What happens to your complaint

Once you’ve made a complaint about the police there are several possible outcomes. Every complaint is different, but we’ll follow the legislation and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) guidelines to try to find a satisfactory solution.

We'll look at your complaint and our standards team will assess its nature and seriousness.

If the reasons for your complaint are clear and no investigation is needed, we’ll try to get back to you quickly with information or an explanation.

Investigations

If we need to look at your complaint in more detail, we'll contact you to explain the next steps, how your complaint will be investigated and how a decision about it will be reached.

A complaint handler who isn’t directly connected to your complaint will look into it. The complaint handler will get in touch with you to ask for any missing details and answer any questions you may have. 

They'll ask you how you'd like to be contacted and keep you informed of the progress.

You must receive an update every 28 days and at the end of the complaint process.

Complaints we get from the Home Office

If you make an initial complaint to the HO, they'll forward it to us. We’ll then follow the same process as if you'd contacted us directly.

Please note, the majority of complaints will be dealt with by your local police force.

Outcomes

However we handle your complaint we'll let you know in your complaints ticket to you to tell you the outcome and explain whether you can request a review.

Find out more about what you can do if you're unhappy with the outcome of your complaint.

Serious complaints

We'll refer serious complaints we receive to the HO.

• Serious complaints include:

• action (or lack of action) that led to a person’s death or serious injury

• serious assault

• serious sexual offence

• serious corruption.

The Home Office may choose to investigate these cases themselves, independently of us.