Timescales

A complaint must usually be referred to the Commissioner within three months of the date of the regulator’s decision letter.  Although the Commissioner can consider complaints received more than three months after the decision, they will expect the complainant to provide a clear explanation of why the complaint was sent late.

Complaints received by the OCC vary widely both in complexity and content. Our work ranges from straightforward signposting to appropriate alternative organisations to address the issues, through to investigating complex apparent regulatory failures.

The following service levels are based on consistent quality of customer service, rather than unrealistic guarantees of timescales.

  1. Acknowledge 95% of correspondence within three working days,
  2. Answer 95% of telephone calls within two working days,
  3. Update 95% of complainants at least every four weeks,
  4. The OCC aims to complete our preliminary investigations of complaints and issue a preliminary report to both the complainant and regulator respond to complaints within 90 days of receiving all the necessary information. However, the time it takes to resolve a complaint can vary depending on the complexity of the case
    • 75% within 12 weeks from receipt of receiving all the necessary information.
    • 85% within 20 weeks from receipt of receiving all the necessary information.
    • 98% within 52 weeks from receipt of receiving all the necessary information.
  5. To allow both the complainant and the regulator 3 weeks to provide a response to the Commissioner’s preliminary report.
    • Requests for additional time to respond to the preliminary report made by either party will be considered and granted where reasonable.
    • Where both parties respond prior to the outlined response date the Commissioner may use their discretion to complete their final report at an earlier date.
  6. To complete the final report within 3 weeks from the final date given to both the complainant and the regulator to provide their responses to the preliminary report.  Where the Commissioner will not meet this timeframe both parties will be informed.
  7. To allow the regulator 10 working days to provide any written response they have to the final report.
    • Requests for additional time to respond to the final report made by either party will be considered and granted where reasonable.
  8. To publish an anonymised copy of the final report along with any regulator response, on the Commissioner website, generally on the first or third Thursday of each month after the date to provide any responses has elapsed.
  9. Once we start to investigate, we will keep in touch at least every 20 working days to let complainants and the organisations we investigate know our progress.
  10. We deal with complaints about our service and post decision review requests within 20 working days.
  11. Where we cannot meet these timescales, we will let complainants and organisations know and explain why.

Longer timescales for group complaints

Group Complaints will take longer than other types of complaints due to the volume of information to review and often the complexity and number of issues to be investigated.  It is important that we ensure that all relevant information is obtained from both the regulator and all complainants. Under the Complaints Scheme there is a three-month referral period from the date the regulators issue their decision letter to complainants, to refer their complaints about the regulator’s decision to the Complaints Commissioner.  Our usual practice for group complaints is that our formal investigation will start once all submissions are in at the end of the three month referral window, however the Complaints Team generally start preliminary work on Group Complaints to ensure that all the information has been provided from the regulator.

Unless the Commissioner agrees an extension for the submission of complaints, our aim is to issue a preliminary report on the Group Complaint within 6 months of receiving all submissions, although that will depend on the complexity of the case and some complicated cases can take longer.

We will give complainants updates, via our website on a regular basis about the progress of our investigation.