Service Complaints

FAQs

• What steps can I take before raising a military service complaint?

  It may be possible to resolve your matter before resorting to a military service complaint. It is recommended that you do the following:

  • Speak or write to the person responsible for the matter you are complaining about
  • Ask the chain of command or a colleague to look into the matter
  • Ask for mediation

• What does the Ministry of Defence Service Complaint Process involve?

  The Service Complaint Process is designed to be effective, efficient and fair with a goal of dealing with complaints as soon as possible and at the lowest appropriate level.

  1. Fill in a service complaint form (Annex F in JSP831) and give this to your Single Service Secretariat. The person you make your complaint to is known as the ‘specified officer’.
  2. The specified officer might contact you to discuss things further and may get legal advice to determine whether the matter can be treated as a formal complaint. If it is treated as a formal complaint, you will be informed of this, and the complaint will go to the next step of the military service complaints If the specified officer decides that the matter can’t be treated as a formal complaint and you disagree with this, the Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces can review this for you.
  3. The Single Service Secretariat will appoint a decision body to investigate the complaint and that person will contact you during their investigation. You will be able to give them further information and suggest witnesses. The decision body will have to agree to evidence, and witnesses being used throughout.
  4. The decision body will send you a copy of the investigation report and you will be able to give comments to be taken into account. The decision body will then write to you with their decision and any action that will be taken.

  Certain types of army service complaints should follow special-to-type procedures, including complaints about:

  • Housing
  • Pay and allowances
  • Healthcare and medical treatment

  You can view more details about the redress of individual grievances and service complaints.

• What options do I have if I disagree with the decision made after making a military service complaint?

  You have two weeks from the date that you receive a decision to appeal against it. To do this, you’ll need to fill in an appeal form (Annex G in JSP831) and send it to your Single Service Secretariat. It is then up to them whether your appeal can be considered. If it can, they will appoint an appeal body. If not, you have other options.

  You can seek additional help from an assisting officer, which you can choose yourself or have appointed for you by your unit’s HR team. You can also get assistance from the Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces. You can seek support from a lawyer for military service complaint support. This way, you can obtain legal advice from the get-go and potentially bypass strenuous processes or at least get professional help with them.

• Who are the Service Complaints Ombudsman?

  You can seek independent and impartial insight from the Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces, which oversees the armed forces service complaint system.

  You can contact the ombudsman during the service complaints process and ask them to assist with the following:

  • Accessing the complaints system through the referrals team
  • Reviewing any decision not to treat a matter as a formal complaint
  • Reviewing any decision not to consider an appeal
  • Investigating delays in the process
  • Investigating issues relating to the handling or outcome of a complaint

  You can find out more information about the Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces here.

• Are there time limits for making a military service complaint?

  Time limits for raising a military service complaint can be very strict and these are normally three months from the date of the incident that you are complaining about. However, it will be six months if your complaint involves discrimination, harassment or victimisation.

  Where you have suffered a number of incidents of harassment, then the time limit normally runs from the date of the most recent incident. You may be able to bring a service complaint out of time in special circumstances.

  In addition to an armed forces service complaint, there are a number of civil military claims that you could bring and these may all have different time limits, so it is important that you get clear advice as soon as possible – preferably at the very start of the process. If you wait until the process is finished, it could mean that you are too late to bring a claim for compensation for a poorly dealt with army service complaint.