Customer feedback and complaints

We want to hear about your experience with us. Complaints, compliments and comments all help us to improve the services we provide to our customers.

How to say thank you

Our teams of dedicated people work every day with passion and purpose to serve the people of Dacorum. If you have experienced excellent customer service, please let us know so that we can recognise the achievements of our colleagues. To send a compliment about a staff member or team, please send an email to compliments@dacorum.gov.uk.

Report a problem to us

You can report a problem with a specific council service using our online forms. This is different to making a complaint but will help us resolve the issue faster:

• Report a missed bin collection
• Report an issue with fly-tipping, dog fouling, full litter bins or abandoned vehicles
• Report a repair to a council property
• Report a problem with noise or smells from other properties or businesses
• Report an issue with anti-social behaviour
• Report a fire or structural safety concern

Make a complaint

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, things do occasionally go wrong. Our  Complaints Policy (PDF 332KB) sets out how we deal with complaints.

In these circumstances, we want to make it as simple and quick as possible for you to raise concerns with us. We will investigate all the complaints we receive and respond as quickly as possible, as well as learn from your feedback.

It is helpful if you raise your issue with us as soon as possible, to help enable a quick resolution. We will only accept complaints related to issues that happened more than six months ago in exceptional circumstances.

We will acknowledge your complaint within five working days of receipt and explain how we plan to investigate it. We will also let you know if we cannot deal with your complaint under our policy.

Please do not use the complaints form to report urgent fire or structural safety concerns.

Start your complaint

You can write to or telephone us to make a complaint. Our Contact us page has details of our telephone number and postal address.

Having someone to speak on your behalf is known as advocacy. Find out more about getting advocacy support.

Unreasonable and persistent customer behaviour

Most enquiries and complaints we receive can be dealt with via our standard service processes.  A minority of cases involve people who pursue their enquiry or complaint in a way which can either impede the enquiry or significantly impact our resources. This may prevent us from dealing with the issue and providing a service to others. It may also have an adverse impact on staff wellbeing. Our  Persistent and Unreasonable Behaviour Policy (PDF 317KB) is designed to address issues arising when such instances occur.    

Report a problem to Hertfordshire County Council

Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) is responsible for:

• Maintenance of roads and street lighting
• Adult social care
• Children’s services and education
  

Please visit the HCC website to report an issue or make a complaint.

Make an appeal

Some services have a separate appeal process if you think we have made the wrong decision. For these services, you should follow the appeals process instead of making a complaint. We have dedicated web pages that cover the appeals processes:

• Appeal a Housing Benefit decision
• Appeal a refusal of planning permission 
• Appeal a planning enforcement notice
• Homelessness review and appeals

How we deal with your complaint

Stage One - Investigating and resolving your complaint  

We will talk to you about how best to investigate and address your concerns.

Usually, we will investigate within 10 working days. However, occasionally we might need to do a more complex investigation, and this will take longer. In exceptional circumstances, we will contact you to get your agreement to further extend the timescale.

When we respond to you, we will tell you what we have found, and we will explain any changes we make. We will apologise if we have got it wrong and try to put this right.

Stage Two - Internal review

If you are dissatisfied with our response or we have not responded to all the concerns you raised, you can escalate your complaint to Stage Two of the process by contacting us within 28 calendar days from receipt of our response. You will need to provide an explanation of why and how the initial response failed to fully address your concerns, and evidence of the aspects of the complaint that were not fully addressed. The complaint will be given to a senior officer from a different department to review.

We will talk to you about how best to review and address your outstanding concerns.

Usually, we will review and respond to your case within 20 working days.

Role of the Housing and Local Government Ombudsmen

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of our two-stage process, The Local Government and Housing Ombudsmen look at individual complaints about councils and other organisations providing local public services.

When we respond to your complaint, we will provide details of how to contact the Ombudsmen and you can find further details of their responsibilities and processes on their websites:

• The Housing Ombudsman for complaints relating to our duty as a social landlord.
• The Local Government Ombudsman for complaints about all our other services. The Local Government Ombudsman provides feedback to us on the cases against us it receives. View all Dacorum Borough Council's statistics and reports.

The new Housing Ombudsman code requires us to annually self assess against their code and publish our report:   Self Assessment against Housing Ombudsman Code (PDF 224KB).

In addition we are required to publish the annual review of Housing Complaints: Annual Housing Complaints Report 2023-2024. We will be updating the report with comments from the Portfolio Holder.

Give us feedback about our services

If you would like to give us feedback on our services or policies, you can email feedback@dacorum.gov.uk. We will consider and respond to any feedback we receive.