Making a Complaint

When making a complaint, it is essential to understand what is meant by the language used by the organisation to whom you are complaining, and well as the firm about whom you are complaining, or of the employer of the person about whom you are complaining.

Remember that the procedures that these organisations operate are set up to not only confuse but also to deflect potential complainants.

Some of the common terms are:

• Time limit. They say that you must complain within so many weeks of an event. Mostly this can be interpreted as "so many weeks after you discover the event". The event must be reasonably discoverable of course.
• Authority. They will say that you are not entitled to complain.
• Wasting time.
• Maladministration includes:
  • unreasonable delay
  • rudeness
  • failure to apply the law or rules properly.
• Acting in a Vexatious Manner [see below]

There may be other failings that are also ‘maladministration’ – the most quoted definition is that of a Cabinet Minister, Richard Crossman, who in 1967 who listed 'bias, neglect, inattention, delay, incompetence, ineptitude, perversity, turpitude and so on'.  However, as a judge - Lord Denning - noted in 1979 'and so on would be a long and interesting list, clearly open-ended, covering the manner in which a decision is reached or discretion is exercised ...'.

The main source of information is the management firm with whom you are dealing:

• Firstly, keep a record of every communication. You should make a "contemporaneous note" or record of telephone calls made and received.
• Secondly, print all "emails" to pdf.
• Lastly, of course keep every piece of paper that comes your way. It is strongly recommended that you scan these and save as a "searchable pdf".

There are a number sources of information:

You have a right to certain information under the various laws etc. Both the following are managed under the UK Information Commissioner's rules.

• Subject Access Request
  https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-get-copies-of-your-data/preparing-and-submitting-your-subject-access-request/
• Freedom of Information Request from from a public authority
  https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/official-information/

Laws etc include:

• The Landlord & Tenant Act.
• Your lease, or the deeds, to your property.
• There may well be other information that you should be sent

The only problem is when you ask for say insurance information, and the management firm simply refuse to supply it, possibly because they have received an unlawful instruction from the free holder.

Next is filing. First there is the big question:

• Are you going to "go electronic" and turn all paper into searchable pdfs - but keep all the paper anyway, or
• Are you going to stay "mixed" - with some stuff electronic and some stuff paper ? NOT recommended.

Assuming you are going to go the electronic route with any paper filed as well. It is suggested that you name "electronic files" as follows:

yyyymmdd_xx_source_recipient_subject, where:

yyyymmddd represents the date of the document [as opposed to the date you received it]
xx is an optional sequential number to get emails of the same day in the correct order.
source and recipient are mnemonics for the people or firms you correspond with. Use capitals like RR for Rendall & Rittner
subject can be the subject or the specific person who you are dealing with, or both.

Note: use underscores NOT spaces.

Don't forget that computers use text - so "01" comes before "1", and "2" comes after "10". Thankyou to Microsoft et al.
"from" should be an acronym - like XXCC - meanning Xxxx Xxxx City Council.
"from" might have an extension like XXCC-initials [of the particular person]. Legally ALL documents from an entity such as XXCC are all deemed to be from the same authority.
"to" should be identical to "from" - so that you can see a conversation.
"subject" should again be an acronym.

It is good practice to make a list of the acronyms you have used.

Introduction

The military have a slogan - SMEAC. It covers the scope of orders received and issued at platoon level - not how the orders are generated, which requires careful planning. SMEAC is translated as follows:

Situation
Mission
Execution
Action
Communications.

The situation is the one you find yourself in. And it is one which you grossly dislike. You may be considering making a complaint, but your instinct tells you do it will probably fail - after all most complaints management systems are NOT about improving things but about protecting the guilty; and secondly that if you go to court the system has an experienced legal team and very very long pockets.

So the mission is simple - get things sorted yourself. This requires setting an objective, or series of objectives - all of which must of course be achievable within whatever constraints one has - time, effort, ability, and money - whether yours or someone else's. The mission requires a plan - and that is what this article is all about.

Execution is an important part: there is no point in having a plan which cannot be executed. And of course there will be lots of information to be provided like where when and how. So the gathering of information before execution is both a painstaking and vital process.

Action. This is where what is going to be done is defined in detail, by whom, and in what order. The details of the plan in other words.

Communications. Who is to say what to whom and when.

