The call
One of our officers has arranged to take a complaint from you over the telephone.
During the telephone appointment, we will take relevant information from you.
The officer will complete the attached complaints form based on information you provide during the appointment: Service User Complaint Form
If you prefer to complete the form yourself instead, you are welcome to do so and send it to us either by email
or by post to:
Public Services Ombudsman for Wales
l Ffordd Yr Hen Gae Pencoed, Bridgend CF35 SLJ
The officer who calls you will not be able to give you a decision about your complaint at the time although may advise you if it is unlikely that we can investigate your complaint. We will need to assess your complaint first.
This may be done by another officer (not the one who took your complaint).
You can expect the telephone appointment to take about 30 minutes. This is usually enough time for us to get all the relevant details.
The officer will record a summary of the information you give them.
We will record the call. We may send you a copy of the form that our officer completes for you during the call.
What we will need from you
During the telephone appointment, you will need to tell us:
- what you think the organisation has done wrong
- when this happened
- what effect this has had on you or the person you are complaining for
- how the organisation should put things right for you (you can find more information about what we can recommend in our Remedies Factsheet)
- whether you have considered legal action and whether this might be an option for you
- how and when you raised your complaint with the organisation, or, in exceptional situations, why you could not do so.
We may ask you to send us any relevant documents.
If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we will need to discuss whether they gave you ‘authorisation’ (allowed you) to do so.
If that person cannot give you authorisation or has died, we will check that you are an appropriate person to make the complaint.
After the call
Once we have taken your complaint, we will process it in the same way as a written complaint.
We conduct most of our business in writing. After we have taken your complaint by phone, we will generally communicate with you in writing unless there is good reason for us to do otherwise. By law our decision on your complaint must be in writing.
This may be, for example, because you have impairment that means written communication is difficult.
After the call, we will take a closer look at your complaint to see if we can resolve it early or if we need to investigate.
We will assess if:
- you complained to us within a year of knowing about the issue
- you have (or had) the option of taking legal action instead to put things right for you
- another organisation is better placed to deal with your complaint
- there are signs that the organisation potentially got things wrong and that it had a negative effect on you or the person you are complaining for
- there is more that the organisation could do to put things right for you
If we cannot look into your complaint, we will tell you why.
Information sharing and your data
During the telephone appointment, we will discuss with you whether you are happy for us to:
- share information you give us with the organisation you are complaining about
- get more information from the organisation.
Please see our Privacy Notice which contains information about your data.