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Complain about a council service or send us a compliment.
If you wish to complain about a council service or give us a compliment, please use the online form.
Before you log a complaint, please read the information below, as these forms can be better suited to what you would like to tell us about.
If you want to report the following, you can do this directly to the relevant team. Please follow the links below instead of using the complaints form:
If you wish to contact us regarding the following services, please use the email below:
Private Sector Housing: propertylicensing@walthamforest.gov.uk
Planning enforcement: planning.enforcement@walthamforest.gov.uk
When you log your complaint through the online portal, please follow the registration process to create an account. If you choose to log your complaint without registering your details, we might not be able to process your complaint or issue a response, and you will not be able to track the case
We send an acknowledgement to you within three working days of receiving your complaint. This applies to all complaints.
We will send a response within 20 working days from receiving your complaint.
Responses to statutory social services complaints in relation to children’s services are issued within 10 working days.
If you're unhappy with the first response to your complaint, then you can escalate this to a stage 2 complaint using the complaints online form.
When you complete the form, please tell us that it’s a stage 2 complaint and provide the reference number of the original Stage 1 complaint. This will speed up the process of logging and acknowledging your complaint.
Stage 2 complaints are investigated by the Council’s corporate Complaints Team on behalf of the Council’s Chief Executive. The Council has 25 working days to respond to Stage 2 complaints.
Please note:
There is no Stage 2 escalation process for Statutory Social Services complaints about Adult Social Care. When the Stage 1 process is completed, you can escalate your complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO)
If you remain dissatisfied with the council’s response after completing the corporate or statutory complaint procedures, you will have the right to escalate your complaint to the Ombudsman.
In July 2020, the Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) published a new Complaint Handling Code setting out good practice that will allow landlords to respond to complaints effectively and fairly. Landlords have been asked to self-assess against the Code by 31 December 2020 and publish the results. Non-compliance could result in the Ombudsman issuing complaint handling failure orders. Guidance on these new orders has also been published and these will be implemented from 1 January 2021. The LBWF Self-Assessment Form re Complaints Handling Code (PDF) has been completed.
We'll tell you which ombudsman to contact as part of our response to your complaint.
Complaints about Data Protection, such as breach in data protection and confidentiality, will not be dealt with under the two stages of the corporate complaints procedure. They will instead be investigated and responded to in one stage by our Data Protection Officer. If you wish to make a complaint about data protection issues, you can:
Submit your complaint through the complaints online portal.
If you remain dissatisfied with our response in respect of your personal data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner. If you wish to pursue such a complaint, you can contact their office via their helpline: 0303 123 1113. You can obtain further information about them via the Information Commissioner website. You will be provided with information about the escalation process when we respond to your complaint.
If your complaint also contains issues regarding other service, those issues will continue to be dealt with under the two stages of the corporate complaints procedure, or the statutory social care complaints procedure, depending on the service complained about.
We don't investigate complaints about schools. Please contact the school directly with your complaint. GOV.UK has set out the complaints process for schools.
This is usually due to statutory or legal reasons,exceptions to the council complaints process.
If you don't have a computer, you can use a self-service PC at any library in Waltham Forest to log your request/report.
Staff there can help you to log in and create a MyAccount.