How to make a complaint
How to report a problem and who to contact with complaints about council services.
Report a problem
If you're contacting us about an issue for the first time, please get in touch with the service directly so that we have the opportunity to put things right.
Go to our report a problem page to tell a council service about an issue.
Services with separate complaints procedures
The services below deal with complaints in different ways.
- Adult social care and safeguarding
- Children's services and safeguarding
- Councillors
- Government agencies
- Health services
- Noise nuisance
- Schools, universities and colleges
- Services or goods provided by a private company
- Taxis in Brighton & Hove
- Transport
How to make a complaint about other council services
All other council services follow our corporate complaints procedure.
If you have tried reporting the problem and it has not been resolved, you can complete our online form to make a complaint.
Telling us about your issue will not have a negative effect on the service you receive.
We welcome any feedback that helps us improve and maintain high standards.
- Make a complaint - we'll respond to your complaint within 10 working days
How we deal with complaints
We have processes to follow to make sure that every complaint is dealt with fairly and sorted out as quickly as possible. For most complaints, there are different stages that we follow.
Informal stage
Where possible, the Customer Feedback Team will do their best to resolve the issue for you. If you are not happy with the outcome of this you can go through a formal complaints procedure.
Formal complaint - first stage
Your complaint will be handled by the service you're complaining about. You can talk to them again if you are unhappy with parts of their reply.
Formal complaint - second stage
If you are still unhappy you can ask to take your complaint to Stage 2 where it will be looked at by the Customer Feedback Team, who are independent of the department your complaint is about.
We aim to respond to complaints within 20 working days at this second stage, if the matter is complex and likely to take longer we will keep you informed.
The Ombudsman
If you're still not satisfied with the response you can approach the Local Government Ombudsman or the Housing Ombudsman Service (if your complaint is about housing).
View the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code self-assessment.
For more information read our Corporate Complaints Policy and Procedure.