Pausing and withdrawing complaints

Sometimes complainants may ask an organisation to pause its consideration of a complaint. This may be for a number of reasons including that they are unable to cope with making a complaint at the time, they are awaiting a decision or outcome from another organisation or, they wish to seek advice.

Organisations should give individuals opportunities to provide supporting evidence or seek advice, but this should be time limited. We think 10 working days is normally enough time to allow individuals to gather evidence or seek advice. However, organisations should be open to extending this timescale where appropriate. In each case the organisation should advise the individual that this will impact their ability to respond within the timescales set out in the Code.

It is for organisations to investigate complaints, not complainants so organisations should check what evidence the complainant is seeking to provide and consider whether this is something that needs to be considered as part of an investigation. For example, it would not usually be necessary for the organisation to wait for a complainant to receive a response to a subject access request relating to information the organisation already holds.

If the deadline for providing evidence passes, or the organisation does not believe it needs to see the evidence as part of its investigation, then it can proceed with its consideration of the complaint and explain the reasons for this to the complainant. The complainant will be able to raise concerns about the organisations approach should they choose to escalate the complaint to stage 2 or to the Ombudsman.

Organisations should not pause consideration of a complaint. Where an individual does not wish a complaint to be considered until a decision or outcome from another organisation is known or is simply unable to deal with the complaint at the time, they should be invited to withdraw their complaint. The individual may then raise the complaint again when they feel able to do so. Individuals should be advised on time limits for raising a complaint.

If the individual does not wish to withdraw their complaint, the organisation should, where possible, provide a response in line with the expectations set out in the Code. This supports the prompt resolution of complaints and prevents matters from being drawn out unnecessarily over an extended period.