Transforming complaint resolution

Welcome to the first blog on the Transforming Complaint Resolution website!

The website (www.complaintresolution.co.uk) was created by Chris Gill, Carolyn Hirst, and Jane Williams. Collectively we are academics, researchers, and practitioners who have an interest in complaint handling, conflict resolution, and administrative justice. You can find out more about who we are in the ‘About Us’ section of the website.

Together we believe that much of the transformational potential of complaints remains unrealised. And our purpose is to carry out research that provides an evidence base for complaint resolution practice and to work collaboratively with practitioners and policymakers to identify best practice.

So the reason for creating this website is to bring together and share the findings of research we have conducted (sometimes with other colleagues) on complaint resolution over a number of years. This has included looking at complaints in public services, in relation to consumer problems, and in relation to external complaint handling by ombuds and others.

When you access the website, the tabs at the top of the home page let you access the website resources. These currently provide details of research on the following topics:

• Being Complained About
• User Experiences
• Fairness
• Access to Justice
• Dispute System Design
• Ombuds Reform
• Parliamentary Casework
• Complaint Data
• Outcome of Complaints

And we will feature new and emerging work under the ‘Current Research’ Tab. You will see this now has information on a research project we are developing with others to look into the complaint systems in the adult social care and social housing sectors in Scotland and England.

We want the website content to have both academic interest and practical application. And we hope that its resources will have relevance to those dealing with and making complaints in a wide range of public, private and third-sector organisations and services, as well as to ombuds institutions, professional and advisory bodies, regulators, and academics.

We will be adding to the resources on this website over the coming months – please subscribe to the blog to keep up to date!