Complaints procedure

How to make a complaint about the Insolvency Service.

We are committed to providing a professional, fair and efficient service to our customers.

If you experience an issue, have questions or are worried, we want you to tell us if you are not happy with our service. We will try to resolve your complaint and make sure it does not happen again.

Before making a formal complaint

Try to resolve things informally with the person you’ve been dealing with first, or their manager, as they may be able to sort the problem out quickly and to your satisfaction.

Where we cannot resolve an issue informally, you may then want to make a formal complaint.

This guide gives you information about our complaints process.

What you can complain about

We will look into a complaint where you feel we have failed to meet our standard of service. We have failed to meet our standard of service if:

  • you experienced unreasonable delays
  • we made mistakes with your case
  • we did not follow our policies or processes
  • a member of our staff has not acted appropriately
  • we have not responded to correspondence within our published targets
  • we have given you misleading or incorrect information

We will not look at a complaint if it’s:

  • not related to the Insolvency Service
  • already been through our complaints procedure
  • outside of our time limits to investigate or escalate
  • about ongoing or upcoming legal proceedings
  • about government policy
  • has a more appropriate solution and we have informed you, for example: to take court action, go to an employment tribunal or to contact the police
  • falls under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 or Data Protection Act 1998 and you want to make a request
  • about the outcome of an operational decision (business decisions made to manage routine, ongoing work) and you disagree with or are unhappy

If we do not accept your complaint, we will write to you to explain why and provide you with an alternative avenue to raise your concerns.

If your complaint is not about the Insolvency Service

You might want to complain to us about:

  • a bankrupt person or a director of a company in liquidation, administration or administrative receivership
  • a director or sole trader reusing the name (or a similar name) of a company in liquidation
  • a disqualified director
  • an active limited company
  • an insolvency practitioner (for example a trustee, liquidator, administrator or supervisor of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA))

We have further information to help you find the right place to direct your complaint to.

Complaint time limits

Complaints should be made to us as soon as possible after an issue or incident has taken place.

You have 6 months to make a complaint from the date the matter happened or you found out about it, whichever is the later date.

If you make a complaint after the 6 month deadline, we will consider if:

  • there were good reasons for not making the complaint before the deadline
  • it is still possible to consider the complaint

If there is not a good reason for the delay, or we think it is not possible to properly consider the complaint (or any part of it). We will write to you to explain this and advise you about the next steps you can take.

Our complaints procedure

Every complaint is different, so we aim to deal with each one in the most appropriate way. We make sure complaints are allocated to the most appropriate person within a business area.

Tier 1

This is the first step in our formal complaint procedure. We will send your complaint to a complaint handler within the team or business area where your issue occurred. They’ll send you a formal reply once they have independently investigated your case.

If you’re not happy with our reply, we’ll advise you on how to escalate your complaint. You have 3 months from the date of our reply to do this.

Tier 2

If you want to escalate your complaint, contact us within 3 months of our response outlining what elements of your complaint remain unresolved.

A senior member of staff not previously involved in the case will then review your complaint. They’ll issue a formal reply once they have completed their review. If you are not happy, our reply will advise how you can escalate your complaint to our oversight regulator: Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO)

We may also inform you of an alternative course of action outside of our complaint procedure.

We will not escalate the complaint if you send us added information to look at. Instead, we will issue a follow up response.

How to make a complaint

You can make a complaint by:

Scanning Complaints
Po Box 17989
18 The Priory Queensway
Birmingham
B2 2PG

Do not send complaints to any other Insolvency Service email address, as it might take us longer to respond to you.

Complaints sent by post may be delayed in receipt and response due to the scanning process and postal delivery times.

If you need additional help or require reasonable adjustments to access our services, make us aware and we’ll do what we can to accommodate.

What to include in your complaint

You should tell us:

  • your name and address
  • the name of the bankrupt or insolvent company (if applicable)
  • the court reference and case reference (if you have one)
  • details of your complaint
  • copies of any correspondence or documents about your complaint
  • the name of the staff member you wrote or spoke to and when
  • details about what has gone wrong
  • how you would like us to resolve your complaint

How long we take to reply

In line with our customer charter, we aim to respond to routine written correspondence within 15 working days of when we receive it. This includes complaints we are dealing with informally.

We aim to reply to 90% of formal complaints within 10 working days. If this is not possible, we’ll write to you within 5 working days to tell you why and when you can expect a full reply. We aim to fully reply to 95% of these complaints within 20 working days.

Our standards of service

We always aim to provide a high standard of service, but if we make a mistake you can expect any of the following:

  • an apology
  • an explanation
  • details of what we did to put things right
  • what we are doing to prevent the same mistake from happening again

Ex-Gratia (discretionary) payment

Unfortunately, the nature of our business sometimes leads to stress for our customers.

If we make a mistake or cause an unreasonable delay, we could cause you more worry, inconvenience or irritation. In these circumstances, we might offer an Ex-Gratia (discretionary) payment to acknowledge our mistake, and to apologise for the way we have treated you.

These payments are not intended to put a value on the distress you have suffered. The payments will range from £25 to a maximum of £250.

You may consider that because of an error, you’ve lost money. Any financial compensation is separate from our complaint process. Any claim would be considered and assessed, depending on the circumstances and the evidence of loss or costs you had to pay.

Unreasonable individual behaviour

We aim to provide a high-quality service and deal with complaints in a way that is fair and transparent.

Occasionally, some individuals behave in a way that makes it difficult for us to help them. We will not tolerate individuals who abuse our staff or processes. Where a person’s actions affect our work and ability to provide a service, we can restrict the contact they have with us.

Abusive emails are likely to be automatically identified and blocked, which means they will not be seen or responded to.

Find out more about unreasonable individual behaviour and what action we might take.

If you disagree with the final outcome

If are not happy with our final response, you can send your complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman is independent from the government. You cannot complain directly to them, you have to contact your MP and ask them to refer your complaint to the Ombudsman.

The ombudsman will expect you to have finished our internal complaints procedure before you contact them. We’ll tell you when you’ve reached the end of our complaints procedure.

Further information is available on the Ombudsman’s complaints process.

Government policy or legislation

If you want to complain about a government policy, or legislation on insolvency or employment rights, you can write to the relevant minister or your local MP.

Court orders

You might want to complain about a court order. For example, if you think the court should not have made you bankrupt. In these cases, you should contact the court that made the order.

More information

We monitor all complaints to make sure we meet our standards and find out how we can make improvements.

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