The Chartered College of Teaching always aims to provide a high standard of care in all our services. Your views are important to us and help to ensure our services are of a consistently high quality. In order to do this, please do share with us your comments about our service and tell us if we get things wrong.

We treat a complaint as an expression of dissatisfaction with our service which calls for a response. We listen to your complaints, treat them seriously, and learn from them so that we can continuously improve our service.

Making a complaint about the Chartered College of Teaching

We aim to handle complaints quickly, effectively and in a fair and honest way. We take all complaints seriously and use valuable information to help us improve the service we provide. We treat all complaints in confidence. The Chartered College of Teaching assures all those who make a complaint that we will do our best to resolve the matter as soon as possible.

Who can complain

Anyone affected by the Chartered College of Teaching’s services can make a complaint. A representative may complain for the affected person if they:

• cannot make a complaint themselves; or
• have given consent for the representative to act on their behalf.

How you can make a complaint

You can complain:

• By telephone: +44 20 3433 7624
• By email: hello@chartered.college
• By letter: Pears Pavilion, Coram Campus, 41 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ
• Where someone complains orally, we will make a written record and provide you with a copy of it within 3 working days. Please provide your email or postal address so we may contact you for this purpose.

We will acknowledge your complaint within ten (10) working days from receiving it and will send a formal response within twenty (20) working days. Once a complaint has been received either in writing or orally, the following process will be followed:

1. A member of the Chartered College of Teaching staff team will contact the affected person to arrange a time to talk to the affected person to gather more information about the issue.
2. A member of the Chartered College of Teaching staff team will then send a summary email to the affected person, outlining the nature of the complaint.
3. A member of the Chartered College of Teaching’s senior management team will decide upon the action(s) to be taken to address the complaint, in discussion with the affected person.
4. A member of the Chartered College of Teaching’s staff team will share the proposed course of action with the affected person.
5. A member of the Chartered College of Teaching’s staff will arrange a time to speak to the affected person to understand the effect of any actions taken.

Every effort will be made to ensure that the complaint is dealt with in a timely manner. There may be instances when the Chartered College of Teaching is unable to make any changes in response to the complaint. If this is the case, this will be explained to the affected person in full.

Responsibility

We will provide as far as is reasonably practical any help you need to understand the complaints procedure; or advice on where you may get that help. All complaints will be stored in line with the data retention schedule and for no longer than necessary.

How we handle complaints

The Chartered College of Teaching may ask one of the senior management team to investigate the complaint. That person will have enough seniority and experience to deal with the issues raised by the complaint. We will acknowledge a complaint within ten (10) working days and give you the name and contact details of the person investigating it.

We will keep you informed about the progress of the investigation. We aim to have all complaints finished within twenty-eight (28) working days unless we agree a different time scale with you.

When we have finished investigating, we will write to you via email to discuss the outcome, details of our findings, any action we have taken; and our proposals to resolve your complaint.

From time to time, we may receive complaints about matters that we are not able to comment on (for example, matters that do not relate directly to the Chartered College of Teaching or our work). Additionally, there may be very rare occasions when we will choose not to respond to a complaint (for example, where someone unreasonably pursues a complaint that we have already responded to; where the person making the complaint is being abusive or offensive in their correspondence; or where the complaint is incoherent or has been made anonymously). We are a charity and we have limited resources, and we have to be mindful of this at all times in responding to complaints.

Time limits

You should complain as soon as you can after the date on which the event occurred or came to your notice. If you complain more than twelve months later after the event occurred, we may not be able to launch a thorough investigation. Nevertheless, we shall also consider whether you had good reason for not making the complaint sooner and whether, despite the delay, it is still possible to investigate the complaint effectively and fairly.

The Fundraising Regulator and the Chartered College of Teaching

The Chartered College of Teaching is committed to delivering a high standard of service to anyone who engages with our work through fundraising. The Chartered College of Teaching is a member of the Fundraising Regulator and we follow the Fundraising Regulator’s high standards and conduct any fundraising in a responsible way.

Further steps

At any stage during the process, if you are not happy with the way the service is dealing with your complaint, you can contact hello@chartered.college and request that we escalate the complaint to a member of the Executive Leadership Team, who will then handle your complaint.

Last updated: February 2025