Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint we want you to tell us so we can put it right. Heart of Yorkshire Education Group aims to provide a high standard of service to all its students, customers and visitors.

If you’re unhappy with any aspect of a Heart of Yorkshire Education Group course, we ask that you first try and resolve the issue with your personal tutor, subject teacher or the relevant manager of the area in the first instance. If you’re unsure who this is, your tutor or Reception staff will be able to guide you. If you don’t feel that your complaint has been resolved once you’ve tried this step, please use this Complaint Form.

How to make a complaint...

...and what happens when you make an official complaint?

• STEP 1 - Make a complaint

  To investigate your complaint properly we need you to provide us with full details of the problem including:

  • Date, time and place of incident.
  • A clear account of what happened, or what the problem is.
  • Names of other people involved.
  • The course you are attending (if applicable).
  • Your contact number and address (please write this clearly).
  • Your email address.
  • The outcome which you would like.

  There are a number of ways to submit your complaint. You can:

  • Complete our online complaint form which can be found on this webpage
  • Complete a complaints form, available from the reception at any site.

  You should submit your complaint via the methods outlined above. However, if you discuss your complaint in person with our staff and they feel that at any time your behaviour is threatening or abusive they will call for the assistance of our Security Team. If you display such behaviour over the phone our staff will terminate the call.

• STEP 2 - We acknowledge your complaint

  Your complaint will be acknowledged by email or letter within three working days starting the day after the date of receipt of your complaint. In our acknowledgement, we will tell you the name and job title of the person who is investigating your complaint and the date by which we will respond to you.

• STEP 3 - We will respond to your complaint in full

  In most cases we will respond to your complaint within ten working days starting the day after the date of our acknowledgment. Please note that this will not take into account any College closure days.

  If all or part of the period to respond to your complaint, outlined above, falls on a day on which we are closed for half-term or end of term holidays, the deadline to respond to your complaint will be extended to twenty working days starting on the day after the date of our acknowledgement. During these times, staff may be on annual leave and more time may be required to account for such absences. We will confirm whether such an extension is required when we acknowledge your complaint (see step 2).

  If your complaint is particularly complicated and/or requires a significant investigation to be undertaken and, in our responsible opinion, it is not possible to respond to you with a meaningful outcome within the deadlines set out above, we will contact you as soon as possible, and no later than ten working days starting the day after the date of our acknowledgement, to let you know and to discuss an appropriate deadline to respond to your complaint.

  If we determine that an extended deadline is necessary, as outlined above, we will keep you informed of our progress at such intervals as we consider reasonable to satisfy you that your complaint is being progressed efficiently.

  Please do not contact us regarding the progress of your complaint before the relevant deadline for response.

  In our response, we may accept, partially accept or reject your complaint. We will accept your complaint if we consider it to be completely justified or partially accept your complaint if we believe part of it to be justified. In either case we will explain what went wrong and why and try to remedy the situation, in particular, by making the changes necessary to ensure the problem does not occur again in the future. Where you have suffered a detriment, we will, where possible, as a general principle, try to put you back in the position you would have been in had things not gone wrong.

  Please do not try and escalate your complaint higher up the organisation without first going through the complaints procedure in full.

• STEP 4 - We hope your complaint will not reach this stage but...

  If you are not happy with our response to your complaint under step 3 (above), you may ask for it to be reviewed by writing to:

  Principal & Chief Executive Officer
  Heart of Yorkshire Education Group
  Margaret Street
  Wakefield WF1 2DH

  You should outline clearly in your letter the reasons for your request.

  Your step 3 response will be reviewed by an independent member of our staff. You will receive a response within twenty working days starting the day after the date of receipt of your request.

  Our step 3 response will either be upheld (meaning our original response stands), not upheld (meaning the independent reviewer agrees with you that our original response was incorrect) or partially upheld (meaning the independent reviewer believes that our original response was only partially correct). If our response is not upheld or partially upheld, we will deal with your complaint as accepted or partially accepted (as the case may be) complaints under step 3 (above).

  If you are still not happy with the outcome of your complaint, you may contact:

  Complaints Team
  Education and Skills Funding Agency
  Cheylesmore House
  Quinton Road
  Coventry CV1 2WT