Thank you for your complaint

Thank you for your complaint which we have received and will now consider. Please make sure you have provided the documents that you have about your complaint.  If we need more information from you, we will contact you, but this is likely to mean it will take longer to consider your case.  If you have documents but were unable to attach them, then please email them to us at documents@ombudsman.wales

Most complaints are responded to within 6-9 weeks.  However, if the complaint requires more in depth assessment or consideration by one of our Investigation Teams, you may wait at least 12 weeks for allocation to an officer and will not hear from us during that time.

We want to make it easy for everyone to use our services.  We can change the way we communicate with you depending on your needs.  Please let us know what your needs are, and we will do our best to help.

Read our factsheet – ‘What we do when we get your complaint about a public body in Wales’.  This explains how our process works.

We also have factsheets relating to specific subjects of complaints.  These factsheets are intended to help you understand what we can and cannot investigate.  Please browse by subject: Factsheets | Public Services Ombudsman Wales

It is best if you contact us by email whenever possible.  If you are waiting for an email from us and have not received it, please check your junk or spam emails first as emails can go there.

If we communicate with you by email, we may send any confidential or sensitive personal information by secure email using Microsoft 365 to encrypt (protect) the message.  You may be sent a code to open the message.  Please see the ‘How to access emails’ factsheet to find out more, including how to access our emails through Apple devices.  If you have any queries about opening emails sent by this office, you call us or contact our IT team on itc@ombudsman.wales.

In case we need to talk with you about your complaint please provide a daytime telephone number for you if you have not already provided it.  We record all our calls to help with staff training.  It can also help to listen again to the conversation when we are looking into the complaint.

You can find out about what you can expect from us and what we ask of you in our Communication factsheet.   We ask that you always treat us politely and with respect and dignity.

We have a legal duty to consider complaints about Welsh public services. When you make a complaint to us, we collect and use your personal information so that we can assess and, where appropriate, investigate your concerns.  Where necessary, we may also collect relevant information about you from other sources, including the organisation you have complained about. 

We will only share your personal information where it is lawful and necessary. The law requires us to share a copy of our final decision with the organisation complained about. Where appropriate, we will take steps to protect your identity.  If we investigate your complaint, we may publish a summary of our report on our website. This summary will not identify you. 

We store your information securely in our complaints case management system.  

• Complaints closed before April 2026 are kept for 10 years from the date of closure.   

• Complaints made from April 2026 onwards are kept for 5 years from the date of closure, following a review of our retention schedule.   

Once a complaint is closed information that identifies you is removed from the record.  We keep only basic, nonidentifying information so that we can monitor complaint trends and improve our services.  

Further details about how we use your personal information, and your rights under data protection law, are set out in our Privacy Notice:
https://www.ombudsman.wales/privacy-notice/  

If you would prefer to receive a paper copy of the Privacy Notice, please let us know. 

We want to make sure that people using our service are treated equally and that we do not unknowingly discriminate against anyone.  We also respect our duties under the Equality Act 2010.  We invite you to fill in our equality monitoring survey which can be found here.  This helps us gather equality information which we use to look for areas for improvement, including how we can reduce any barriers to access.  The survey takes about 3 minutes to complete.  If you would like a paper copy, please let us know.  

Please let us know if you want the equality survey in a different format – this might be in large print or in another language.  We can also arrange to complete this survey with you over the phone.  If you want any of these options, please contact us on 0300 790 0203.

Your complaint will not be affected if you do or do not complete the survey.  Your response will not be seen by any member of staff who assesses or investigates your complaint.

Details about how we process your equality information are in our Privacy Notice.  The online equality survey is run by SurveyMonkey, and their Privacy Notice is available on their website.