Complaints and compliments

Thank you for visiting this page

You’ve come to this page to provide critical feedback about the council, and we thank you.

We need people like you to point out our mistakes. In response to your feedback we’ll fix the problem, and as a result provide better services.

You can also use this page to provide compliments and praise if it’s appropriate.

Submit a complaint or compliment

Please review this whole page before submitting your comment as any questions you may have might be answered.

To submit a complaint, or a compliment, please select a service you want to talk to us about from the list below:

Submit a complaint or give a compliment

To submit a complaint or to give a compliment, select a service you want to talk to us about from the list below:

  • Access Harrow
  • Adult Social services
  • Bins, waste and recycling
  • Business rates
  • Children's social services
  • Concessionary Travel
  • Council Tax
  • Electoral services
  • Environmental health
  • Housing benefits
  • Housing services
  • Leisure services
  • Libraries
  • Parking fines
  • Parking permits
  • Parks, trees or verges
  • Planning
  • Schools and education
  • Street cleaning
  • Street lighting
  • Traffic management
  • Website issues

How we handle complaints

We address complaints in one of two ways.

Stage 1

If any aspect of one of our services doesn’t meet your expectations you can complain about it. At that point one of our staff members will do their best to resolve the issue. However if the matter isn’t resolved and you wish to escalate it, you’ll need to submit the complaint formally via our online complaints form.

After formal submission your complaint will be routed to an appropriate officer for review. For example if the complaint is about a member of staff then your complaint will be sent to their manager.

We will acknowledge your complaint within three days, and provide a full written reply within 15 working days.

If the service is being delivered via a third party, we stipulate for them to comply with the above. In any event we always aspire to be open and honest, admitting fault when things have gone wrong, and set out measures to put things right.

Stage 2

If the matter hasn’t been resolved by the stage 1 action, you can escalate your complaint. You can request it to be reviewed by a more senior member of staff. In most cases this will be the service manager or a designated officer. All stage 2 complaints must be copied into the corporate complaints manager. Once approved we acknowledge it within three working days, and a full written reply sent within 20 working days.

For further details please see the policies:

What can you complain about?

A complaint can be submitted if you are not happy with the quality of work, for example:

  • A service we delivered
  • Our failure to deliver a service
  • The standard work provided by the council, or one of our contractors.

For information about our customer service commitments, see our customer service commitments page.

What can’t you complain about

Examples of what is not covered by our corporate complaints procedure include:

  • day to day service requests or reporting faults (for example a faulty street light)
  • where an  appeal procedure already exists to deal with the issue, such as an appeal concerning a parking ticket, a planning application or a Housing benefit decision
  • formal complaints about the service, or a lack of service, provided by the Adult's or Children's services departments, for which there are statutory complaints procedures
  • where the council has no power or duty to provide service 
  • complaints about councillors 
  • complaints about schools

If we are unable to investigate your complaint we will let you know and advise you accordingly.

Compliments

You may want to congratulate us or an individual officer for a job well done or service provided. If you do, we’ll respond to your praise within 10 working days of receiving it.

We'll also pass on your compliments to the relevant staff member, or service area, and encourage others to follow their example. 

Other complaints

The following complaints are dealt with on other pages: