If you are a young person in care or a care leaver and you would like an advocate to help with your complaint, you can refer yourself, or a professional can refer you to Onside Advocacy.
Onside Advocacy's Access Hub
Stage 1
We will contact you to acknowledge formal complaints relating to Children’s Social Care Services within 3 working days.
The statutory period for completing an investigation and responding to complaints relating to Children’s Social Care Services is 10 working days but can be extended to 20 working days in line with statutory guidance.
If the complaint is complex and the senior officer requires more time to investigate the matter, we will keep you informed until the matter is concluded.
Stage 2
If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of your complaint response at stage 1, you may ask for your complaint to be reconsidered.
In order to request a stage 2 review of your complaint you must be able to show
- the reasons why you disagree with the Stage 1 response
- the potential outcomes you would hope to see from escalating your complaint
This request should be made within 20 working days of the date of the stage 1 response. Details of how to raise a stage 2 complaint will be included in the stage 1 response that you receive.
The statutory period for completing an investigation and responding to stage 2 complaints relating to Children’s Social Care Services is 25 working days but can be extended to 65 working days in line with statutory guidance.
If the complaint is complex and the senior officer requires more time to investigate the matter, we will keep you informed until the matter is concluded.
Stage 3
If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of your Children’s Social Care Services complaint response at stage 2, you may ask for your complaint to be reviewed at an Independent Review Panel.
In order to request a stage 3 review of your complaint you must be able to show:
- the reasons why you disagree with the Stage 2 response
- any potential outcomes you would like to see from escalating your complaint
This request should be made within 20 working days of the date of the stage two response. Details of how to raise a stage 3 complaint will be included in the stage 2 response that you receive.
The statutory period for holding the Independent Review Panel is 30 working days from the date of your request for a stage 3 review.
If after this, you are dissatisfied with the Council's response to your complaint you can go to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
Complaints
Complaints
We will do all we can to resolve your complaint promptly and effectively.
If you are unhappy or concerned about something Worcestershire County Council is responsible for, then there are different ways to tell us.
Reporting an issue
Some issues are best raised first as service requests. A service request is when you want something done now, next or in the future. A service request gives us a chance to resolve your issue before it becomes a complaint.
An issue that affected you on a highway
You should use the Highways reporting system to tell us about issues you have spotted, including if a road issue has affected you or your vehicle, or caused you expense.
Highways reporting
A problem with a shop or business
If you want to report a trading standards breach, either contact Citizen’s Advice to make a referral, or see our Trading Standards page:
Worcestershire Trading Standards Services
Things that other organisations handle
If your complaint relates to one of the following areas then please raise it with the relevant organisation as the County Council will not be able to deal with your complaint
Street bins and bin collections
The county council does not collect or maintain bins, so please select the appropriate local area below:
Noise, smoke, pests or other public nuisance
You should report these first to Worcestershire Regulatory Services.
Worcestershire Regulatory Services
A problem with public bus services
For complaints about public (non-school) buses, you should first complain to the bus company concerned. If you have already done this and received a response, you can contact the independently run organisation Bus Users UK.
Bus Users link
Car parks or on-street parking
Your local district, city or borough council is in charge of enforcement of street parking rules and operates certain public car parks. If you are unhappy about a council car park, or enforcement actions, contact them by selecting the right council below:
Problems with the Health Service
For compliments, complaints and feedback about Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust you can contact their Patient Relations Team:
Patient Relations Team from NHS Trust
Details about how to compliment or complain about Herefordshire and Worcestershire CCG:
Compliments and complaints from Herefordshire and Worcestershire CCG
For compliments and complaints about care in Worcestershire NHS Acute Trust:
Complaints from Worcestershire NHS Acute Trust
Complaints about schools
To complain about a state school, you should first approach the school itself. More details are here about what to do if you are still unhappy after completing the school's complaints process.
Complain about a school: State schools - GOV.UK
Complaints for Worcestershire County Council
A complaint is when you are unhappy with something Worcestershire County Council did (or did not do) in the past and you think the council needed to act differently. When you raise a complaint, you are asking us to take some time to investigate the reason for something that went wrong and get back to you with our findings.
Some complaints are dealt with separately to our main complaints process:
Complaints about Councillors
If you think a county councillor has breached the code of conduct, you can report this to the Monitoring Officer.
Councillor Conduct
Complaints about the Police and Crime Panel
All complaints about the conduct of the Police and Crime Commissioner or Deputy PCC can be made online.
Police and Crime Commissioners Complaint form
Your complaint must relate to the conduct of the Police and Crime Commissioner. If you have an ongoing complaint, we would normally require that complaint process to be completed before it would be considered under the Panel's procedure.
There are separate procedures for the following complaints:
Appealing an EHCP decision
If you are unhappy with:
Then you can look at your appeal options.