About creating a Plan

The first thing to write down is your Objective, which will basically be what you want to achieve and why:

is it for you ?
is it for rectification of a wrong ?
just to obtain an apology ?
or for good old fashioned revenge - an eye for an eye ?
or for the greater good to make sure it never happens to anyone else ?

Before you can create a plan you need to gather all the relevant information.

A note on what is relevant:

The structure of the organisation you are having a problem with - who is who, who reports to who, etc etc.

The relevant rules, statutes, etc, and what may be in the Organisation's rule book. An example is Scottish Water's rule book which is published by a private limited company called CMA [Central Market Agency] - so it does NOT have the authority of Law, but be warned lawyers for the opposition and others will quote it as if it were.

The breaches of the Law, or Rules, and who breached them. It is probable that there will be several.

About Gathering Information

First one has to gather the facts for analysis. Remember, whether its been written down or just said, the ABC rule [supposedly to be the mantra of every policeman]:

Accept Nothing
Believe No one
Challenge Everything

And then there is the standard of proof - or reliability of the information. There are three levels - well two plus the last one: reality.

Civil - on the balance of probability,
Criminal - without any reasonable doubt,
However, for civil servants, the truth absolute and final with no dubiety.

There are a number of ways to gather public information

Freedom of Information request [viz an FOI] - but you cannot go "fishing".
Subject Access Request [viz an SAR] - about yourself.

If you do NOT like the result of the FOI, or SAR, you can always raise an objection.

However, the gathering of information is a hugely time consuming and difficult task.

Indexing of Information

All records should be indexed, and record of conversations made as soon as is possible after it took place, if it was not recorded: and is recorded it should be transcribed as soon as practicable.

Presenting the History

Having sorted out all your information into indexed documents,the firts task is to write a "timeline". This just a list of dates and key events, and where necessary the important documents.

The next task is to write "short stories" about each breach about which you are complaining. This can be a very painful experience. It is often best to write them in the third person, using the acronyms defined above, in the text.

Do not at this stage make allegations, write the facts and only the facts as supported by your information - which should be referenced to the documents: do NOT quote vast sections of the documents, it becomes wholly unreadable to anyone else.

Each story should be written in short sentences, and kept into short paragraphs. It may be worth explaining briefly why something occurred, and what was happening - NOT what you would have liked to happen, NOR anything judgemental.

Presenting the Case

This would be referred to as the indictment in a court of law.

Set out firstly a summary of the events as you see them, and for each one state what laws or rules were broken. Each event should have one or more a stories about them. So in reverse, each story becomes an event. Try not to intermingle them.

You may need then to identify a person and describe their traits - falsification of facts - remember that they will be doing the same to you ! So make sure that you are correct - see the last item under Standard of Proof above.

Having done that, get a third party to review what you have done.

The Plan

Now you are possessed of all of the facts, you can work out what to do with them.

Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable".

It is the effort of planning [and the gathering of information] which is in valuable.

Consider the risks and expense of going to Court, to an Ombudsman [free], or the IC [also free], but also what if they do NOT see things your way. Recent reports suggest that "the system" is loaded against complainants.

Get an outsider to review your efforts, and keep it all in manageable chunks. Such a chunk will fit on one side of A4 paper.

An important general rule is to think about how the recipient may react to what you write (or rather, how you would react). That person may or may not be well-meaning, diligent and intelligent, but is probably overworked, with much else to read and think about. How might you react to abuse? Do not think of all MP's, officials etc as the enemy.

So be brief and concise. Aim for no more than one A4 page, but if there is much supplementary evidence it might go in an Appendix.
Avoid repetition, unhelpful ranting and generalizing beyond what you can actually prove.

If possible, present evidence as exact quotations or at least state that you have it (e.g. from emails, websites, Acts of Parliament, minutes of meetings etc). Avoid merely saying “He/you told me that ....”. Too often such unsupported statements turn out to be untrue - with the whole case collapsing as a consequence.

Years ago in Baltimore, a ward leader calls City Hall to say he has someone who needs a job.

"What can he do?" the mayor asks.

"Nothing," says the leader.

"Good," says the mayor. "We won't have to train him."

From the Baltimore Sun, February 13, 2005 by C. Fraser Smith

Now you may know the type of person who may be handling your complaint

How to Complain

Most visitors to this website have had to complain to public bodies of one kind or another. If the experiences were frustrating, they may also have complained, or are contemplating complaining, to someone else, perhaps their local councilor or Member of Parliament.

Here we try to offer some general advice.

