Comments and complaints

The General Medical Council is the independent regulator for doctors in the UK. Our statutory purpose is to protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public by ensuring proper standards in the practice of medicine.

We value comments and complaints about the services we provide. Your views are important. They help us to understand what works well and which services or procedures we can improve.

In this section

1. 1. Making a complaint about a doctor

2. 2. Making a complaint about a GMC decision

3. 3. Making a complaint about the services we provide

4. 4. General feedback and comments about GMC services

1. Making a complaint about a doctor

If you want to complain about a doctor, please read the Making a complaint section in the Concerns about doctors section of our website. If you want further information, please contact us.

2. Making a complaint about a GMC decision

If your complaint is exclusively about a decision we have made, and the law gives you a right of appeal against that decision, we will not treat it as a complaint about our service. Examples of these types of decision are:

A decision not to investigate a complaint about a doctor, or not to refer a doctor to a public hearing following an investigation

In these cases, you should contact us and ask to talk to a Fitness to Practise Investigations officer.

A decision on an application for registration

If you are unhappy with the outcome of your application for registration, you should contact us first and talk to the application adviser who handled your application. Although it is important to stress that we can’t treat your concerns as a complaint if they relate to an appealable decision, we may be able to help with any other issues you may want to raise about the service you received. We might also be able to arrange for your concerns about our service to be considered by an appropriate member of the Registration Directorate’s staff, who will let you have a formal response.

Our handling of your request for information under the Data Protection Act or Freedom of Information Act

If you are unhappy with the way that we deal with your Data Protection or Freedom of Information request, please read the Accessing information part of our website or speak to the person who dealt with your request.

3. Making a complaint about the services we provide

We aim for the highest standards of service. However, we recognise that sometimes things go wrong. We take all complaints about the standard of service we have provided very seriously.

Our promise to you

We aim to provide the highest standard of service and to have a complaints procedure which:

• Is easily accessible and well publicised.
• Is simple and easy to understand.
• Allows us to act quickly, with clear timescales for action.
• Keeps you informed of progress.
• Is fair, objective and free from discrimination.
• Maintains your and our staff's confidentiality.
• Treats everyone politely and with dignity.
• Answers all the points and issues and provides appropriate redress.

We recognise that sometimes we do not provide the standard of service that we would like. When things go wrong, we will acknowledge our mistakes, put things right and learn from your experience to improve our services.

We will acknowledge your complaint and answer any concerns as quickly as we can, and within 10 working days, wherever possible. We will let you know if it will take longer.

Your responsibility

In return, we expect you to treat our staff politely and with respect. We do not expect our staff to tolerate abusive, offensive or threatening behaviour.
We will:

• Tell you when your behaviour is unacceptable.
• Ask you to change it.
• Consider restricting your contact with our staff, if the behaviour continues. For example, by asking you to contact us only by correspondence, to contact only a named member of staff, or by restricting telephone calls to specified days and times.
• Consider ending contact, if you continue to behave in an unacceptable way.
• In extreme cases, consider reporting matters to the police if your behaviour threatens the safety and welfare of our staff.

Our complaints process

Step 1: Try to resolve your complaint with the person or team you have been dealing with

First, you should try to resolve your complaint with the person or team you have been dealing with. 

A number of staff at directorate level have complaints handling as a key part of their roles. They will work with the relevant team to ensure that your complaint is dealt with appropriately.

If you are unsure who to get in touch with, please contact us and we will help you find the right team or directorate.

Step 2: If you have taken step 1 and remain dissatisfied

If your complaint remains unresolved, you can contact our Customer Service Manager by email, or letter. Please tell the Customer Service Manager:

• the names of the people you have been dealing with
• any reference number(s) we have given you
• your GMC reference number, if you are a doctor
• what you think has gone wrong
• why you are dissatisfied with the handling of your complaint
• what you think we should do to put things right.

Our Customer Service Manager will acknowledge your complaint. We might then ask the relevant team to try again to resolve your complaint. The team will aim to reply within ten working days, but will let you know if they can't.

Or we might ask a member of our senior management team to consider your complaint. Again, we’ll aim to reply within ten working days, but let you know if we can't.

Step 3: If you still disagree

Step 3 is the final stage of our complaints procedure. If you are still dissatisfied, our Customer Service Manager will acknowledge any further correspondence about your complaint but, unless it raises significant new issues, we won't send further replies.

How to complain

You can comment or complain by email or letter.

We are happy to receive comments or complaints through someone acting on your behalf. We will ask you to confirm that you are happy for that person to act for you. And we will deal with them direct until we have completed the investigation of your complaint. You can tell us at any stage if you no longer want the person to represent you.

Accessibility information

We are committed to making our website accessible to everyone. Our website is BrowseAloud enabled. You can find out more about BrowseAloud and accessibility by reading our Web accessibility statement.

Information about our complaints procedure is available on request in Braille, on audio cassette tape, on disk, in large print and in other languages.

Please contact our Customer Service Manager if you need information in an alternative language or format. The Customer Service Manager may ask you some questions about your preferred method of communication. We want to ensure that any information we provide meets your requirements.

Wherever possible, we will provide the information in the format or language you need during all stages of the complaints process.

4. General feedback and comments about GMC services

If you would like to send comments on any aspect of our work, you can send them to our Customer Service Manager:

Customer Service Manager
General Medical Council
350 Euston Road
London
NW1 3JN

Fax: 0845 357 0025

Email: customerservicemanager@gmc-uk.org

The Customer Service Manager will acknowledge your comments. We aim to reply within ten working days but will let you know if it will take longer.

Alternatively you can contact us by email or phone.