How to complain about your council

Councils make two kinds of decision. Some carry a statutory right of appeal or review to a specific body, and those routes have their own short deadlines. Others are administrative, and dissatisfaction with them is a complaint. Getting this wrong is the single most expensive mistake, because appeal deadlines are typically weeks and complaint routes take months.

Decisions with their own appeal routes include: school admission refusals, which go to an independent appeal panel within about twenty school days; Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction decisions, which go to the First-tier Tribunal or the Valuation Tribunal depending on which; council tax banding, which goes to the Valuation Office and then the Valuation Tribunal; planning refusals, which go to the Planning Inspectorate; homelessness decisions, which carry a statutory internal review and then a county court appeal on a point of law; and licensing and penalty notices, which go to the magistrates' court.

Complaints cover everything else: delay, failure to reply, losing documents, failing to follow the council's own policy, failing to give reasons, giving wrong information you relied on, poor service from a contractor acting for the council, rudeness, failure to make reasonable adjustments, and failure to carry out a service the council is obliged to provide.

Some things are neither. A councillor's personal conduct goes to the council's monitoring officer and, in Northern Ireland, to the Local Government Commissioner for Standards inside NIPSO. A data protection failure or a refused freedom of information request goes to the Information Commissioner's Office. A social housing landlord's handling of repairs goes to the Housing Ombudsman in England rather than to the LGSCO.

Where the same episode contains both — a wrong decision and appalling handling of it — run both. Use the appeal route for the decision because it has the shorter deadline, and complain separately about the handling. A complaint does not extend an appeal deadline and will not rescue one you have missed.

If you genuinely cannot tell which you have, the council's own complaints team can tell you, and asking them in writing creates a record that you tried. So can Citizens Advice, free of charge.

Find the council's complaints procedure on its website and use it. Most operate two stages: an initial response from the service concerned, then a review by someone independent of that service. You have to complete both before an ombudsman will look at the matter, and going to the ombudsman early simply produces a referral back.

Put it in writing, even if you have already phoned. Email or the online form is best because it creates a timestamped record. Keep every reply, and keep a note of the date and the name of anyone you speak to.

Structure it around what went wrong rather than around how you feel. State what you asked for and when, what the council did or failed to do, which policy or duty you say was not followed, what the consequence was for you, and what you want done about it. One page in that shape gets a better answer than five pages of narrative.

Say what remedy you want and be specific. Ombudsmen and councils both work in terms of putting things right: a decision retaken properly, a service delivered, an apology, reimbursement of costs you incurred, a payment for avoidable distress or time and trouble, and a change to the procedure so it does not recur. Asking for nothing in particular tends to produce nothing in particular.

Attach the evidence rather than describing it. Copies of correspondence, dated photographs, the reference numbers of calls, appointment letters, and a short chronology are worth more than adjectives. A dated timeline is the single most useful attachment because it makes delay visible.

Note the council's own published response times and hold it to them. If stage one is missed with no explanation, escalate to stage two on that basis. Unreasonable delay is itself maladministration and it strengthens the eventual ombudsman complaint.

If the complaint is about adult or children's social care, note that a separate statutory complaints procedure applies in England, with defined stages and timescales, and that the LGSCO can look at care provided by a private provider arranged or funded by the council.

Once the council's procedure is exhausted — or once it has had a reasonable opportunity and has not responded at all — you can go to the relevant ombudsman. Every UK public services ombudsman is free to use and none of them requires a solicitor.

In England, that is the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, established under Part III of the Local Government Act 1974 as the Commission for Local Administration in England. It covers councils, adult social care including private providers, school admission appeal panels' handling, and some other local bodies. It does not cover NHS bodies, which go to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, or social landlords' housing services, which go to the Housing Ombudsman.

In Wales the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales covers councils, NHS Wales bodies, social landlords and other Welsh public bodies within one office. In Scotland the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman covers councils, the NHS, housing associations, universities, water and prisons, and it is the final stage of the Scottish public services complaints system. In Northern Ireland the Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman covers councils, government departments, health and social care trusts and other bodies, and separately holds the local government commissioner for standards role dealing with councillor conduct.