Because the experience can be truly horrendous, associated perhaps with loss of home, health or career, it is important to acknowledge first that it can also be positive, with problems promptly sorted by caring officials. So do not be put off.

The first rule is to make sure that you are complaining to the right person, with the power to act.

Regulatory Bodies receive many complaints that they have no power to handle. Thus they must be about service failure and ‘maladministration’ and they must first have been considered by the Public Service body in question. So be sure to check with the Ombudsman or their website at the start, to save both your time and theirs. In other contexts your constituency MP's may be able to help, but the Parliament generally has no power to consider individual cases.

The second rule is to keep a dated record of everything written and said. Keep all letters and emails, including copies of your own.

The third rule is to give some thought to psychology. A very effective way to get nowhere is to be abusive, because the natural response to attack is to become uncooperative and to ‘put up the shutters’. This does not just apply to the person whom you think has wronged you, but also to any third parties whose assistance you might wish to enlist. People are more likely to help, or be persuaded by, someone who gives the impression of being polite and pleasant. If you are not yourself persuaded by this advice, you could read up on the results of scientific research by social psychologists or, more simply, try a little introspection: think about how you might react to unpleasantness, whether you are guilty or innocent.

Alternatively, you might try imagining yourself to be a council official, for example, and a nice person (as indeed you are, of course) who is accused of making some administrative mistake. You wish to put things right, but you have 103 emails to deal with. The complainant rants abusively at length, then again and again. Soon you cannot bear even to think about the complainant any more. You would rather sort out that problem for that nice Mrs Bucket. The complainant might feel better for having let off steam, but will his or her problem be solved?

Of course, there are incompetent and corrupt officials too, but abusing them does not help either.

Are we suggesting that angry complainants should be two-faced? ‘Restrained and objective’ is a better description. Act in a way that may achieve your goal – and vent your anger on some inanimate object.

In regard to officials and their actions there is not always a clear distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Often the problem is one of ‘unconscious incompetence’, a blind spot for one’s faults like that of an enthusiastic but tone-deaf singer. This could understandably apply to organizations like the Regulatory Body for which the output is no adequate external monitoring.

So far this has been about specific complaints that concern one personally, but members of This article has more general aims – ‘changing the system’ to put it loosely. Here similar considerations apply. It is counterproductive to lambast the very MPs or civil servants whose help you ultimately need. It is pointless to harry MPs or parliamentary bodies hoping that they will take some action that is actually outwith their power. Nor can they be expected to become fired up by every worthy issue; not every issue has its ‘Millie Dowler moment’. We must play by Parliament’s rules when only Parliament can deliver our goals. We must appear to be well-informed and constructive.

As a final hint, it sometimes helps to ask a question in a letter or email as this demands a response.

There was a website [www.howtocomplain.com] that gave general advice on complaining, e.g. to councils and businesses, and also gives specific guidance – to particular British local councils, for example. There was also guidance on your rights.

Here is a link to their archived web site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120922105333/http://howtocomplain.com/regulatorybodies

Are you a "Vexatious" or "Persistent" Complainant - or just Tenacious ?

Many complainants have been described dismissively as constituting vexatious or persistent complainants in relation to their communications with regulatory and parliamentary bodies. This is a way of debasing the complainant and of implying that their arguments are of no consequence. Most serious complainants are indeed tenacious in pursuing their goals and some officials dealt with may be vexed by this, but “vexatious” and “unusually persistent”, and some related terms have a special meaning in psychiatric literature. They refer to a particular category of complainant, possibly fewer than one in twenty, with a tendency to share certain uncommon personality characteristics that can make these people very difficult to deal with.

It is difficult to define to whom this label applies. It is therefore important that the use of such phraseology as a weapon against complainants is combatted. It is also important that one remains “tenacious”, for justified tenacity can be rewarded (i.e. Hillsborough).

The label of “vexatious” is also sometimes used against individual complainants by public officials. It provides an easy way of shutting down an investigation that is in danger of becoming embarrassing.

