In order to do this we welcome any comments about our service; including areas where you feel that we get things wrong. We want to help you resolve your complaint as quickly as possible.
We treat as a complaint any expression of dissatisfaction with our service which calls for a response. We listen to your complaints, treat them seriously, and learn from them so that we can continuously improve our service.
What is a complaint?
A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction, whether justified or not.
Our policy covers complaints about:
or
Our standards for handling complaints:
We treat all complaints seriously, whether they are made by telephone, by letter, by fax, or by email.
You will be treated with courtesy and fairness at all times. We request in return that you will be courteous and fair in your dealings with our staff at all times.
Your complaint will be treated in confidence.
We will deal with your complaint promptly. We will acknowledge receipt of a written complaint within 3 working days. If we can give you a full reply at this point, we will, otherwise we will send you a full reply within 10 working days of receipt.
If we cannot send a full reply within 10 working days of receipt, we will tell you the reason why and let you know when we will be able to reply in full.
We will not treat you less favourably than anyone else because of any protected characteristics. Currently those defined under the Equality Act 2010 are:
Age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; gender; sexual orientation.
How to complain
See Section 8 for contact details.
Centre for Life Customer Complaint Policy
We have a two-stage complaints procedure. At each stage it will help us to resolve your complaint quickly if you can give us as much detail as possible, including any documents and correspondence and stating that you are making a complaint in line with our procedure.
Stage 1
Upon receipt of your complaint we will speak to the appropriate staff at Life for feedback, investigate the circumstances surrounding your complaint and
then contact you with a response.
Stage 2
If you are dissatisfied with this response you may request a review. Your request should be sent to the person who responded to your complaint initially.
At each stage of the procedure we will acknowledge receipt of your written complaint within 3 working days and we will send you a full reply within 10 working days of receipt. If we cannot send a full reply within our deadline we will tell you the reason why and let you know when we will be able to reply in full.
At each stage please send your complaint or request for review to Life, using the contact details given in Section 8.
Comments
As well as learning from your complaints, we are also interested in ideas you may have on how we might do things better. We would also like you to tell us
when we do things well. You can make your comments by telephone or by writing to any member of our staff, or you can email us (see Section 8). We will use your comments to help improve our service and the way we do things. However, the two-stage procedure outlined above does not apply to comments.
Contacting us
All complaints, requests for review and comments under our complaints procedures should be sent to the following:
Postal Address: – Director of Operations and Trading, Centre for Life, Times Square, Newcastle NE1 4EP
Email: info@life.org.uk
Tel: 0191 243 8223
Monitoring
To enable us to be assured that we are reaching everyone and they are treated fairly, regardless of who they are, we would like you to complete a short equality monitoring form either at the beginning of the process, or at conclusion, it is your choice. This will enable us to analyse more effectively any complaints and assess any particular training or assess service or delivery issues which need to be resolved. See CFL customer equality and diversity form.