The Forces Employment Charity strives to achieve high standards in service delivery. We welcome feedback from individuals, users of our services, stakeholders, funding bodies and anyone who works with us on all our services. Such feedback is invaluable in helping us evaluate and improve our work.
The objectives of the Forces Employment Charity complaints policy and procedures are to:
The Forces Employment Charity will ensure that we:
A complaint is any expression of dissatisfaction by an individual, whether justified or not.
An individual may make a complaint if they feel the Forces Employment Charity has:
This policy relates only to complaints about the Forces Employment Charity and its services.
Establishing the difference between a concern and a complaint is essential. Taking informal concerns seriously at the earliest stage will reduce their likelihood of developing into formal complaints.
If you have any concerns about our work, please tell a Forces Employment Charity employee or their manager as soon as possible so they can quickly understand your concerns and try to put things right.
If you are unhappy with the response to your concern and want to complain formally, please follow the procedure below.
The Forces Employment Charity aims to settle many complaints quickly and satisfactorily by the member of staff who provides the service. The complaint may be resolved soon by way of an apology or by an acceptable explanation to the individual.
There are four stages to the complaint’s procedure:
Complaints can be made in the following ways:
By calling our Forces Employment Charity Support Team on 0121 236 0058,
Emailing [email protected],
Writing to Sandra Williamson, Head of Compliance, Forces Employment Charity, Mountbarrow House, 12 Elizabeth Street, London SW1W 9RB, or Submitting the Complaints form on our website www.forcesemployment.org.uk
Once the complaint has been recorded, we will acknowledge receipt of the complaint to the individual making the complaint within two working days of the complaint being received.
An investigation will be launched within two working days of receiving the complaint. The Forces Employment Charity Senior Management Team will request internal information from staff and from systems to understand the circumstances surrounding the complaint.
Information may also be requested from external sources, such as individuals in partner organisations.
We will treat the complaint with sensitivity, discretion and understanding and conduct our investigation accordingly.
The Head of Compliance will aim to complete the investigation within ten working days of receipt of the complaint and will determine and implement remedial action where appropriate. The Compliance Team will respond to the individual making the complaint and let them know the outcome of the investigation and the action taken.
If the investigation takes longer than ten working days, we will inform the individual making the complaint with an estimate of the length of the investigation. We will then respond and resolve the issue as above.
Once the investigation is complete, the resolution determined, and the individual who has received the complaint has received the response, the complaint will be closed. Any learning and development opportunities identified from the complaint investigation will be implemented as standard.
If the complainant is not satisfied with the resolution offered, they will have the opportunity to appeal. Appeal requests should be made to Head of Compliance at [email protected]
To process a complaint, the Forces Employment Charity will hold personal data about the complainant, which the individual provides, and others give in response to the complaint. The Forces Employment Charity will store this data securely and only use it to address the complaint. The identity of the person making the complaint will only be known to those who need to consider the complaint and will not be revealed to others or made public by the Forces Employment Charity. However, it may not be possible to preserve confidentiality in some circumstances, for example, where relevant legislation is applied or allegations involving third parties’ conduct.
The Forces Employment Charity will usually securely destroy complaint files six years after closing the complaint.
Reviewed 7 March 2024
Head of Compliance