EHCP appeals
Other exclusions
We don’t investigate the following under the complaints process:
If your complaint is about a Worcestershire County Council service that you or your child uses then you can submit it below.
If you are complaining on behalf of someone else who uses a service, we may need to contact them to know they consent to this. If they are someone else’s child, we will probably need consent from a person with parental responsibility.
Before you submit your complaint, here are some things to include if you know them. If you are not sure about these, check your records before you fill in the form.
If you have more than one issue you are unhappy about, then try to list them out as separate points.
Don’t forget to tell us the name (including surname) of each person affected. Please also tell us if you have an access issue that means you need your response in a particular format.
Make a complaint
Alternatively you can contact us by telephone, in writing or in person using the contact details on our contact us page.
If you make a complaint, we will:
Complaint procedures
Depending on the nature of your complaint, different processes are followed.
Adult Social Care Services
We will contact you to acknowledge formal complaints relating to Adult Social Care Services within 3 working days.
The statutory period for completing an investigation and responding to complaints relating to Adult Social Care Services is up to 6 months. If an investigation is carried out, then you will also receive a copy of the report.
If the complaint is complex and the senior officer requires more time to investigate the matter, we will keep you informed until the matter is concluded.
If after this, you are dissatisfied with the Council's response to your complaint you can go to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
Children's Social Care Services
If you are a young person in care or a care leaver and you would like an advocate to help with your complaint, you can refer yourself, or a professional can refer you to Onside Advocacy.
Onside Advocacy's Access Hub
Stage 1
We will contact you to acknowledge formal complaints relating to Children’s Social Care Services within 3 working days.
The statutory period for completing an investigation and responding to complaints relating to Children’s Social Care Services is 10 working days but can be extended to 20 working days in line with statutory guidance.
If the complaint is complex and the senior officer requires more time to investigate the matter, we will keep you informed until the matter is concluded.
Stage 2
If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of your complaint response at stage 1, you may ask for your complaint to be reconsidered.
In order to request a stage 2 review of your complaint you must be able to show
This request should be made within 20 working days of the date of the stage 1 response. Details of how to raise a stage 2 complaint will be included in the stage 1 response that you receive.
The statutory period for completing an investigation and responding to stage 2 complaints relating to Children’s Social Care Services is 25 working days but can be extended to 65 working days in line with statutory guidance.
If the complaint is complex and the senior officer requires more time to investigate the matter, we will keep you informed until the matter is concluded.
Stage 3
If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of your Children’s Social Care Services complaint response at stage 2, you may ask for your complaint to be reviewed at an Independent Review Panel.
In order to request a stage 3 review of your complaint you must be able to show:
This request should be made within 20 working days of the date of the stage two response. Details of how to raise a stage 3 complaint will be included in the stage 2 response that you receive.
The statutory period for holding the Independent Review Panel is 30 working days from the date of your request for a stage 3 review.
If after this, you are dissatisfied with the Council's response to your complaint you can go to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
Other Council Services
Stage 1
We will contact you to acknowledge formal complaints relating to other Council Services within 5 working days.
Your complaint will be investigated by a council officer.
The normal period for completing an investigation and responding to complaints relating to other Council Services is 20 working days (10 to 15 working days from April 2026). However, if the complaint is complex and the investigator requires more time, we will let you know.
Stage 2
If you remain dissatisfied after our Stage 1 response, you can request escalation, stating the reasons why you disagree with the Stage 1 response. We will decide whether or not to investigate further within 5 days.
We do not always agree to investigate further at Stage 2, but when we do, the normal period for completing the investigation and responding is 25 working days. Stage 2 investigations are normally undertaken by a council officer.
If after this you remain dissatisfied with the Council's response to your complaint you can go to the Local Government Ombudsman.
Complaints relating to Freedom of Information Request Internal Reviews, Data Breaches or Subject Access Requests cannot proceed to Stage 2. Instead these can be escalated to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
What will happen to my complaint?
What will happen if my complaint is upheld?
If we have failed to provide our agreed standards or quality of service, we will acknowledge and apologise for this. We will then set out actions we will take to put things right and improve our services. This could include:
What will happen if my complaint is not upheld?
Where we have investigated and do not uphold the complaint, we will:
Persistent and vexatious complainants
Occasionally customers may pursue a complaint in an unreasonable way which impacts on the council resources and capacity to respond to the complaint effectively. Examples include:
If a complainant is considered to have become vexatious, they will be referred to a nominated officer who will decide on the action to be taken on any further involvement with the council on this matter.
Annual reports
Every year we produce annual reports on the operation of the Complaints and Representations Procedures.
The latest reports are available below.
Corporate complaints procedure
These documents explain the general standards we use when handling corporate complaints, comments and compliments (it is different to how we handle Adults Statutory or Children’s Social Care Statutory complaints).
Download:
Share this page