How to complain
On this page we provide advice on making a complaint.
We believe that complaints are valuable to us and to the Scottish Government. Complaints help us to identify if something has gone wrong. For us, dealing with complaints effectively means putting measures in place to ensure that the same things don’t go wrong again in future.
You can make a complaint about a public appointments process or you can make a complaint about our work or the services we provide.
If you're not sure we're the right people to deal with your complaint you can refer to a route map, which provides information and contact details for the different organisations that handle complaints about public services in Scotland.
Making a complaint about a public appointment
If you have a complaint about a public appointment you first have to complain to the Scottish Government and give it a chance to respond to your complaint. If you are unhappy with the Scottish Government’s response to your complaint you can then ask us to investigate the matter for you.
We regulate the public appointments process, as opposed to the activities of board members once they are appointed. Although the Public Appointments Commissioner does not investigate the probity or conflicts of interest of existing board members, the Public Standards Commissioner does. the Public Standards Commissioner is also a part of the Commission for Ethical Standards.
The type of issues the Public Appointments Commissioner can investigate include
whether an appointment round was fair and whether the people selected for interview or appointed were chosen on merit
whether an applicant has been poorly treated or discriminated against
whether the Scottish Government checked the probity of candidates and any conflicts of interest they may have.
The type of issues the Public Appointments Commissioner can’t investigate include
the performance of an existing board member in their role
appointments to posts or to bodies that the Commissioner doesn’t regulate. A list of regulated bodies is available on our website.
Also, we are very unlikely to investigate complaints about appointments made more than a year ago. This leaflet gives specific guidance on how we handle complaints about the public appointments process.
Making a complaint about us
Occasionally you may be unhappy about
an aspect of our performance, or
the service that we provide to you, or
a decision made by the Commissioner.
We have service standards covering what you can expect from us. If we fall short of these standards we’d like you to let us know so that we can work on putting things right. This leaflet tells you how we will deal with complaints about us.
Complaints about our performance or the service that we provide are treated differently to complaints about the Commissioner’s decisions. You can find our more about how we deal with each type of complaint in our complaints leaflets.
If your complaint is about the way we have treated you, and we don’t deal with your complaint appropriately, you can raise this with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman.
If you are in any doubt about whether we can deal with your complaint, or if you want advice before raising a formal complaint, please contact us. You can read more about the way we deal with complaints by downloading our leaflets. If you want we can also send you more detailed information on our methodology for handling complaints and for conducting investigations.
Please contact us if you want to make a complaint or if you have any questions about our work.
Are you unhappy with how you’ve been treated? Would you like to complain? Here’s how.