East Dunbartonshire Council provides a vast range of services
for the people of the area. We are fully committed to a programme
of continual improvement in all of our service areas and your
comments and suggestions will help us improve our services.
We do our best to maintain high standards and hopefully you will
never have cause to complain. However, occasionally things can go
wrong and if they do we want to know so that we can put things
right as soon as possible and make sure it doesn't happen
again.
Our aim is to:
- make it easy for anyone to make a comment, suggestion or
complaint
- solve problems as close to where they occur as possible
- pass compliments to the right people
- prevent problems happening again and also encourage good
practice.
Should you wish to make a comment, compliment or complaint, a
copy of the Council's Complaints Procedure and form
has been provided below:
When should you complain?
You should complain:
- if we have failed to do something we should have done
- if we have agreed to do something but haven't
- if we have given a poor service
- if we have treated you unfairly or discourteously.
Routine enquiries about Council services such as a request for a
Council house repair or advising us of a pothole in the road are
not regarded as complaints but as requests for service. Similarly,
an objection to a planning or licensing application or decision is
not a complaint but is part of the statutory process where an
objector is entitled to make comment to the service concerned, eg.
to the Head of Partnership & Planning in the case of a planning
application.
How to make a comment or
complaint
If you know who provides the service you want to comment on, why
not talk to them to see if they can put things right for you? In
many cases, we can resolve the issue there and then. Most problems
can be quickly sorted out in this informal way.
- contact services directly by phone or email
If you are not satisfied, or feel you cannot talk directly to
the Service involved, you can contact us by:
Director of Corporate and Customer Services
East Dunbartonshire Council
Tom Johnston House
Civic Way
Kirkintilloch
G66 4TJ.
What happens when you
complain?
We will deal with any comments and complaints about our services as
quickly as possible.
When you contact us, we will ensure that your comments and
complaints are directed to the right person. We may be able to give
you an answer straight away but we may need to have more time to
look at what you have told us, particularly if your complaint
involves more than one service.
In that case, someone will write to you within twenty working
days of us hearing from you. We will either give you a full answer
or give you a progress report and explain why we need more time to
look into what you have told us. We will also tell you when you can
expect a full answer.
We will treat your complaints in confidence. Details will be
given only to those members of staff who need to know in order to
investigate it.
Some complaints, such as those about schools and Social Work,
are covered by law.
For complaints relating to Social Work and the Housing Service
please select the following links:
What If you are still not
satisfied?
We hope our complaints
procedure will help you to solve any problems you may have with our
services quickly and satisfactorily. If we are wrong we will
apologise and if possible, put matters right. We will also look at
our procedures again to see what lesson we can learn from your
complaint.
If you are still not satisfied and wish to take your complaint
further you can request that your complaint is investigated by the
Head of Service. If you are still unhappy, you can request a review
by the Service's Strategic Director who will investigate and take
an independent view of your complaint and the solution offered. We
would hope your complaint would be able to be resolved by this
stage however, the Council's complaints procedure includes a final
stage where you can appeal to the Chief Executive.
The Scottish Public Services
Ombudsman
The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman investigates complaints
about the way particular cases have been handled. You can make your
complaint directly to him at any time, but he will usually only
take action when our own investigations have been completed.
Ombudsman Reports on East
Dunbartonshire
In the event that the Ombudsman carries
out an investigation, reports on complaints or finds against East
Dunbartonshire Council's services it will be published here. This
will be in a hyperlink format to the Scottish Public Services
Ombudsman (SPSO) website where the full report will be
published.
Currently there are no reports by the SPSO on this Council's
services
This satisfies the Council's requirement in terms of Section 15 (4)
of the Scottish Public Sector Ombudsman Act 2002
The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman can be contacted at:
The Scottish Public Services
Ombudsman
4 Melville Street
Edinburgh
EH3 7NS
Tel: 0800 377 7330
Website: http://www.spso.org.uk