Complaints process
Find out about the council's two-stage complaints procedure.
Stage one
When you make a formal complaint, we will pass your complaint to the relevant service who will investigate and respond within 10 working days from our acknowledgement.
If you have received a response and/or update and you are still dissatisfied, you can ask the Corporate Customer Service team to look at your concerns at stage two of the complaints process.
Stage two
The Corporate Customer Service team will consider your complaint and, if necessary, carry out an independent review. You can expect a response within 20 working days from our acknowledgement.
These investigations are carried out at the discretion of the principal complaints officer who will make a decision based on:
- what you are unhappy about with the stage one response
- information you provide that will help us to make a decision
- whether we will be able to achieve the result you want.
Full details can be found in the Corporate Complaints Policy.
Making a complaint
Find out how to make a complaint.
Not all complaints follow the same process.
- Adults social services complaints process
- Children social care complaints process
- Complaints about councillors
Managing unreasonable customer behaviour
Sometimes people may pursue their complaints or requests for information in an unreasonable way, even if nothing more can realistically be done to help them or solve their problem.
In these situations, we may have to class the customer as ‘Unreasonable’ or an ‘Unreasonable Persistent Customer’ who may also display unacceptable behaviour.
Find more information about this in our unreasonable behaviour policy.
The Ombudsman's new guidance on complaints handling
The Joint Complaint Handling Code was introduced on 1 April 2024 by:
It sets out good practice for social housing landlords and service providers to resolve complaints quickly, and to use complaints to improve services.
Read Islington Council's self-assessment for our social housing service's complaint-handling.
