Your correspondence will be received by our Quality Assurance Unit. We will then acknowledge it and let you know the name of the investigating officer. We will also let you know the date when you should receive a full reply.

We aim to respond within 20 working days. If we are unable to respond within this time, we will contact you to let you know, together with a new date for a full reply.

Inspectors have no further direct involvement in the case once their decision is issued. It is the job of the Quality Assurance Unit to investigate correspondence about decisions and Inspector’s conduct, or the administrative process that supported the appeal. The Quality Assurance Unit works independently of all of our casework teams. This ensures that all complaints are investigated thoroughly and impartially, and that we reply in clear, straightforward language, avoiding jargon and complicated legal terms.

To assist our investigations we may need to ask the Inspector or other staff for their comments on your correspondence. This helps us to gain as full a picture as possible so that we are better able to decide whether an error has been made. If this is likely to delay our full reply we will quickly let you know.