Helping people to use our service

To get started, we need:

• a brief summary of what happened in date order, including what happened when the person you’re supporting complained to the organisation and what it said (there will be an opportunity to provide more detailed information if the complaint is passed to one of our caseworkers)
• a clear idea of the person you’re supporting’s main concerns and what needs to be sorted out
• an explanation of how the problem affected the person you’re supporting (or other people, if appropriate) - this might include distress, anxiety, inconvenience or financial loss
• copies of the complaint responses from the organisation - we may ask for other documents later if needed
• a completed complaint form that includes the person’s consent for you to make the complaint on their behalf.

It’s important the person you’re supporting knows what we can and cannot do before they make a complaint to us.

People are often looking for an apology, an explanation of what happened, or for the organisation to learn from its mistakes so they do not happen again. We may ask organisations to do these things when we find that something has gone wrong. You can search the decisions we publish on our website for similar complaints to see what recommendations we have made in the past.

If the person you’re supporting would like a financial payment, please tell us what they’re expecting. This is important because the payments we can ask an organisation to make are often small and different to what a court can award.

We can also ask an organisation to make a payment for any specific financial loss caused by its mistakes. If the person you’re supporting is out of pocket, please give us more information.

The organisations we can investigate and the types of complaints we can deal with are set out in law. Use our complaint checker to make sure the organisation or issue is something we can look at or call us on 0345 015 4033.

Before coming to us, people need to complain to the organisation they’re unhappy with first and have received a response. This is because we’re the final stage of the complaints process. The organisation should have the chance to sort out any issues before we look at what happened.

If the person you’re supporting has had a final response to their complaint and is unhappy with it, you can ask us to look into it. Sometimes we can get involved earlier. For example, if someone has been waiting a long time to get a response from the organisation.

The organisation should make it clear that its response is final and let people know they can come to us if they’re still unhappy. If this is not clear, contact the organisation to check.

There are time limits for bringing a complaint to us and these are set in law:

• if the complaint is about the NHS, the person you’re supporting needs to complain to us within 12 months of becoming aware of the problem
• if the complaint is about a UK government service, the person you’re supporting needs to ask their MP to refer their complaint to us within 12 months of becoming aware of the problem. The MP then needs to pass the complaint to us.

If we receive a complaint outside these time limits, we cannot normally investigate it. In some circumstances, we may still be able to investigate as the law gives us some flexibility.

One common reason people cannot complain to us in time is how long it took to go through the organisation’s complaints process. Illness, or other personal circumstances, can also cause delays.

If the person you’re supporting was not able to complain to us in time, it’s important to tell us what happened so we can understand why they did not complain sooner. We’ll look at how much time has passed and whether we can still investigate.