Have your say
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Customer care
We welcome feedback and we use it, where possible, to help us improve future council services.
We want to hear from you when you think we have done a decent job but also when you feel we could have done better. You can be assured that you will be:
- Listened to.
- Treated honestly, fairly, and politely.
- Given help and advice as quickly as we can.
- Your individual needs and right to privacy will be respected.
- Kept informed about what is happening
You have the option to provide us with a compliment, comment, concern, or complaint- and an explanation for what each of these are can be found below:
A compliment is a polite expression of praise or admiration for a service received. A compliment could be about a person, a team, a service, a single event, or a chain of circumstances that made your experience a positive one.
If you would like to congratulate us or an individual officer for a job well done or service provided. Then you can do this by completing our online form. The compliment form can be found under the ‘Give us your views’ tab.
A comment is a verbal or written remark expressing an opinion or reaction about a standard of service, policy or decision made by Tewkesbury Borough Council. You will receive an automatic reply to let you know we have received your comment within five working days, but you may not receive a response from us unless you have ticked the box requesting one.
If you would like to submit a comment, please use our online form. The comment form can be found under the ‘Give us your views’ tab.
Raising a concern allows you to tell us about something which is bothering you, but you don’t feel it needs to go down our more formal complaints procedure route. This might be something that you need further advice or information on – concerns are sent directly to the service area your concern is relating to so they can investigate it as quickly as possible. There isn’t a specific response time set, but we do aim to respond to all concerns within five working days.
An example of a concern is if your bin has been missed on more than one occasion.
When a concern is raised, if it needs investigating to resolve the issue, we will let you know this and provide an appropriate timescale.
If you would like to submit a comment, please use our online form. The concerns form can be found under the ‘Give us your views’ tab.
Formal complaints
We aim to provide a high standard of service, but try as we might, we may not always get it right first time.
If you wish to provide general feedback about one of our services, including compliments then you can do this through comments, concerns or compliments.
A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction that requires a response about the standards of service, actions or lack of action, by the council or its staff.
For example where:
- We have not responded to a service request or we have failed to deliver a service to you.
- The service we delivered did not meet your expectation.
- You were treated in an unprofessional manner.
There are some complaints that we are not able to investigate but if we are unable to, we will let you know and advise you what the correct process is.
Examples of the sort of issues not covered by our formal complaint’s procedure include:
- Day to day service requests or reporting faults (e.g. noise complaints, fly tipping, missed bins etc). These can be reported directly through our report it system or contact our customer services team on 01684 295010.
- Services handled by other councils or organisations e.g. car parking fines, pot holes, street lighting, social care etc.
- Complaints about elected councillors- please visit our Councillors’ code of conduct page or contact the council’s monitoring officer on 01684 295010 or email customerservices@tewkesbury.gov.uk.
- Allegations of financial impropriety or criminal activity by the council. Please contact the council’s Section 151 Officer and/or an internal auditor, monitoring officer or Chief Executive. You can do this by emailing customerservices@tewkesbury.gov.uk.
- Complaints about national government policy.
- If you disagree with the way we have calculated your benefits entitlement, please visit the Benefits page.
- To appeal a licensing decision (premises, personal or taxi license), please visit the licensing appeal page or email licensing@tewkesbury.gov.uk.
- To appeal a planning application decision, the written decision notice will give details of the rights of appeal for the applicant. If you are unhappy with the decision but you are not an applicant you have the right for a judicial review within six weeks from the date of the planning permission decision. Please visit the Planning page for more details, further information can also be found here.
- To appeal a Homeseeker Plus application decision please refer to their separate appeal process.
Before using our formal complaints process, please try to contact the service or team at the council that has caused your dissatisfaction to see if an informal solution can be found. Alternatively, if you think it might be more appropriate to submit a comment or concern- comments and concerns are less formal, but we still take them seriously, then you can do this by completing the forms through our portal.
The easiest and quickest way to make a formal complaint is to use our online formal complaints form. This can be accessed through our self service portal under the ‘Give us your views’ tab.
Alternatively, complaints can be made in writing to:
Complaints,
Customer Services,
Tewkesbury Borough Council,
Public Services Centre,
Gloucester Road,
Tewkesbury.
GL20 5TT.
You can also email customer.services@tewkesbury.gov.uk. We do not accept complaints over the phone or through social media.
We treat all complaints with respect and in confidence. Any personal data gathered as part of a formal complaint will be handled in accordance with the council’s Data Protection Policy. We may share some personal data, where necessary, with third parties where it is appropriate for investigating and resolving a complaint.
Should you require assistance in submitting a complaint please contact our customer services team on 01684 295010.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman have some top tips for making a complaint on their website. These can be found here.
We have two stages to our formal complaints process these are:
Stage one- investigation by the service manager or team leader
Your complaint will be acknowledged within three working days with a unique complaints reference number. Please ensure this is quoted on any correspondence you have with us in relation to your complaint.
A full investigation will take place by the service manager/ team leader involved and we will respond within 20 working days.
If your complaint requires a lot of investigation, then we may take longer but we will always keep you informed.
Stage two- investigation by an independent senior manager
If you are not happy with the response, we have sent to you, you can ask us to review your complaint again.
For your complaint to be taken to stage two your request should include:
- Your complaint reference number
- Details of why you disagree with the stage one response.
- What you would like us to reconsider.
We will acknowledge your request for a second investigation and inform you of the name and contact details of the officer assigned the complaint.
Your complaint will be investigated by an independent senior manager who was not involved in the original investigation.
We aim to respond fully to your stage two request for a review as soon as possible and within 20 working days.
If your request requires a lot of investigation, then we may take longer but we will always inform you of this.
If you are not satisfied that the council’s reply to your stage 2 complaint resolves your issues, you may contact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which is an independent, impartial and free service.
You can do this by visiting their website: www.lgo.org.uk/how-to-complain
Or by telephone: 0300 0610614
(Calls to 03 numbers will cost no more than calls to national geographic numbers (starting 01 or 02) from both mobiles and landlines and will be included as part of any inclusive call minutes or discount schemes in the same way as geographic calls. Please note that calls may be recorded for training and quality purposes).
Alternatively, you can write to:
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman
PO BOC 4771
Coventry
CV4 0EH
To investigate properly, we might need to share your complaint, including your contact details, with one of our partner organisations. Please read our privacy statement for more information.
The council regularly monitors its performance for complaints and on an annual basis produces a ‘Have your say’ report. Alongside this the council receives an annual review letter from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. The most recent reports can be found under our performance page here.