You are entitled to make a complaint when you feel a service is not up to the required standard.
We will treat you politely and with respect. We expect you to treat our staff in the same way.
If you do not behave in a reasonable way you may:
- stop us from looking properly at your own complaint,
- stop us from looking at other people’s complaints,
- stop us from doing our work because we are taking so long with you,
- affect the wellbeing of our staff.
We will not tolerate:
- abusive, intimidating, or threatening behaviour
- swearing and offensive language
- shouting
- racial abuse, or
- any form of discrimination.
Our staff share their time between different tasks, helping many people at once.
They cannot do so if you take up all their time with frequent, lengthy contacts and repetitive information.
When this becomes a problem, we may take action to restrict your access to our services.
Warnings
If we think your behaviour is unreasonable, we will explain why and ask you to change it.
We will warn you that, if the behaviour continues, we may take action to restrict your contact with our officers.
If we think you are behaving unreasonably, we may end a telephone call or ask you to leave our building.
If your behaviour is so extreme that we believe it threatens the immediate safety and welfare of our staff, we may:
- report the matter to the police, or
- consider taking legal action.
If we do this, we may not give you warning.
Restricting access to our services
If we see a pattern of unreasonable behaviour, the sort of restrictions we might put in place include:
- restricting your telephone calls to certain days and limited times,
- limiting contacts to one type only (for example, a maximum of one letter or email a week),
- requiring you to only contact one named staff member,
- requiring you to enter into an agreement about your future behaviour before your complaint can carry on,
- someone else helping you make your complaint.
We will balance any health or welfare concerns you have with the need to protect the safety and wellbeing of our staff.
Ending access to our complaints process
If you continue to behave unreasonably, or do not follow the restrictions, we may decide to stop investigating your complaint.
New complaints
Restrictions because of an earlier complaint will not automatically apply to a new complaint. Each instance will be treated on its merits.
Who makes the decision?
We realise that restricting contact with you can make things difficult. We do not do it lightly. Because of this, a member of the Corporate Management Team (the most senior managers of the Council) will make the decision.
We will explain:
- why we have restricted your access
- how it has been restricted
- how long it will be before we reconsider our decision
Challenging a decision
You cannot use the Council’s complaint processes to complain about a decision to restrict contact.
You can challenge whether the facts used to make the decision are accurate.
We will let you know if your challenge is successful.
If it is not, you have the right to make a complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
A Court decision to restrict your contact with us will take precedence over this procedure.