Any dissatisfaction with a council service is a complaint.
You can make a complaint online, call 01227 862 000, or write to us at:
Canterbury City Council
14 Rose Lane
Canterbury
CT1 2UR
Your complaint may be directed straight to the service area, or through the customer contact centre.
Complaints are different from a request for service. For example, a one-off message to say that a bin has been missed could be a request for service, whereas an ongoing situation with repeated missed bins is likely to be a complaint.
What happens after I make a complaint?
Stage one
We aim to acknowledge your complaint within five working days, and provide a reply within 10 working days of the acknowledgment.
If the complaint is very complex and needs an extension to this timescale, then we will tell you when you can expect a reply. Any extension will be no more than 10 working days without good reason, and we will clearly explain the reasons for the extension to you.
If you're unhappy with the response, please contact the department or individual who dealt with it. The majority of queries are usually resolved at this stage.
Stage two
If you're still not satisfied with our response, you can ask for another officer to review your case.
We aim to acknowledge your request for a review within five working days, and provide a reply within 20 working days of the acknowledgement.
If the complaint is very complex and needs an extension to this timescale, then we will tell you when you can expect a reply. Any extension will be no more than 20 working days without good reason, and we will clearly explain the reasons for the extension to you.
Referring a complaint to the Ombudsman
If you are still not satisfied with the reply you can then refer your complaint to the relevant Ombudsman.
If your complaint is about Canterbury City Council as a landlord, you should contact the Housing Ombudsman.
For any other complaints, contact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
Both Ombudsman are independent of Canterbury City Council.
Their role is to investigate specific complaints about local authorities. The Ombudsman will usually only consider a complaint after it has been through both stages of our complaints procedure, so please make sure you have exhausted our complaints process before contacting them.
Complaints procedure documents
Response to the housing self-assessment and service improvement plan
The self-assessment against the Housing Ombudsman’s complaints handling code and the corresponding service improvement plan were presented to Cabinet committee on 7 July 2025. All councillors that were present were invited to comment.
The Cabinet member for housing, Cllr Pip Hazelton, provides the following additional response to the Cabinet minutes:
"As the councillor responsible for housing complaints, I have had sight of our complaints performance report for 2024-2025, including the Housing Ombudsman's formally published report.
Our officers are continuing to focus their efforts on improving performance in how we handle complaints.
I am confident that the self-assessment is an accurate reflection of our performance and am pleased with the progress made against the position reported in 2023-2024.
However, we recognise there is more work to do, and there is a detailed action plan underpinning the published service improvement plan which sets out how we will achieve this."
Customer behaviour and incident policy
We've developed a customer behaviour and incident policy to deal with the small minority of cases where people pursue their complaint or request for information in a way that is unreasonable.
This can have a significant impact on our resources and on our ability to provide services to other customers. The policy sets out how we will deal with customers or requests that we believe to be unreasonable or vexatious.