Customer feedback and complaints

Hartlepool Borough Council aims to provide high quality services that meet the needs of local people. To support this aim the Council welcomes all customer feedback.  The Council wants to learn from both good and bad experiences. This will help improve services we offer across the Council.

We are committed to delivering high-quality services that meet the needs of our residents. Your feedback helps us improve and ensure our services are efficient, effective and responsive.

We welcome:

  • complaints - if you're not satisfied with a service, let us know what went wrong and how we can improve.
  • feedback - share your suggestions for making our services better and tell us when we've done something well

All feedback is treated confidentially and handled professionally. Making a complaint will not affect the services you or your family receive.

Please read Customer Feedback and Complaints Policy for more details

How to submit feedback

You can submit a complaint or feedback online:

Annual monitoring reports

Each year, we publish a report showing the number and outcome of complaints received, including those reviewed by the Ombudsman:

Statutory complaints

We receive some complaints that are considered outside of the corporate complaints policy. This includes those that are required to follow statutory complaints processes for social care and public health. Separate annual reports are prepared for these.

Public health complaints

Managed in line with NHS and Local Authority regulations (2012).

Social care complaints

Handled separately due to the sensitive and complex nature of services.

School complaints

Each school has its own complaints procedure. We cannot investigate internal school matters.Further information on school complaints can be obtained from the Department for Education.

Department of Education

Council-owned social housing complaints

Housing management service complaints policy

This applies to:

  • a person or persons who are or have been in a landlord/tenant relationship with our Housing Management Service or
  • someone who has applied for a property owned by our Housing Management Service (other than statutory allocations and applications for assistance from people who are homeless or threatened).
Housing management service complaints policy