Several phrases have been used in this general context, including ‘querulant’ or ‘querulous complainant’ as well as ‘vexatious complainant’ and ‘unusually persistent complainant’ (the word ’unusually’ being important here). What are the characteristics of such people? They make an interesting list, but they are also worth noting by any would-be complainant who wishes to avoid being judged as vexatious. You are far more likely to be treated sympathetically and to win your case if you are not tarred by the “vexatious brush”. As you look at the list, you may well think that particular items are perfectly innocuous, justified in some contexts or even potentially helpful. It is therefore important to bear in mind that it is a combination of a number of them together that characterises the vexatious complainant. Here are some of them, taken from a research article (see the first link reference below under "Further Reading" below, by Lester, Wilson, Griffin and Mullen):

Abusive language
Writing letters more than 100 pages long, which are often hard to follow
Numerous telephone calls or letters
Making telephone calls lasting more than an hour
Sending copies of other irrelevant letters
Sending personal character endorsements
Over-use of capital letters and highlighters
Repeated underlining
Numerous inverted commas
Many comments written in margins
Making threats over the phone or in writing
Threatening suicide
Unnecessary repetition
Expressing complaints in an incoherent manner
Involving other agencies
Desire for public recognition of the complainant’s struggles
Demand for retribution or revenge
Use of rhetorical questions

It must be emphasized again that showing just a few of these characteristics should not necessarily brand one as a vexatious or unusually persistent complainant. Most were exhibited by some of the nonvexatious ‘control’ individuals in the study of Lester et al, but to a much lesser degree. There is no excuse for dismissing a complainant or group collectively as vexatious or persistent complainants. Regardless of how one is  judged in this regard, what should ultimately matter is whether the arguments are sound and our information correct.

Much of this article is in essence repeated from http://accountabilityscotland.org.uk/making-a-complaint where there is also find an article on anxiety about complaining.

Further reading:

Lester G, Wilson B, Griffin L and Mullen PE (2004) Unusually persistent complainants. BritishJournal of Psychiatry 184, 352-6.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/184/4/352.short

Australian Ombudsman - Unreasonable Complainant Conduct Report – June 2009 - no longer available, but their good practice guide on Managing complex complainant behaviour is available [October 2022]
https://www.ombudsman.vic.gov.au/learn-from-us/practice-guides/managing-complex-complainant-behaviour/

An example in Scotland: Unacceptable Actions Policy - now called Complaints handling practice guide:
https://www.spso.org.uk/complaints-handling-practice-guide

Skilling G, Øfstegaard M, Brodie S, Thomson L. Unusually Persistent Complainants against thePolice in Scotland. This is now to be found at: https://www.sipr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Unusually-Persistent-Complainants-against-the-Police-in-Scotland.pdf.you

Why Case studies

Case studies are needed in order to define what is generically going wrong.

The last part of a case study is the "Preventive Action". That is what society needs to make an organisation do in order to prevent another similar occurrence.

How might that happen ? One way is to make proposals for changes in the Law, or Rules of Conduct, or Byelaws, or what ever needs to be amended.

Writing a Case Study

A Case Study is NOT a complaint.

It is a means to an end as is indicated above.

A Case study should contain FIVE elements.

• A description of what happened - a brief history of events only.
• Next is a description of reactions - what exactly did the offending party do or not do.
• Then a description of your expectation - what should the offending party have done or not done.
• This is a necessary part: what should be done to CORRECT the situation: this might be nothing - a wrong leg amputated cannot be replaced. If permission to erect a building was given, but the building has NOT yet been erected, the correction should be to retract the permission granted.
• Lastly and most importantly, what can be done to prevent such a re-occurrence. In the case of the leg wrongly amputated it might be to insist that the hospital's checking procedures are improved, or if they exist to make sure that they are properly implemented; whereas in the case of a planning permission reversal it might be a matter of insisting on better staff training. The possibilities are endless.

About Preventive Action Plans

Whatever you want to recommend must be

• Sensible, and
• Feasible.

Wanting the impossible is impossible.

Demanding that which is possible, but is also fair and reasonable is most likely to gain acceptance from the authorities.

In order to achieve this interaction with the appropriate authority is a must. The existing rules and regulations need to be determined.

It may be that during the course of the events leading to the complaint [upon which the case study is based], the rules and regulations were changed - possibly as a means of escape by the authorities. Examples of this are:

• Sacking [or retiring early] an employee, so that they cannot face disciplinary charges.
  This is a nonsense as the authority remains culpable whether or not the specific offender is still employed.
• Changing the rules as time proceeds so as to exclude a complaint.
  This is also a nonsense. The rules in force at the time of the events is what is important.

However, if the changes that have been made are beneficial in prevent a future occurrence, then no preventive measures are necessary - they have already been implemented. Whereas if the changes that have been made are evasive in nature, then that is wholly unacceptable.