Complaints and feedback about our service
Your comments, compliments and complaints are important to us. We want to give you the best possible service and your feedback helps us to do that. And where things have gone wrong, we want to put them right.
We follow the GMC’s customer complaints policy, processes and systems. In line with our values we will:
- be open, honest and fair
- be polite, professional and treat you with respect
- listen to what you tell us and learn from it
- understand and meet your needs and communicate with you in a way that’s right for you
- keep our processes efficient and effective.
If you want to tell us about any part of your experience with us – whether good or bad – we want to hear from you.
Below we summarise our policies and procedures. But you can also read our full policies:
How to give feedback
Alternate versions
Editable form (English) and editable form (Welsh)
Screenreader accessible (English) and screenreader accessible (Welsh)
Easy read version (English) and easy read version (Welsh)
Once complete, you can:
Email us
Email: enquiries@mpts-uk.org
Write to us
Feedback and complaints
Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service
St James’s Building
79 Oxford Street
Manchester
M1 6FQ
Call us
Call: 0161 923 6602
Use a representative:
We'll ask you to confirm you're happy for that person to act for you. We will then deal with them directly until we have completed the investigation of your complaint. You can tell us at any stage if you no longer want the person to represent you.
What is a customer complaint?
A customer complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction about our services. A response or resolution may or may not be expected. Complaints can be made verbally or in writing.
Sometimes we get things wrong, or we can’t help you in the way you would like. Our customer complaints process covers feedback about:
- a procedure or policy
- the way we have communicated with you
- the actions of our staff
- any service we have provided that you feel wasn’t satisfactory.
If your complaint is not appropriate for the MPTS to deal with, we’ll redirect it to the right team in the GMC. We’ll let you know if we do this.
What customer complaints do not cover
We do not consider complaints about doctors. You can find information on how to complain about a doctor on the Concerns section of the GMC site.
Our complaints process doesn’t cover requests for information under data protection legislation. See our Accessing information page.
What do we need from you?
When making a complaint or feeding back about please tell us:
- what happened (including any reference numbers we have given you)
- why you are complaining or giving us feedback
- what your expectations are from providing the feedback
- if you are a doctor, your GMC registration number.
What we expect from you
We treat every complaint on its merits, regardless of who has made the complaint. We act honestly and treat all complainants fairly and with respect. And in return, we expect everyone who contacts us to be polite and courteous. If customers are persistently rude, threatening or abusive, or make offensive or discriminatory remarks, we may withdraw or restrict our service.
How will we handle your complaint?
We aim to resolve complaints with our first response wherever possible. But if you aren’t happy with our response we may escalate it through our complaints process.
Acknowledging your complaint
We'll acknowledge receipt of your complaint within five working days.
Initial assessment
We'll assess your complaint to make sure we send it to the most appropriate person to respond. We’ll record it and give it a unique complaint number so we can track the progress of your complaint.
Complaint investigation
Once your complaint is with the right person, we will investigate it with help from the relevant team. At this stage we'll also identify and record any improvement opportunities and share these with our colleagues.
Resolution
When the investigation is over, we'll send a response by email (unless you’ve requested another format). We aim to do this within ten working days of the date we received your complaint. If a delay is likely we will let you know as soon as possible.
Escalation
If we haven’t reached a resolution after a further response, we may escalate your complaint by sending it to the GMC’s Corporate Review team.
They will investigate further, take an independent view on the matters and write to you to give you the final outcome. If they decide no further action is needed, we’ll consider your complaint closed, unless you raise any new information.
Confidentiality
Your personal data is important. So we’re committed to holding it safely and using it appropriately.
We maintain complaint records electronically. When we record identifiable information, we only use it to investigate and resolving a complaint. Or to deal with the wider process in which your complaint was raised. We store and process your data under the relevant legislation.
We report on complaints regularly to understand and improve our complaints’ process and our services. We rarely publish these reports externally. But any that we do publish will have personally identifiable information excluded, to preserve the confidentiality of those involved.
Your information may be used by our different teams. We may also share your personal data with other parties if required by law. This could be where ordered by a court, or where it is otherwise in the public interest (for example for research purposes). Where possible, data will be anonymised or aggregated before we share it with any other party.
Meeting complaints handling standards
The British Standards Institution (BSI) has certified that we:
- have effective procedures for responding to customer complaints
- are committed to learning from customer complaints and improving the service we offer
- deal with complaints in a consistent, fair and transparent way.
The BSI has awarded us a kitemark to reflect the way we meet complaints handling standards.
