How we will deal with your comment or complaint

We deal with all comments and complaints seriously. We promise that we will treat your comment or complaint fairly and impartially.

We will not treat you differently because you have made a complaint. We will not discriminate against you on the basis of your age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion, belief, sexual orientation or any other irrelevant ground.

We aim to respond to you promptly – regardless of the subject matter, the way in which you contact us or the country in which your comment or complaint is made.

If we are unable to respond at the first point of contact, we aim to deal with your comment or complaint within ten working days of receipt.  If it takes longer than this, we will inform you of any delay within ten working days.

When things have gone wrong we will do our best to resolve matters quickly and fairly. We will:

• explain what went wrong and why
• apologise when it is appropriate
• take action to remedy the situation, when possible.

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you can take the matter further by contacting the responsible staff member. We will provide you with details of how to do this when we respond to your complaint.

If, following this, you remain dissatisfied then you may be able to refer your complaint to an external body for review. The responsible staff member will provide you with more information when he or she responds to your complaint.

WE VALUE YOUR OPINION

How to make a comment or complaint to the British Council?

We hope to make your experience of dealing with the British Council an excellent one and we value your opinion of our people, work, website, programmes, products and services. If you would like to make a comment or complaint to us about the service you have experienced when contacting us or using any of our products and services you can do this in one of two ways below:

• contact the person or department that you have already dealt with to fully explain your situation.
• contact the British Council using any of the below methods providing us with your contact details to enable us to respond to you.

How we will deal with your comment or complaint?

• we deal with all comments and complaints seriously and impartially.  
• we aim to acknowledge your comment or complaint within three working days and will aim to feedback or resolve the complaint within 10 days of receipt
• we will also let you know of any unexpected delay in dealing with your complaint.
• we will draw on the information received from our customer comments and complaints to improve our services and products

Who will deal with your comment or complaint?

• we aim to resolve most issues at the first point of contact. The staff member who receives a complaint is empowered to attend to it
• in complex cases you may receive the response from the person or department who is responsible for that aspect of our work
• if you are not satisfied with the response you received you may contact the Customer Services Manager in British Council Office