At Oldham Council, making sure residents have a good experience is really important to us. We’re always listening and learning so we can keep getting better.
We welcome your feedback and use it to:
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Improve our services
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Apologise and fix things when something goes wrong
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Learn from what’s gone well
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Understand what matters most to you
Many of our services are available online, so you can use them whenever it suits you—this is often the fastest way to get in touch.
Our libraries offer free Wi-Fi and computers for public use. You can also get help with using the internet, learning digital skills, or borrowing a free tablet:
Complaints
We can only investigate complaints that have already been reported to the service involved and haven’t been resolved.
If you haven’t reported your issue to a service, please contact them directly first:
Bin complaints
If you're contacting us about a missed bin collection or anything to do with waste, you need to report it directly to the Rubbish and Recycling Team
The complaints team can’t deal with those issues.
Emergencies
If your issue is urgent or an emergency, please contact the right team directly:
- Homelessness/Housing Advice: 0161 770 4605
- Children’s or Adults’ Safeguarding: 0161 770 7777
- Mental Health Crisis: Call 111, choose Option 2
- Urgent Highways Issues: 0161 770 4325 out of hours (after 5pm): 0161 770 2222
- Drop-in centres, shelters, and food support
Make a complaint
If you have reported an issue to a service that hasn't been resolved please let us know by completing our complaints, comments and compliments form:
Complaints, comments, and compliments form
We aim to provide an update within five working days, though it might take a bit longer during busy times.
We normally only handle complaints that you became aware of in the past 12 months. If something prevented you from reporting the issue sooner, please tell us as soon as you can.
Equalities statement
The Council tries to deal with all complaints fairly and honestly, no matter who makes them.
Everyone in the community is treated equally, and no one gets special treatment.
The Council mainly uses English, but we can provide information in other formats or languages if needed—just ask.
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman
We hope to sort out all complaints in a way that makes residents happy, but we understand that sometimes people may not agree with our decision.
If you're still unhappy after we’ve given you our final response, you can ask the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to look into your complaint. You usually have 12 months from when you first knew about the issue to do this.
The Ombudsman mostly looks at complaints within that time, but might consider older ones if there’s a good reason.
The Ombudsman investigates complaints about councils, adult social care services (like care homes and home care), and some other local public services. It’s free to use, fair, and independent. If the Ombudsman can’t look into your complaint, it will explain why
- www.lgo.org.uk - Local Government Ombudsman website
- Phone: 0300 061 0614 opening hours: Monday to Friday - 10am to 4pm (except public holidays)
Compliments
We’re happy to receive positive feedback and will make sure it gets passed on to the staff member who helped you. We also use your feedback to see if we can apply good ideas to other services.
The fastest way to contact the Complaints Team is by using the complaints, comments, and compliments form:
Unreasonable contact
We try to fix problems as quickly as possible and ask that you give staff time to look into any issues you've raised. We understand it can be frustrating when things go wrong, but staff shouldn’t have to deal with abusive, offensive, or threatening behaviour—we’ll take steps to protect them if that happens.
Usually, we don’t limit how residents contact staff, but if someone’s behaviour becomes unreasonable, we will act according to our Unreasonable Behaviour Policy.