Making a complaint

If you have a complaint, the first thing to do is complain to the council. You can find out how to complain from the council, or you can ask a councillor to help. In most cases, the council must have a chance to sort out the complaint before we can consider it. Councils often have more than one stage in their complaints procedure. You will usually need to complete all stages before we will look at your complaint. See our 'top tips' for making a complaint.

Throughout this section we refer to ‘councils’ and sometimes ‘councillors’, but these terms apply to all authorities that we can investigate and their members.

If you need any help – call the LGO Advice Team on 0300 061 0614 or 0845 602 1983. 
It is open from 8.30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. (Calls to 03 numbers will cost no more than calls to national geographic numbers (starting 01or 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.) 

Help to use our services:

We have arrangements to help you if you have difficulty using our service, for example if you have a disability or if English is not your first language.

For instance, if you need an interpreter, we can arrange this over the telephone. We can also produce letters and reports in large print, in Braille or as a voice recording.

Download the information sheet in the box on the right hand side of this page, or phone the LGO Advice Team on 0300 061 0614 or 0845 602 1983 for more information. (Please note that calls may be recorded for training and quality purposes.)

Our leaflet, ‘Complained to the council? Still not satisfied?’ is available as a download  - we also have a version in EasyRead - see the box on the right hand side of this page. The standard version of the leaflet is also available in large print format, in Braille and on CD-Rom.