The time limit is normally twelve months from when you first knew about the problem, in each jurisdiction. Ombudsmen have discretion to accept late complaints where there is a good reason, but it is genuine discretion and relying on it is a bad plan. If the council's own procedure has dragged on, complain to the ombudsman anyway and explain the delay rather than waiting for a final letter that may never come.

Ombudsmen apply a filter before investigating. They can decline where the matter is minor, where there is an alternative legal remedy such as a court or tribunal, where the complaint is out of time, or where investigation would achieve nothing. A refusal to investigate is not a finding that the council behaved well.

Where they do investigate, the process is documentary. They obtain the council's file, take your account, and produce a decision. Outcomes range from no fault found, through fault with no injustice, to fault causing injustice with recommendations — an apology, a payment, a decision retaken, a service delivered, staff training or a procedural change.

Recommendations are not legally binding, but compliance is high and non-compliance is published. Where a council refuses, ombudsmen can issue a public report and, in England, require the council to publicise it. That reputational mechanism is what gives an unenforceable recommendation practical force.

Ombudsmen cannot overturn a decision the council was legally entitled to make. If a council refused something within its discretion, considered the right things, followed its policy and explained itself, the ombudsman will not interfere however unwelcome the outcome. This is the disappointment people most often report, and it is not a failure of the system — it is the design.

They generally cannot look at matters that have been, or could reasonably be, taken to a court or tribunal. A homelessness decision with a statutory review and a county court appeal, a school admission appeal, a benefit decision with a tribunal route — all sit outside jurisdiction, or will be declined in favour of the proper route.

They cannot deal with personnel matters between a council and its own staff, with the internal conduct of council meetings, or with policy decisions properly made by elected members. Objecting to a council's budget priorities or to a lawfully adopted policy is a political matter, and the remedy is political.

Where the objection is that a council acted unlawfully rather than badly, the remedy is judicial review in the Administrative Court. That is a legal challenge to the lawfulness of a public body's decision — illegality, procedural unfairness or irrationality — and it has a very short time limit, usually three months and often less. It is not a merits appeal, it requires permission, and it carries costs risk, so take advice early. Legal aid may be available.

For data and information failures, go to the Information Commissioner's Office. A council mishandling your personal data, refusing a subject access request or wrongly refusing a freedom of information request is the ICO's territory, and the ICO can order disclosure and take enforcement action in a way an ombudsman cannot.

For social housing repairs, antisocial behaviour handling and tenancy management by a council or housing association landlord in England, the Housing Ombudsman is the right body. Its jurisdiction overlaps confusingly with the LGSCO's, and the practical dividing line is that landlord functions go to the Housing Ombudsman while the council's functions as a local authority go to the LGSCO.

England is the most fragmented. The LGSCO covers councils and adult social care, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman covers the NHS and central government, and the Housing Ombudsman covers social landlords. A single household problem can therefore straddle three bodies, and being sent between them is a common and legitimate frustration.

Wales consolidated. The Public Services Ombudsman for Wales handles councils, the NHS, social landlords and other devolved public bodies in one office, and it also has powers to investigate on its own initiative rather than only on complaint. For a Welsh complainant this materially simplifies the picture.

Scotland also consolidated. The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman is the final stage for complaints about virtually the whole Scottish public sector, and Scotland additionally operates a model complaints handling procedure that standardises how bodies must handle complaints before they reach the SPSO. That standardisation means a Scottish complainant can expect the same two-stage structure and the same timescales from any Scottish public body.

Northern Ireland runs NIPSO as a single office covering departments, councils, health and social care trusts, education bodies and more, with the additional local government standards jurisdiction over councillor conduct that has no direct counterpart elsewhere. Northern Ireland's local councils have narrower functions than councils in Great Britain — housing sits with the Housing Executive and education with the Education Authority — so identifying the right body is a step Northern Irish complainants have to take that others often do not.

One point holds everywhere. Complaining is free, and it is worth doing even when the individual remedy is small, because ombudsmen aggregate. Repeated findings against a service produce systemic recommendations, and the published decisions become the evidence base for changing a procedure that is failing everyone who meets it. That is a slower benefit than a payment, and often a larger one.