Our service commitments to you

1. We will respond swiftly to your enquiries. We aim to answer your telephone call within four rings during business hours. If you complain to us, we will acknowledge your letter within three working days of our receiving it.

2. We will deal with your complaint as quickly as possible. We aim to deal with complaints in an average of 35 working days. If your complaint is a complex one which is going to take longer, we will explain why. We will aim to keep you informed of the progress of your complaint at intervals of no longer than fifteen working days.

3. We will work with you to examine, and try to resolve where appropriate, any complaint that raises a possible breach of the Code of Practice. We will do so fairly and impartially.

4. Our procedures are transparent: the Commission will only consider material submitted by one of the parties to the complaint after it has been seen by the other party.

5. We will explain all of our decisions to you clearly and in full.

6. We will process your complaint at no cost to you. The PCC costs nothing either to the taxpayer or to those who complain. We will continue to operate a service which is free of charge.

7. We will be as accessible as possible. Our literature is available in a range of languages to assist those whose first language is not English - and we will continue to widen the range of languages in which it is produced. We will maintain a Textphone to assist those who are deaf or have difficulty hearing - and make literature available on audio cassette for the visually impaired.

8. We will be as open as possible. Members of staff will be available throughout the process to assist those making a complaint. Once your complaint has been taken up, a named Complaints Officer will deal with your complaint throughout and act as a continuing point of contact for you. Members of staff will at all times identify themselves by name, and be courteous and polite.

9. We will seek to improve standards year on year. Every year we will publish statistics on the number of complaints received and resolved, and the average time it takes to deal with them. We will aim to make improvements in these standards each year. Once a year, an independent 'Charter Compliance Panel' will publish a report after auditing our standards of service, and make recommendations to the Commission about how they can be improved.

The Independent Charter Commissioner
c/o Halton House
20/23 Holborn
London EC1N 2JD

Email: chartercommissioner@pcc.org.uk