Care home complaints procedure

The rule: Regulation 16 in full

Regulation 16 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 is short. Regulation 16(1): “Any complaint received must be investigated and necessary and proportionate action must be taken in response to any failure identified by the complaint or investigation.” Regulation 16(2): “The registered person must establish and operate effectively an accessible system for identifying, receiving, recording, handling and responding to complaints by service users and other persons in relation to the carrying on of the regulated activity.” Regulation 16(3) requires the provider to send the Care Quality Commission (CQC), “when requested to do so and by no later than 28 days beginning on the day after receipt of the request”, a summary of complaints, the responses and further correspondence, and any other relevant information CQC asks for.

CQC’s guidance on Regulation 16, which providers must have regard to, explains the enforcement: “CQC can prosecute providers for a breach of the part of this regulation that relates to the provision of information to CQC about a complaint within 28 days when requested to do so. CQC can move directly to prosecution without first serving a Warning Notice.” CQC “must refuse registration if providers cannot satisfy us that they can and will continue to comply with this regulation.”

In assessments, complaints sit under CQC’s quality statement Listening to and involving people: “We make it easy for people to share feedback and ideas or raise complaints about their care, treatment and support. We involve them in decisions about their care and tell them what’s changed as a result.” It describes what good looks like from the resident’s side: people “feel confident that if they complain, they will be taken seriously and treated compassionately”, complaints are “dealt with in an open and transparent way, with no repercussions”, and “learning from complaints and concerns is seen as an opportunity for improvement”. Charities that run care homes meet the same regulation; our guide to a charity complaints procedure covers the other rules a charity carries.

What should be included in a care home complaints policy

CQC’s guidance under Regulation 16(1) and (2) is, in effect, the specification for a care home complaints policy. Each of these is a “must” or a “should” in the guidance:

• Anyone, any way. “People must be able to make a complaint to any member of staff, either verbally or in writing”, and “all staff must know how to respond when they receive a complaint”. A resident can complain personally or through a friend or relative, an advocate or someone with legal authority to act for them; the Ombudsman, for its part, accepts complaints on someone else’s behalf “if you have their permission, or if you have a legal right to act for them”.
• Accessible. Information about how to complain “must be available and accessible to everyone who uses the service”, in “appropriate languages and formats”, and providers “must tell people how to complain, offer support and provide the level of support needed to help them make a complaint”, including “advocates, interpreter services and any other support identified or requested”.
• Acknowledged. “Unless they are anonymous, all complaints should be acknowledged whether they are written or verbal.” An anonymous complaint is still followed through: “the provider must still follow its complaints process as far as possible.”
• No detriment. “Complainants must not be discriminated against or victimised. In particular, people’s care and treatment must not be affected if they make a complaint, or if somebody complains on their behalf.”
• Investigated without delay, starting with “a review to establish the level of investigation and immediate action required, including referral to appropriate authorities for investigation. This may include professional regulators or local authority safeguarding teams.”
• Investigated by the right people. Staff involved in assessing and investigating complaints “must have the right level of knowledge and skill”.
• Kept informed. “Complainants, and those about whom complaints are made, must be kept informed of the status of their complaint and its investigation, and be advised of any changes made as a result.”
• Confidential. “Consent and confidentiality must not be compromised during the complaints process unless there are professional or statutory obligations that make this necessary, such as safeguarding.”
• A way out. “Information must be available to a complainant about how to take action if they are not satisfied with how the provider manages and/or responds to their complaint”, including “when complaints should/will be escalated to other appropriate bodies”, and the provider “should cooperate with any independent review or process”.
• Reviewed. Providers “should monitor complaints over time, looking for trends and areas of risk”, and “providers that do not have independent review stages should regularly review their complaints resolution processes to ensure they are not disadvantaging complainants as a consequence”.

A policy that does all of that on two sides of A4, in plain words, naming the person responsible for dealing with complaints and saying how to make a verbal or written complaint, is better than a long one nobody reads. Display it where residents and visitors will see it, give it to every new resident and their family, and make an easy read version.

