Complaints POLICY & Procedure

What is a complaint?

A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction, whether justified or not.

Our policy covers complaints about:

• The standard of service you should expect fromus
• The behaviour of our staff indelivering that service
• Any action, or lack of action, byour staff or others engaged BC Beauty Training

Our complaints policy does not cover:

• Comments about our policies or policy decisions
• Dissatisfaction or complaints expressed within our policies or decisions about individual cases, funding, or requests for legal advice and assistance.
• Matters that have already been fully investigated through this complaints procedure
• Anonymous complaints

Our Standards for Handling Complaints    

• We can receive complaints by letter oremail, or alternatively. We treat all complaints seriously.
• You can expect to be treated withcourtesy, respect and fairness at all times. We expect that you will also treatour staff dealing with your complaint with the same courtesy, respect andfairness.
• We will treat your complaint inconfidence.
• We will deal with your complaint promptly. We will acknowledge receipt of a written complaint within five working days where we have a return address and you can expect to have a full reply within 20 working days. In a few cases we will not be able to send you a full reply within 20 days of receipt, for example if your complaint is very complex. If this happens, we will tell you the reason why and let you know when we will be able to reply in full, keeping you fully informed of progress.
• We will not treat you less favourably than anyone else because of your:

Third Party Reporting

Complainants may wish to have a third party act on their behalf. A third party is any person or organisation acting on behalf of, or making enquiries for the complainant.For example, third parties may include:

• Advice organisations
• Professionals, such as social workers, community psychiatric nurses, doctors or solicitors
• Family members or friends

Where a third party is helping a complainant with a particular complaint, we need written consent to that effect. Where we have this authority, we will endeavour to take all possible steps to keep the third party informed of progress of this complaint. 

We do not need written consent if a MP or elected councillor is helping a constituent with a complaint, and we can disclose information to them in response to their enquiries.  Also, some lawyers and attorneys are legally empowered in certain circumstances to act on behalf of a complainant, and consent to disclose information is not required.

Confidentiality

All complaints received will be dealt with confidentially and in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998, subject to the need to disclose information as required by statutory authorities, and/or as a result of statutory, legal or parliamentary obligations placed on the commission.

How To Complain To Us

If you wish to make a complaint, you can do so by email or letter.If you are disabled, and need a reasonable adjustment to ensure you can register your complaint, you can contact us alternatively by:

• Telephone (one of our staff will help you wrote out your complaint)
• Asking a member of staff to help youwrite out your complaint.

Our contact details are in the contact us section below. If you require different adjustments, please let us know and we will try to put those arrangements on place where we can.

How We Will Respond to Your Complaint:

Complaints Procedure

We have a two stage service complaints handling procedure, explained above. At each stage it will help us to resolve your complaint quickly if you can give us as much clarity and detail as possible. Including providing any documents and correspondence and stating you are making a complaint. If we do not have all the details required to deal with the complaint, we may contact you and ask you for further information. Our senior staff and Director are responsible for managing the handling of service complaints, including notifying you of the outcome.

STAGE 1

This is the first opportunity for us to resolve your dissatisfaction. We expect the majority of complaints to be resolved at this stage. On receipt of your complaint, we will contact a senior member of staff and ask them to respond to your complaint.

STAGE 2

If you are dissatisfied with the response at stage 1, you may request a review. This will be carried out by a responsible director. Your request together with all subsequent correspondence relating to it should be sent to our correspondence address.

If You are Still Dissatisfied

If having followed the two internal stages of our service complaints procedure you remain dissatisfied, you can ask to have your complaint reviewed by the Parliamentary and Health service Ombudsman (The Ombudsman) who is independent of the company. The ombudsman will assess whether there is evidence of service failure or maladministration on our part. You have a maximum of 28 days from the date of the companies final response to register a complaint with the ombudsman.  You can only refer your complaint to the ombudsman through your Member of Parliament (MP).You should contact your MP and ask them to refer your complaint to the ombudsman. The Ombudsman can carry out independent investigations into complaints about government departments, agencies and some public bodies which include the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. 

Timescales

Our timescales for handling complaints comply with guidance issued by the Public and Health Services Ombudsman.

STAGE 1

We will acknowledge complaints within 5 working days pf receiving each complaint. We will send a full response within 20 working days of receiving each complaint. If you make a complaint in person to a member of our staff (within the salon or remote training) we will record your complaint in writing within 3 working days, and acknowledge it within 5 working days thereafter. We will then deal with your complaint in accordance with our policy for written complaints. 

STAGE 2

We will acknowledge complaints within 5 working days pf receiving each complaint. We will send a full response within 20 working days of receiving each complaint.

Extending time limits

We aim to complete our investigations into all of our services within the timescale set above. However in a limited amount of cases – for example if a complaint is very complex or requires further breakdown, t may be necessary to extend the timescale to ensure we have all of the necessary information to deal with it.If this is the case we will keep you informed of progress with the investigation, the reasons for delay and inform you of next steps.

Remedies

When we get things wrong we will act to:

• Accept responsibility and apologise
• Explain what went wrong and why
• Put things right by making changes required
• Learn lessons from mistakes and change policies and practices where proportionate to do so.

The action we take to out matters right in response to a service complaint can include any of the remedies set out in the list below. The general principle we follow is that the complainants should, so far as possible, be put in the position they would have been in, had things not gone wrong.

The remedy applied needs to be proportionate and appropriate to failure in service, and take into account what redress people seek when they complain. An apology is generally the most appropriate action, but other action may also be necessary in some circumstances.

List of remedies

• A full apology, explaining what happened and/or what went wrong (an apology is not an acceptance of liability under section 2 of the compensation act 2006)
• Remedial action, which may include reviewing or changing a decision on the service given to an individual complainant.
• Provide the service in the first instance (immediately if appropriate)
• Putting things right (for example a change of procedure to prevent future difficulties of a similar kind, either for the complainant or others)
• Training or supervising staff, or a combination of both
• Financial compensation

Compensation

In the majority of cases, remedies other than financial compensation will satisfy the complainant. Financial compensation is a final option, and will only apply incases where the loss or suffering is considered to warrant such a payment (ie in cases of actual direct or indirect financial loss). 

In circumstances where it is decided that our action or lack of action has resulted in maladministration, if the complainant has suffered direct or indirect financial loss, compensation may be payable. 

Where it is decided, following an investigation of complaint, that a complainant has suffered injustice or hardship resulting in direct or indirect financial loss due to maladministration, we determine whether compensation is an appropriate remedy by looking at all of the evidence, including how much the complainant can demonstrate that they have lost, or what extra costs they have incurred asa result of our maladministration. 

The reason for our decision will be recorded by the decision maker and included in our response

Contacting Us

All complaints: 

By post:              

BC BeautyTraining ltd, F.O.A Laura Camilleri, 35 Ladies Mile Road, Brighton, BN1 8TA.

By email:  info@bcbeautytraining.co.uk
‍
If you are unable to contact us in writing as above, and require a reasonable adjustment, please contact us as follows: Telephone: 01273 502227

Reasonable Adjustments and Alternative Formats

We are committed to equal opportunities and our aim is to make our complaints policy as easy to use and accessible to all of our customer. We will take reasonable steps to accommodate any reasonable adjustments you may have to enable you to access this policy.