Persistent Complainants

Gedling Borough Council are committed to dealing with all complaints fairly and impartially and to provide a high quality service to those who make them. We want to ensure that any person who makes a complaint is satisfied that their complaint is dealt with this way and we do not normally limit the contact that complainants have with the Council.

However there are a small number of complainants who, because of the frequency or manner of their contact with the Council, hinder our consideration of their or other people’s complaints and place an unreasonable amount of time on the Council in dealing with the matter. We refer to such complainants as ‘unreasonable persistent complainants’ and, on an exception basis we will take action to limit their contact with the Council.

The decision to restrict contact to the Council will be taken at Head of Service level or above and will normally follow a prior warning to the complainant. Any restriction imposed will be appropriate and proportionate. The options we are most likely to consider are:

• requesting contact in a particular form (for example, letters only)
• requiring contact to take place with a named officer of the council only
• restricting personal contact to specified days and times
• asking the complainant to enter in to an agreement about their future contact with us

In all cases where we decide to treat someone as an unreasonable persistent complainant, we will write to tell the complainant why we believe that their behaviour warrants this, what action we are taking, the duration of that action, and we will also tell them how they can challenge the decision if they disagree with it.

Where a complaint whose case is closed persists in communicating with the Council about it, we may decide to end contact with the complaint on the matter. In these cases, we will read all correspondence from the complainant, but unless there are new evidence which effects our view or decision on the complaint we will only acknowledge it or place it on file with no acknowledgement.

New complaints from persons who have been placed under the unreasonable persistent complaints policy will be treated on their individual circumstances.