The stages, the timescales and the Ombudsman

Regulation 16 sets no number of days for acknowledging or answering a complaint; CQC’s guidance asks for complaints to be investigated and responded to “without delay”. The home sets its own timescales in the policy and should keep to them. A common pattern, consistent with the Ombudsman’s advice to the public, has three stages:

1. Raised and, if possible, resolved at a local level. Many problems are put right the same day by the person in charge. They still go in the log, with what was done.
2. Formal complaint. Acknowledged within a stated number of working days, with a copy of the procedure and an offer to meet and speak it through, investigated by someone not involved in what is complained about, and answered in writing: what was looked at, what was found, an apology where something went wrong, what will change, and how to take it further.
3. Review, then the Ombudsman. An internal review by a more senior person or the provider, where the provider has one, then a clear pointer to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) is the independent route for adult social care complaints in England. Its adult social care page says “we look at all adult social care complaints. This includes care that is funded privately without council involvement”, so self-funding residents have the same route as council-funded ones. It will not start until the provider has had its chance: “The first step is to complain directly to the organisation you’re unhappy with. This gives them the opportunity to resolve the problem first. We cannot look into your complaint before that happens.” A complainant can also go to the Ombudsman if they have “complained but haven’t received a response within a reasonable time. In most cases, we think this should be up to 16 weeks.” And it cannot normally look at a complaint if “more than 12 months have passed since you first knew about the problem”. The home’s final response should say all of that, and give the address the Ombudsman asks providers to use, lgo.org.uk/how-to-complain.

Where the council arranged the placement, the family may also complain to the council, and the Ombudsman says it expects people to complain “to all organisations you are unhappy with” before coming to it. Where a complaint crosses into NHS care, the Ombudsman’s Joint Working Team with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman handles complaints that “involve both health and social care issues”. CQC, for its part, does not resolve individual complaints: its guidance for the public says “we are not able to take forward complaints on your behalf”, but asks people to tell it about poor care, because that information “helps protect others”.

The complaints log CQC can ask for

CQC’s guidance is explicit: “Providers must maintain a record of all complaints, outcomes and actions taken in response to complaints. Where no action is taken, the reasons for this should be recorded.” Regulation 16(3) is why the record must be producible quickly: CQC can ask for a summary of complaints and the correspondence, and the provider has 28 days starting the day after it receives the request. A care home complaints log that answers that request in an afternoon has, for each complaint:

• a reference, the date received, how it arrived (in person, phone, letter, email, message) and who received it;
• who complained and on whose behalf, with the resident identified by the code your records use;
• what the complaint is about, in the complainant’s words where possible, and the category (care, medication, staff conduct, communication, fees, food, environment, other);
• the initial review: immediate action, and whether it was referred to safeguarding, a professional regulator, CQC or anyone else, with the date;
• acknowledgement date, investigating officer, response date and outcome (upheld, partly upheld, not upheld);
• the action taken, or the reason no action was taken, and the date it was completed;
• whether the complainant was satisfied, and whether it went to review or to the Ombudsman.

Review the log monthly for trends – the same shift, the same unit, the same kind of concern – and report it to the provider, as CQC’s guidance on monitoring complaints over time expects, with what the service decided to change and how it will learn from it. Compliments belong in a separate record; they are useful evidence, but mixing them into the complaints log makes trends harder to read.

Keep complaints records for their own period. The retention schedule in NHS England’s Records Management Code of Practice, which covers adult social care records, gives “complaints, case files” a minimum of 10 years. A complaint file is personal data about the complainant, the resident and the staff named in it, so access should be limited to those handling it.

When a complaint is also something else

The initial review exists because some complaints are the first report of something that has its own duty and its own clock:

• Abuse or neglect. A complaint that describes possible abuse or neglect is a safeguarding concern first. Regulation 13 requires systems “to investigate, immediately upon becoming aware of, any allegation or evidence of such abuse”, a referral to the local authority may be needed, and an allegation of abuse is notified to CQC under regulation 18 of the CQC (Registration) Regulations 2009. Our guide to safeguarding in care homes covers the route.
• Harm from care. CQC’s guidance says providers “must act in accordance with Regulation 20: Duty of Candour in respect of complaints about care and treatment that have resulted in a notifiable safety incident”. The candour steps run alongside the complaint, not instead of it; see our guide to the duty of candour.
• A professional’s conduct. CQC’s guidance names referral to “professional regulators” as part of the initial review, for example the Nursing and Midwifery Council for a nurse.
• A concern from staff. A member of staff raising a concern about practice is usually making a whistleblowing disclosure, not a Regulation 16 complaint, and has different legal protection; route it through the whistleblowing policy.

