaint, we will send you an e mail to confirm that we are looking into the matter.
- We will send you a detailed reply to your complaint within 10 working days of sending you our acknowledgement.
If you are still not happy with how we have dealt with your complaint you can write to the Head of Service or the Director of the department you are complaining about. However, if the Head of Service or the Director has already been involved in dealing with your complaint, you can write to the Chief Executive. Once again, we will send you an acknowledgement within three working days of receiving your letter, and after the Head of Service or the Director has reviewed the matter, he or she will send you a detailed reply within a further 10 working days.
Complaining to Social Work Services
If you have made a complaint to social work services, in addition, once you have completed step 3 above, you may be able to have your complaint reviewed by the social work complaints review appeals panel. This panel is made up of independent representatives.
Contact a committee service officer in corporate services on 0141 840 3642 for more information on this stage and the timescales involved.
If you would like independent advise on how to make a complaint to social work services or you are unhappy with the way your complaint was handled you may want to contact the:
Care Commission Central West Region
4th Floor, No1 Smithhills Street, Paisley PA1 1EB
phone: 0141 843 4230
lo-call: 0845 600 8334
website: www.carecommison.com
Who else can I contact?
We hope that by following our complaints procedure you will find that your problem is solved quickly and effectively. If however after completing our complaints procedures you still remain dissatisfied, you may of course still refer the problem to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. There are some restrictions to what the Ombudsman can look at but the Ombudsman's staff will be able to tell you more.
The Ombudsman will normally only look at complaints:
- made within 12 months of the date you first knew about the problem about which you are complaining
- that have gone through the whole of the council's complaints process and where you have had a final reply
email: ask@spso.org.uk
website: www.spso.org.uk
phone: 0800 377 7330
fax: 0800 377 7331
address:
4 Melville Street
Edinburgh EH3 7NS
or
Freepost EH641
Edinburgh EH3 0BR
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