What next?

If the local authority doesn’t respond to your complaint

• If they don’t respond within the time you requested, give them a ring.
• Try to stay calm and polite.
• Ask what the reason for the delay is.
• They may tell you their response is in the post or that they will reply very soon. If so, it may be best to wait another few days before considering your next step.
• If you told them your situation was urgent, remind them. If you gave them a time limit in which to deal with your complaint, remind them of this as well.

If the local authority gives you a response you are unhappy with, you need to decide what to do next.

We suggest you:

• think carefully about the response and what the local authority is suggesting
• follow it up by explaining which points you disagree with and why
• provide any further information they ask for
• co-operate with the next steps proposed by the local authority

Your local authority is likely to propose a reassessment, a meeting or some other step for you to go through at this point. It’s easy to get disheartened by this. You may feel you’ve already explained your situation – several times! You may be on the verge of losing patience with the whole thing. You may be tempted to refuse to co-operate with a reassessment. Don’t give up now.

Top tips

• Don’t give up now. The local authority may delay, forget to do things or tell you something is someone else’s responsibility. Staff changes may mean someone new has to get up to speed with your case. All this can grind you down.
• Keep going. Explain in detail again what it will mean if you don’t get the help you need.
• Get support from an advice organisation or advocate if you haven’t done so far. Some advocacy organisations provide really detailed help with complaints. They will monitor timescales and they may be able to provide someone to go with you to the reassessment.
• Why are we encouraging you to keep going? To stick at it, to make the same points over and over again? Because in practice, the vast majority of successful outcomes are achieved through a good reassessment following a complaint. And even if the complaints process doesn’t resolve things fully and you have to go to the Ombudsman or to court, it will be easier to succeed in the end if you have co-operated at every stage of the complaints process.

What options do I have now?