Complaints Handling Procedure

Emily Petter Ltd provides leadership coaching and workplace mediation. We aim to deliver both services professionally, ethically and respectfully. If you are unhappy with any part of the service you have received, please tell us. Complaints are taken seriously, handled fairly, and used to improve what we do.

This procedure applies to both coaching and mediation. The stages and timescales are the same for both; the only difference is the external body you can approach at the end (see section 6). It is published here and is shared with every client, sponsoring organisation and mediation participant at the start of our work together.

1. Who can complain

You can use this procedure if you are:

• a coaching client

• an organisation that sponsored or paid for coaching

• a participant in a mediation

• an organisation that commissioned a mediation

• someone acting on behalf of any of the above, with their consent

2. How to make a complaint

Please contact:

Emily Spencer (known professionally as Emily Petter), Director, Emily Petter Ltd
Email: emily@emilypettercoaching.co.uk

A written complaint is preferred. If you would rather talk it through, email us and we will arrange a call. We will write down what you tell us and send it to you to check that it is accurate.

Please include:

• your name and contact details

• whether your complaint is about coaching or mediation

• the date(s) of the sessions concerned

• what you are unhappy about

• what you would like to happen

Please raise your complaint within 6 months of the events concerned. Later complaints may still be considered at our discretion.

If you need this procedure in another format, or support to make a complaint, please ask.

3. Stages and timescales

Stage 1: Response from Emily Petter Ltd

• Your complaint will be acknowledged in writing, normally within 7 calendar days of receipt.

• It will be looked into carefully. This may include reviewing any records kept and asking you for more information.

• You will receive a full written response within 28 calendar days of the acknowledgement. It will explain what was found, any action taken, and how to ask for an independent review.

• If a full response cannot be given within 28 days, you will be told why and given a new timescale.

Stage 2: Independent review

Emily Petter Ltd is a sole practitioner, so the Stage 1 response comes from the coach or mediator involved. If you are not satisfied with it, you can ask for an independent review. Emily Petter Ltd will arrange for this to be carried out by an experienced coach or mediator, as relevant, who has had no involvement in, or connection with, the matters complained of. You will be told who the reviewer is before the review begins.

• Please ask for a review within 28 calendar days of the Stage 1 response, using the contact details above. Your request will be passed to the reviewer.

• The reviewer will acknowledge your request in writing, normally within 7 calendar days.

• The reviewer will give a full written response within 28 calendar days of the acknowledgement. If this is not possible, you will be told why and given a new timescale.

• The reviewer's response is the final stage of this procedure.

4. Confidentiality

Coaching and mediation are both confidential, and that continues while a complaint is handled. Only information needed to deal with the complaint will be used, and the independent reviewer is bound by the same confidentiality. If responding fully would mean disclosing what someone else said in confidence (for example, another mediation participant), their consent will be sought first.

For mediation, the complaints procedure looks at how the mediation service was provided. It cannot reopen the dispute between the participants or change any agreement they reached.

5. Records and learning

A record of every complaint, the actions taken and the outcome is kept securely for at least three years, in line with our privacy notice. Records of mediation complaints are made available to the Civil Mediation Council on request. Complaints are reviewed to improve the service.

6. If you remain dissatisfied

Coaching

Emily Petter is a member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and works to the EMCC Global Code of Ethics. If your concern is about a possible breach of that Code, you can raise it with EMCC UK under its complaints procedure, available at https://emccuk.org/about/policies/

Mediation

At the conclusion of the complaints-handling process, a complainant may, in certain circumstances, refer the matter to the Civil Mediation Council (CMC). Such referrals are considered having regard to whether the matters raised could amount to Serious Professional Misconduct and could thereby meet the requisite high threshold of seriousness. Please note that, as a CMC referral relates only to matters which could give rise to Serious Professional Misconduct, this is not a route to compensation, redress, or resolution, and cannot be used to appeal, change, or otherwise alter or overrule the outcome of a CHP. Further information is available at: www.civilmediation.org/concerns

Timescales at a glance