Customer Care

Customer Charter

Our Commitment to You

Angus Council aims to provide a courteous and helpful service to our customers. We aim to deliver the best standards of customer care possible and provide the modern customer services that people want.

We will work for and with you, to involve, inform and give you fair and equal access to information and services.

We aim to deliver a consistent and high standard of customer care and will:

treat you politely and with respect
be friendly and approachable
listen to what you have to say
respect your right to confidentiality
be open and accountable
give you the information you need about our services
give you choice in how you access services
value and respect the diversity of our customers and try to meet the needs of customers with specific requirements
work in partnership with other organisations and communities to improve our services
learn from your compliments, comments and complaints

Through our regular customer surveys we will ask for your comments on how we are doing and we will report on our performance annually.

What We Expect from You

Angus Council has respect for all its customers and in return we expect you to:

treat us politely and with respect
be patient, we will do all we can to keep waiting times to a minimum
not use aggressive behaviour or inappropriate language, as this will not be tolerated
provide us with the information we need to help you
be on time for an appointment and let us know if you need to cancel
let us know if you need an interpreter or information in other formats

Our Standards for Responding to Your Enquiries

Good communication with our customers is important to Angus Council. We aim to respond to your letters, phone calls and emails as swiftly as possible and have the following standards in place so you know what to expect from us.

We will respond to your letters within 15 working days. If a full response cannot be given within that time you will be given a target date for a full response.
We will answer phone calls as quickly as possible and any telephone message will be responded to promptly, wherever possible within one working day.
We will reply to your emails within one working day, either to answer your query or to inform you when a full response will be given. We aim to respond in full within 15 working days but if we are unable to do so we will give you a target date for a full response.

Improving Our Service to You

You can let us know where we've got things right and help us sort out things that may have gone wrong by contacting accessline@angus.gov.uk, call ACCESSLine, the council's direct line for council services, on 08452 777 778 or tell us online using the compliments, comments and complaints form.

Compliments, Comments and Complaints

Our aim is to provide all our customers with good quality services and wherever possible deal with your concerns as they arise.

You can record your compliment, comment or complaint via our online form to tell us where we've got things right, help us improve services and sort things out if they've gone wrong.

However we are keen to resolve any problems as soon as possible so if you have a comment or complaint about a service please raise the matter with those delivering that service first of all - we will do our best to help resolve any problem there and then. Alternatively you can contact ACCESSLine on 08452 777 778 or email accessline@angus.gov.uk.

If we cannot resolve a problem immediately; within the agreed service standards; or to your, the customer's, satisfaction or if you have a complaint about how you have been treated we will record your complaint and give you our formal response within 10 days. If we cannot respond within that time we will inform you when we will be able to provide you with a response.

Our aim is to work things out so we want you to tell us if you are satisfied with the outcome of your complaint or wish us to take further action and have the matter investigated by a senior officer or ultimately the chief executive.

Although most complaints will be dealt with in this way there are separate complaints procedures for some council activities and services, such as social work; equal opportunities; recruitment and bus services. In addition an advice and conciliation procedure is in place to assist parents and the Education department address problems or concerns raised.

When you contact us you will be advised of the procedure to be followed when dealing with your complaint.

Scottish Public Services Ombudsman

If you are still dissatisfied after completing our complaints process you have the right to ask the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman to look at your complaint.

The Ombudsman can generally look at complaints that something has gone wrong in a service or function administered by or on behalf of the Council. There are some restrictions to this but the Ombudsman’s staff will be able to tell you more when they receive your complaint.

The Ombudsman will normally only look at complaints:

made within 12 months of the date you first knew about the problem about which you are complaining
that have gone through the whole of the Council’s 3 stage complaints process.

"Making a Complaint" Leaflets are available from the Council’s ACCESSLine

Tel: 08452 777 778
email: accessline@angus.gov.uk

and directly from the Ombudsman’s office - Tel: 0800 377 7330

or write to

Scottish Public Services Ombudsman
FREEPOST EH641
Edinburgh EH3 OBR.

or download from the website www.spso.org.uk