Complaints about care are rising. The Ombudsman’s annual review of adult social care complaints for 2025–26, published on 24 September 2026, reports that it received 3,938 complaints and enquiries about adult social care, that “complaints from people who fund their own care also rose by 10% to 368”, and that of 904 cases investigated, 77% were upheld. It also reports that around a third (33%) of upheld complaints about private social care providers “had already been suitably remedied by the organisation before the Ombudsman investigated”. A good local response is what keeps a complaint from becoming an upheld finding.

The complaint that arrives as a message

CQC’s guidance says people “must be able to make a complaint to any member of staff, either verbally or in writing”. In practice that includes a message. A daughter texts the senior carer she knows: “Mum’s hearing aid has been missing three days and nobody seems to care.” The carer replies that she will look into it, finds it in the laundry, and messages back that evening. Nothing reaches the log. A month later the daughter writes formally about a pattern of lost belongings, and the home’s record begins with the letter, not with the three messages that came before it.

That first message was a complaint received, and under Regulation 16 a received complaint is investigated, recorded and answered, with the outcome in the log. When it lives on a carer’s personal phone, the home cannot show it acted, cannot spot that it was the third such message that month, and cannot include it in the summary CQC may ask for within 28 days. The family, who kept their side of the exchange, can.

The remedy is not to stop families messaging the staff they trust; that trust is the service. It is to give those conversations a place the provider controls, where everyone in the channel is told it is on the record and a manager can see when a message is a complaint and log it. ComplyChat provides that kind of channel, and a mobile number verified by SMS is an identity on it, which matters because families are outside the organisation entirely and have no account on its systems; on paid plans the lasting record files into the provider’s own Microsoft 365. It is not a complaints management system and it does not keep the log; it keeps the conversation the log is written from.

A question for the next managers’ meeting: how many concerns did families raise with staff by message last month, and how many of them are in the complaints log?

Questions people ask

What are the steps in a care home complaints procedure?

Raise the concern with the person in charge or any member of staff; if it is not resolved, make a formal complaint to the home’s manager or provider, which must investigate it and respond; use any review stage the provider offers; then, if still dissatisfied, go to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. Regulation 16 requires every CQC-registered care home to run an accessible system for receiving, recording, handling and responding to complaints.

Who do I complain to about a care home?

Complain to the care home first, because the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman will not look at a complaint until the provider has had the chance to resolve it. If the home’s process is finished, or it has not responded within a reasonable time – up to 16 weeks in most cases, the Ombudsman says – complain to the Ombudsman, which looks at all adult social care complaints, including privately funded care. Tell CQC about poor care too, although it cannot take a complaint forward on your behalf.

Does CQC investigate complaints about care homes?

No, CQC does not resolve individual complaints: its guidance for the public says “we are not able to take forward complaints on your behalf”. It does want to hear about poor care, because that information “helps protect others”, and it can ask a provider for a summary of its complaints, which the provider must send within 28 days under Regulation 16(3).

What should a care home complaints log include?

A care home complaints log should record every complaint, verbal or written, with the date, who complained, what about, the action taken, the outcome and, where no action was taken, the reason. CQC’s guidance says “Providers must maintain a record of all complaints, outcomes and actions taken in response to complaints. Where no action is taken, the reasons for this should be recorded.”

How long does a care home have to respond to a complaint?

Regulation 16 sets no fixed deadline; CQC expects complaints to be investigated and responded to without delay, and each home sets its own timescales in its complaints policy. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman will accept a complaint if the provider has not responded within a reasonable time, which it says in most cases should be up to 16 weeks.

Official guidance and your next step

The primary sources are Regulation 16 and CQC’s guidance on it, CQC’s quality statement on listening to and involving people, and the Ombudsman’s adult social care pages, including its free toolkit for care providers, which contains a template complaints policy, template letters and guidance on signposting complainants to the Ombudsman.

This guide is a practical summary for care providers in England, not legal advice about an individual complaint. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different regulators and ombudsmen.

Then do one thing: read your last three complaint responses and check that each one tells the complainant, in plain words, how to go to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman if they are still unhappy.