Complaints

This webpage provides advice on how you can make a complaint about the FSA, our people or our services.

If you are not complaining specifically about the FSA but want to report an issue such as poor hygiene practice in a food outlet or mislabelling, you should not use this complaints procedure. You should instead get the relevant contact details for officials responsible for food standards enforcement in the area where you live from the How to Complain section.

Receiving complaints and compliments is important to the Food Standards Agency, as they give us a valuable insight into how we are doing, helping us know what we’re getting right and what we can improve on.

Even the best organisations will sometimes get things wrong. Where this happens, we encourage you to let us know. We will try to resolve any problem quickly, and explain what we have done and why.

You should let us know if:

• you believe we have not met any of our statutory obligations
• we have failed to live up to our own service standards or our statement of general objectives and practices, for example if there have been undue delays in replying to correspondence
• you believe that we have not acted properly or followed the right procedures, for example in the conduct of public consultations, or in our procurement of goods and services
• you have not been able to access our information or other services because they are not available in a suitable language or format
• the conduct of any of our staff or Board members has fallen short of your expectations.

If you are dissatisfied with any decision or policy that the Food Standards Agency has made, please contact us so we can explain how that decision or policy was reached. If, after receiving our explanation, you believe you have grounds for a complaint, you should follow our complaints procedure.

Most concerns or complaints are best and most quickly resolved by talking to the person or team directly concerned. If you need to find the person that deals with a particular subject area, please use our A-Z contact list at the Contact Us section.

If your concerns cannot be resolved informally with the person or team concerned, you can make a formal complaint, contacting the Complaints Co-ordinator:

FSA Complaints Co-ordinator

Keith Gregory
Head of Correspondence, Openness and Parliamentary Branch
Regulation, Government and Secretariat Division
Food Standards Agency
125 Kingsway
London WC2B 6NH
Tel: 020 7276 8612
E-mail: keith.gregory@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk

If you write to us with a complaint, we will acknowledge your letter within two working days of receiving it. We will write to you with a full reply within 20 working days of receiving your complaint or, if this is not possible, we will explain why and say when you will get a full reply.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of our investigation of your complaint, you can write to us to ask for a further review of your complaint. This review will be adjudicated by a senior person, normally the Chief Executive, who will work to the same service standards above.

If you are still dissatisfied after the conclusion of our complaints procedure, you can ask for your complaint and its handling to be investigated by the Ombudsman. To do this, you must write to a Member of Parliament (this does not have to be your local MP) asking that they refer your complaint to the Ombudsman (the telephone number for the House of Commons Information Office, where you can get information on contacting your MP, is 020 7219 4272). Usually, before you complain to him, the Ombudsman expects you to have first put your complaint to the FSA through our complaints procedure. If you are in any doubt about whether your case is suitable for referral to the Ombudsman, contact the Ombudsman's helpline on 0845 015 4033 for guidance.

We are also very pleased to receive compliments about the Food Standards Agency or any of our staff, as they highlight areas of good practice and acknowledge the hard work of our staff.

You may also wish to make a comment about the Food Standards Agency or our staff that isn't a complaint. You may, for instance, have an idea of how we can improve our service in a particular area. Such comments are always welcome and can be very helpful.

Please forward any compliments or other comments to the Complaints Co-ordinator, using the contact details above. We will always acknowledge your comments.

The Meat Hygiene Service has its own robust procedures in place to deal with customer complaints. These include:

• a published customer complaints procedure
• procedure for managing disputes regarding the MHS audit of the Food Business Operator's Food Safety Management System
• an independent appeals mechanism for objections to the levy of additional charges for MHS work made under the revised meat hygiene inspection charging system
• regular meetings of the MHS Industry Forum

For further details, contact the Meat Hygiene Service on 01904 455 558.