East Suffolk Council

Customer feedback

Covid-19
We are sorry if you have been inconvenienced by any of the changes to our service during restrictions for COVID-19 (Coronavirus). We will not usually respond to comments and complaints about these restrictions. Please see our COVID-19 webpage for information and updates on the council’s response to the virus.

We are committed to providing excellent customer service first time, every time and we welcome feedback, positive or negative.

We know that by listening to our customers, we can learn what we are doing well, and where we need to improve. Understanding the experiences of our customers is an important way for us to continuously review and improve the services we provide to the people who live in, work in, and visit East Suffolk.

Where things have gone wrong, we want to put them right for you as quickly and simply as possible. Before making a complaint, please contact us to see if we can do this.

Send us a compliment, comment or complaint online If you are unable to set up a "My East Suffolk" account you can also send us feedback by email, by phone, in person at one of our Customer Service points, by post or via social media.

How we respond to your feedback 

You can read a brief description below. If you would like more information, please see our Customer Feedback Policy.

Compliments and comments

We log your compliments and comments and send them to the relevant manager. Compliments and comments help us learn what we are doing well and where we can make improvements. We will use your feedback to:

• keep doing what we do well;

• learn where we can make improvements to make services better and easier to access for all our customers;

• make positive changes.

Complaints

Sometimes we make a mistake that can be sorted out quickly and simply. If this is the case you should not need to make a complaint. We will take the details and make sure that we put things right for you. We call this "early resolution".

If we cannot put things right quickly and simply, we will log your complaint. We have a 2-stage complaint process. 

Stage 1 - Investigation

A team leader or manager will investigate and reply to you, usually within 15 working days. If we need to put things right or make improvements we will let you know how and when we will do this. 

Stage 2 - Internal review/appeal

If you are not satisfied with our reply to your stage 1 complaint, you can ask for a review within 1 month of the date of the reply. We will not usually investigate appeals received later than one month from the stage 1 response.

We can only investigate an internal review/ appeal if you give us details of why you are still dissatisfied and what you think we need to do to put things right. 

A Senior Manager, Head of Service or Director will investigate, and the Chief Executive will sign off our reply. We will usually reply within 20 working days. If we need to put things right or make improvements we will let you know how and when we will do this. 

There will be some cases where we cannot come to a different conclusion from the stage 1 response. In this case, we will let you know that you have completed our complaints process and that you can contact the Ombudsman without a stage 2 investigation. 

Ombudsman

If you have completed our internal complaints process and feel that we have not resolved your issues you can contact the Ombudsman*:

• For complaints about the council as a landlord (e.g. housing rent, repairs, maintenance) contact the Housing Ombudsman Service
• For all other complaints, contact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman 

Data sharing

To investigate properly, we might need to share your complaint, including your contact details, with one of our partner organisations:  Norse Group, Anglia Revenues Partnership (ARP) or Places Leisure.