Complaints about the NSW Ombudsman

We encourage you to give us feedback about our services. We listen to your feedback and use it to help us understand what we're doing well and where we can improve.

You can make a complaint about any aspect of our service, including:

  • staff behaviour or conduct
  • the way we handled your complaint
  • our policies, procedures or service.

If your complaint is about a decision we made, you can request a review of a decision.

Complaining about our services is different to making a complaint to us about another NSW government agency or community service provider. To do this, see How to make a complaint.

Make a complaint about our service

If you're not happy about the way we handled your complaint about another NSW government agency or community service provider, the first thing to do is contact your case officer. Talking to your case officer may sort out the problem.

If you can't resolve your complaint with your case officer, or you don't have a case officer, then you can contact us to make your complaint.

If it's easier, you can ask someone else to make the complaint for you – for example, a friend, relative or case worker.

How we handle your complaint

We will let you know we've received your complaint within 2 working days.

We will review the information you give us and decide what action to take. We'll keep you informed of the progress of your complaint, including the reason for any delay.

Depending on your complaint, we may:

  • gather information from the staff member or area that your complaint is about
  • give you more information or an explanation
  • review a practice, policy or procedure
  • take action to fix the problem or improve the situation
  • apologise to you
  • investigate your complaint.

We will give you advice about your options and reasons for our decisions.

You can learn more about how we handle complaints about our service in our Feedback, compliments and complaints policy.

Request a review of a decision

If you're not happy with the outcome of a complaint you made to us about another NSW government agency or community service provider, you can ask us to review the decision.

Before requesting a review of a decision, you need to contact your case officer. Your case officer will be able to explain how and why we made the decision.

If you're not satisfied with the case officer's response, then you can contact us to request a review. We will explain the review process, including whether the decision can be reviewed or not.

We may ask you to make the request in writing, including:

  • why you are not satisfied with the decision
  • any new information you believe is relevant to the decision.

We will let you know the outcome of your request.

If we agree to review the decision, it will be reviewed by someone more senior to your original case officer.

You can learn more about the way we handle requests to review a decision in our Request for a review of a decision policy.