Complaints procedure

How to complain
• Set out your complaint clearly, including relevant dates, times and
locations. Send it to us at info@highwaysengland.co.uk.
• Our customer contact centre will always try to resolve your complaint at
the first point of contact. We aim to respond to all queries within 15
working days. If we’re going to take longer, we’ll let you know why and
when we can reply.
• You can alternatively contact us by phone on 0300 123 5000 (local rate
call). If you prefer to send a letter, the address is:
• Highways England
National Traffic Operations Centre
3 Ridgeway
Quinton Business Park
Birmingham
B32 1AF

Unreasonable complaints
If a complaint becomes unreasonable we may require you to contact us in a
particular way. We’ll let you know if we believe your complaint is unreasonable –
usually if you:
• refuse to follow our complaints procedure
• refuse to be specific or continually change the basis of your complaint
• make excessive demands on staff resource
• submit repeated complaints on the same issue
• use abusive language
Stages of Complaint Resolution
• Stage 1: Local resolution
If our customer contact centre can’t provide an answer or you aren’t happy
with their initial response, they’ll ask the relevant area of our business to
investigate and respond.

• Stage 2: Review
If you’re unhappy with the response provided by the relevant business
area, you can ask for your complaint to be reviewed and investigated.
We will aim to send a full response within 15 working days.

• Stage 3: Independent review (ICA).

If you’re not happy with our review, you can ask us to refer your complaint
to an Independent Complaints Assessor (ICA). Please be aware that the ICA
can only review decisions in certain circumstances.

Independent Complaint Assessor (ICA)

What the ICA can review
• bias or discrimination
• unfair treatment
• poor or misleading advice
• failure to give information
• mistakes
• unreasonable delays
• poor administration
• inappropriate staff behaviour
What the ICA cannot review
• legislation
• Highways England policy
• matters where only a court, tribunal or other body can decide the outcome
• legal proceedings that have already started and will decide the outcome
• an ongoing investigation or enquiry
 • personnel and disciplinary decisions or actions as an employer

An ICA can’t review your complaint if it’s being or has been investigated by the
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. They can’t usually look at any
complaint that:
• hasn’t completed all stages of our complaints process
• is more than six months old from the date of our final response

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).

• If you think we have not done everything possible to resolve your
complaint, you can also ask a Member of Parliament to contact us on your
behalf. Or you can ask them to refer your complaint to the Parliamentary
and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).
• The PHSO will expect you to have tried to resolve your complaint at the
earlier stages of our complaints procedure before they look into it.
• Our complaints procedure does not prejudice or prevent a referral of your
complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
• By law, we can only look at complaints about UK government departments
and other UK public organisations if a Member of Parliament (MP)
refers the complaint to us. You can complete our complaint form and ask
an MP or their office to sign it.