Giving us feedback

We realise that sometimes people only contact us when they want to complain, but we would also like to hear from you if you consider we have done something particularly well. We welcome any comments and suggestions you have which might help us to improve our service.

 

We want to make our service to you even better. We will do this by

• listening to your views and ideas
• taking full account of your complaints
• monitoring our performance
• reviewing and evaluating our performance and publishing the results
• undertaking customer surveys.

Complaints

We take all complaints about the quality of our services seriously and will provide a speedy response and a full and fair investigation of your complaint. You should first take up your complaint directly and informally with the person with whom you have been in contact and can expect a reply from us within five working days. If you feel you need to raise your complaint more formally than this or are not satisfied with the response you have received you can write to your first contact’s manager or to our Regional Director:

Liz Meek
Regional Director
Government Office for the North West
City Tower
Piccadilly Plaza
Manchester
M1 4BE

 

Government Office for the North West complaints procedure

We take all complaints about the quality of our service seriously. We will provide a speedy response and a full and fair investigation of your complaint, respecting your right to confidentiality.

 

A complaint about the service we provide might include the following:

• attitude and conduct of our staff
• quality of service
• maladministration e.g. failing to follow the right procedures
• delays in receiving information or a response from us.

We have a three-stage complaint process to ensure that, if you are not happy with the initial response we give you (in stage 1), you can ask more senior staff to consider the issue again (stages 2 and 3).

 

Stage 1: You should first take up your complaint directly and informally with the person with whom you have been in contact. You can express your dissatisfaction by letter, fax, email or telephone. You can expect a reply from us within five working days.

Stage 2: If you are not satisfied with the response you should then write to your first contact’s immediate line manager setting out your complaint clearly and in detail. Our target for replying to such formal complaints is 20 working days from the date of receipt.

Stage 3: If you are still not satisfied with our explanation you can write to our Regional Director, Keith Barnes. You will receive a full response within a further ten working days. Please write to:

Liz Meek
Regional Director
Government Office for the North West
City Tower
Piccadilly Plaza
Manchester
M1 4BE

These procedures do not affect your right to ask your Member of Parliament to refer your complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman (officially known as the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration).

 

Please note that this procedure relates to complaints about the services we provide and not about Government policy, the content of legislation or contractual issues. However, when your complaint does not involve the Government Office for the North West, or is a matter outside our control, we will do our best to advise you how to pursue it.