Commendation and Complaint Handling

Canada Bay Council prides itself on delivering excellent service to residents and customers.

We welcome all feedback from the community, whether it be positive or negative. If something has exceeded, or not met your expectations, Council would like to know about it.

Council believes effective feedback management benefits the organisation in the following important ways:

  • Allows our customers to provide input into service delivery and improvement
  • Provides valuable feedback and performance
  • Allows us to identify areas, processes or skills that need improvement
  • Gives us a second chance to serve, satisfy or clarify issues for dissatisfied customers. 

At this point it is important to distinguish between customer requests, complaints and commendations.

What is a customer request?

  • A request for the provision of services (including provision of information) 
  • A report about damaged or faulty infrastructure
  • A request requiring action relating to noise, pollution, dogs, food premises etc. 

These are service requests that fall under the normal scope of Council services. These can be reported to Council via the online forms, or by contacting us in the usual manner. 

What is a complaint?

A complaint is when a service or request is not actioned in a satisfactory way, which infers that a request has already been lodged with Council for the particular issue. It can be any expression of dissatisfaction with Council:

  • Policies procedures and processes - this usually relates to dissatisfaction with service charges, policy decisions or an agreed practice covered by a policy or procedure
  • Employees - usually relates to dissatisfaction with the behaviour of a Council employee
  • Quality of service - generally related to the quality of the finished job such as service not up to an expected standard, or the work or service taking longer than previously specified.

Council deals with your complaint

Council has developed a comprehensive Complaint Handling Policy to ensure all complaints are dealt with as follows:

  • All complaints are handled fairly, transparently, promptly, respectfully, and confidentially across the organisation to achieve a resolution
  • Effectively record complaints for investigation and action, and ensure appropriate systems for analysis and response
  • Ensure that all Council's legislative obligations are carried out as per the relevant legislation.

What is a commendation?

Council prides itself on delivering excellent service to residents and customers. When you have had a positive experience with Council staff or services, Council would encourage your feedback to this effect, to ensure that relevant staff are commended for providing quality services to the residents of Canada Bay.

What we ask of our customers

A customer normally needs to provide:

  • Full details of their name, address and telephone number before a commendation or complaint can be registered
  • Sufficient details to assist in resolving the complaint and/or providing positive feedback to the relevant staff.

It is important to keep in mind that Council has a very wide scope of operations (and particularly for certain areas and requests the timeframes for managing various issues vary), so being informed about how the services work, or should work, is an important step in the process. Council's website is an excellent resource, and is always being updated with improved content in this regard.

How do you lodge a commendation or complaint?

For further information, please see Council's Complaint Handling Policy

If you are dissatisfied by a decision or outcome to lodging a complaint with Council, you can contact the relevant body: Department of Local Government, NSW Ombudsman, ICAC, Privacy NSW.

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