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Complaints, compliments and suggestions


Service requests and reporting issues

If you need to contact one of our services about an issue or report then please do this directly with the service. Any service requests submitted as a complaint will not be investigated as a complaint.

To find the details you need you can:

Give us your feedback

We want to provide good quality services for everyone, but things can sometimes go wrong. If they do, we need to know so we can put them right and learn from them. If you are unhappy with any of our services, you need to complete our complaints, compliments or suggestions form.

To find out how we deal with all of the feedback we receive you can read our Feedback Policy (PDF, 221KB) .

Types of feedback

Suggestions

If you would like to make a suggestion about how we can improve, please let us know by using the complaints, compliments or suggestions form .

If you have had a pleasant experience please tell us about it. We like to hear when people compliment us on the quality of our service and of the special attention given by our employees. Compliments help us understand what we are doing well and what our customers really value and help us evidence examples of good practice and improve other areas of the council.

Compliments

To submit a compliment please complete our complaints, compliments or suggestions form. Compliments are passed to the relevant Head of Service who will pass the feedback to the service manager or employee and thank them for providing excellent service to the customer.

The section will not deal with the following as a complaint:

Benefits – if your concern relates to the amount of benefit you have been awarded, an amount of overpaid housing benefit or the date you benefit is paid from, then these are all covered under the Benefits Appeals procedure.

Council Tax -if you have any concerns over your account including the amount you have to pay, when you have to pay, if monies have not arrived on your account or issues relating to overdue amounts then you should contact the Council Tax section on [email protected]. More details can be found at Council Tax.

Non-Domestic Rates (Business Rates) – If you have any issues or concerns over your account in relation to the amount you have to pay, when you have to pay or you believe you should be entitled to a relief or exemption. Please contact the Non-Domestic Rates team at [email protected]. Further information about business rates can be found on the Business Rates page.

Debt Management – Any issues relating to overdue amounts should be addressed by contacting the Debt Management team on [email protected] This includes any concerns relating to Court Costs and Enforcement Agents Costs. To tell us about any  vulnerability or hardship issues regarding attachment of earnings you should contact us on [email protected].  Also if your issue relates to Freeman of the Land or Contract to pay Council Tax, this should be sent to [email protected] Further information can be found at Can’t afford to pay your council tax bill.

If you are unhappy with the treatment or service you have received from NHS services, or adult social care services (for North East Lincolnshire only), you have the right to make a complaint, have it looked into and receive a response, and this is written into the NHS Constitution on GOV.UK, and the North East Lincolnshire Council Constitution. You can raise your concerns immediately by speaking with the staff involved in your care who will attempt to resolve your complaint informally. Alternatively, you can contact the Humber and North Yorkshire ICB’s Experience Team at Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership.

If the concerns you are raising relate to children’s social care services the complaint may be progressed as a Statutory Children’s Social Care Complaint. Further details regarding this process can be found on the Children’s social care complaints page.

The Multi Agency Complaints Protocol (PDF, 51KB)  is applied when feedback requires a co-ordinated handling across all organisations such as North East Lincolnshire Council, Clinical Commissioning Group and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS foundation trust.

This protocol is intended to ensure that any feedback about a jointly provided service, or that involves services provided by more than one organisation, is dealt with seamlessly, promptly and clearly through a co-ordinated process, and as stated in the Local Authority Social Service and NHS Complaints (England) Regulations 2009.

Complaints about Elected Members and Parish Councillors are conducted under the Code of Conduct.

If you wish to complain about any aspect of how we have processed your personal information or applied the data protection regulations please go to Data Protection and privacy.

Find details in our housing section.

If your child has a problem at school you should be able to sort it out through an informal discussion with your child’s teacher. If you can’t resolve the problem informally, the school will have a formal complaints procedure that you can follow.

If your complaint is about the head teacher, then you should contact the chair of the governing body of the school to consider your concern/complaint. If the complaint is about the conduct of a governor, this should be referred to the chair of the governing body in the first instance. The chair will investigate your concerns. If the complaint is about the chair of the governing body, this will be investigated by the vice chair.

To complain about the governing body as a whole go to GOV.UK – Complain about a school .

Our corporate complaints procedure does not provide compensation if you have suffered damage or loss.

If it is your intention to make a claim then you should submit this to our insurance team.

Making a complaint through the normal complaints process may delay the response.

If you are unhappy with the handling of your Freedom of Information request you should follow the appeal rights given with the response you received or contact [email protected].

If you have exhausted all stages of the Corporate or Statutory Complaints processes and feel that your complaint has still not been satisfactorily resolved, you can take your issue to the Local Government and social Care Ombudsman.

If you are contacting us to raise an issue with a missed collection you should do this via the online form available on the Missed collections page.


Related documents

Complaints, compliments or suggestions form

Complaints, Compliments and Suggestions Form (PDF, 48KB)  – Print and return to us by email or post

Customer Commitment (PDF, 2MB)

Feedback Policy (PDF, 221KB)

Related websites

Local Government Ombudsman

Contact details

Complaints, Municipal Offices, Town Hall Square, Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, DN31 1HU

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: 01472 326298 option 2 then option 1

Telephone opening times: Monday to Friday 8:30am to 4:30pm, except bank holidays