The corporate complaints procedure covers all aspects of complaints (apart from those relating to children and young people and adult social care), where a service has failed to meet the standards or level of service promised to you.

The corporate complaints procedure cannot be used to revoke a decision we make about a legislative responsibility (for example a penalty charge notice or planning permission). These issues should be pursued via the relevant process.

What shouldn't be raised as a corporate complaint

The complaints process should not be used to report an issue that requires us to take action, such as telling us about a pothole, a faulty streetlight or an overgrown hedge. These should be reported to the relevant service area first.

Where possible, we provide ways for you to do this online, such as reporting Highways issues, so please do use our website search or menu to find the service you need.

We ask that you give us the opportunity to fix the problem before you make a complaint. If you have already reported an issue and are later unhappy with the result, you may then wish to use the complaints process.

We also provide specific complaints processes for our childrens and young people's and adult social care service areas, and advice for complaints about schools, colleges and universities.

If you wish to be anonymous

Please note that we'll try to accept anonymous complaints but you won't receive a response as we won't have your name or contact details. Where we can look into an anonymous complaint and take remedial action we will - for example, when we receive a complaint with enough information to allow us to do so.

However, in many circumstances an anonymous complaint won't have enough information to allow us to investigate. For example, a complaint about the service an individual has received, but we can't investigate if we don't know who the individual was or when they received the service.

In cases where we don't have enough information to investigate we'll record the anonymous complaint, but in many cases they may be recorded as comments due to a lack of information and inability to determine whether or not the complaint is justified (some complaints can be made due to a lack of understanding rather than a poor service).

How will my complaint be handled?

Our corporate complaints process allows 30 working days to respond to a stage one complaint. Your complaint will be considered by a Complaint Investigating Officer from the service area your complaint relates to and a response provided.

If you are still not satisfied with your stage one complaint response you will have 20 working days to request a stage two review and details will be provided of how to escalate your case within the initial complaint response.

If you feel there are elements of your complaint that have not been responded to adequately, or you have further questions, these may be responded to as an additional stage 1 response prior to any review.

How to make a corporate complaint

If you want to give feedback but don't want to contact us online, you can:

• Email: customer.feedback@shropshire.gov.uk
• Write to: Feedback and Insight Team, Shropshire Council, Shirehall, Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY2 6ND
• Telephone customer services: 0345 678 9000