Scottish Parliament Complaints Procedures
As an organisation, we strive to improve the way we work and become more efficient and effective. To help us achieve this, we welcome your thoughts and comments about our services.
To find out how to send questions, comments and suggestions to us, please see the Public Information Service pages of our site.
We appreciate that, when things go wrong, you might wish to make a formal complaint, so we have developed a process that will enable you to bring complaints to our attention.
What do our complaints procedures cover?
Our complaints procedures cover complaints in relation to Scottish Parliament staff or services. View policy statement.
They do not cover complaints about:
- the merits of a decision taken by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB) acting properly within its legal powers
- MSPs
- Scottish Ministers or government policy.
If you have a complaint on these issues, please contact the Public Information Service and our staff will be happy to assist you.
How do you register your complaint?
This is the first step in having your complaint dealt with. To register your complaint you can do one of the following:
- complete and submit an online complaint form
- print out a complaint leaflet, fill out the attached form and post or fax it to the Public Information Service
- contact the Parliament switchboard on 0131 348 5000 and you will be transferred to a member of staff who will help you with registering your complaint. Calls by RNID Typetalk service are welcome, or if you are a textphone user, you may wish to contact us on our textphone number 0131 558 7676.
To address and respond to your complaint, we will need information from you. We will use this information only in relation to the specific complaint you have lodged. If you have any queries regarding the information you give us, please contact the Public Information Service.
What do we do with your complaint?
Once we have received your complaint we will:
- acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 3 working days
and
- investigate your complaint and write to you with the conclusions we have reached within 20 working days of receiving it or write to give you an explanation of our progress where a response in 20 working days is not possible, and outline the reasons for this.
We will inform you as soon as possible if your complaint needs to be dealt with by another organisation. If possible, we will indicate where you might redirect it. We cannot forward a complaint to another organisation on your behalf.
What happens if you still have concerns?
If you are unhappy with the outcome of your complaint, you can ask for it to be reviewed by the Chief Executive of the Parliament. Information on how to do this will be included in the response outlining the outcome of our internal investigation.
If you still have concerns after the Chief Executive has responded to your complaint, you may raise your complaint with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. This independent office was established to consider complaints about poor service by public bodies, their failure to provide a service and any administrative failures on their part. The Ombudsman would normally expect you to have raised your complaint with us in the first instance and for it to have progressed through each possible stage before you take a complaint to them. It is expected that a complaint to the Ombudsman will be lodged within a year of the incident or event that gave rise to it.
Useful links
As stated above, we cannot forward complaints to other organisations on your behalf. However, if you have a question, comment or complaint in relation to the following areas, you may wish to check these organisations’ websites for further information:
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Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body
Policies
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