Tell us about our service

Compliments, comments and complaints help us to improve the services we provide our residents and businesses.

You can:

• pay us a compliment
• make a comment
• make a complaint

You can do this using our online form. This is the quickest and easiest way to register a compliment, comment or complaint with us.

Compliments

If you were happy with the service you received from a team or individual within the Councils, we would love to hear about your positive experience.

All compliments that we receive are submitted to a panel, for annual customer service awards, to recognise:

• outstanding contribution to customer services from an individual
• outstanding contribution to customer services from a team

The panel includes:

• our Corporate Manager for Customer Operations
• volunteer officers from across the Councils
• volunteer residents

If you would like to join the panel, please complete our online Customer Panel Request form. We will be in touch within five working days.

Comments

If you have an idea about how we could improve or develop the services we provide, we would be grateful for your opinion. If you would like a response, please provide your contact details with any comment(s) made. We will be in touch within ten working days.

Complaints

Is it a complaint or a service request?

A complaint is where a customer expresses their dissatisfaction - however made - about the standard of service, actions or lack of actions by:

• us as an organisation (Babergh Mid Suffolk District Councils)
• our own staff, or those acting on our behalf

The customer affected may be an individual resident, or a group of residents.

A service request is contact from a customer, that makes us aware of a matter for the first time. It will regard a service offered by the organisation. An example of a service request would be a missed bin collection.

Make a service request

If you think you need to make a service request, please contact us via one of the two relevant links below:

1. Make a report online
2. If you would like to make contact with a specific team, please do so via our online Contact us form. You can select which team you would like to speak with. Any information you provide within your submission will be forwarded directly to them

Register a formal compliment, comment or complaint

How we deal with your complaint

Your can find out more about the different stages and timescales at our webpage here

Continuous Improvement

All feedback that we receive is important to us as it helps us to make improvements. We are committed to learning lessons from the feedback we receive from our customers.

Some of the ways we use your feedback include:

• We report on improvements made to our services every 12 months
• We publish annual Local Government Ombudsman reports

Our policies

In April 2022, the Councils agreed a new Compliments, Comments and Complaints Policy. This policy details how we will deal with your complaint.

We also have a Unreasonable and Persistent Complainant Policy. This policy details our process for designating an unreasonably persistent complainant, and the processes of appeal.