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Complaints procedure

How to complain if you’re unhappy with the service you get from the Department for Transport or one of its agencies or other bodies.

Making a complaint to the Department for Transport’s agencies or other bodies

Each of our agencies and other bodies has its own complaints procedure. Please click on the appropriate link below for further details.

Other public bodies in the DfT family operate their own separate complaints procedures. If you have a complaint about the service provided by one of those bodies, please contact the organisation direct.

Making a complaint to the Department for Transport

Step 1

To make a complaint about our service, use the complaints form.

Or you can write to:

Maladministration Complaints
Department for Transport
3rd Floor
One Priory Square
Hastings TN34 1EA
United Kingdom

The responsible policy division will consider the complaint and respond in writing within 20 working days of the complaint being received in the department.

The quickest way to make a complaint is to use our complaints form. Alternatively, send your complaint to us at the postal address above.

Step 2

If you have been through step 1 and are not happy with the outcome, then you can ask that your complaint be passed to the head of the division you have been dealing with.

You can ask that your complaint be passed on to their line manager if the complaint is about the head of division themselves or if the head of division considered your complaint at step 1.

You will receive an acknowledgement of your complaint within 5 working days and the department will aim to send you a full response within 20 working days.

Please note that the central department is not able to consider complaints that relate to the Department for Transport’s agencies or other bodies. Each agency and public body has its own separate complaints procedure, which you will need to follow.

The independent complaints assessor

If you feel your complaint is still unresolved after going through the above complaints procedure, and your complaint is about the quality of the service we have provided or a member of our staff, you can ask us to refer your complaint to a Department for Transport independent complaints assessor (ICA).

Details of how to ask for your complaint to be referred to an ICA will be included with the step 2 complaint response.

Find out more information about what the ICAs cover and how to complain to them.

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

There may be times when you’ve tried to resolve the complaint with us directly, including having received an independent review by the ICA, and you’re still dissatisfied.

If so, you may want to ask a Member of Parliament to refer your complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).

You can find out more on the PHSO website.

It’s important to follow the steps in the complaints process as set out above for the central department, or for the agency or other body that you’ve been dealing with.

The ICA and PHSO will both expect you to have tried to resolve your complaint at the earlier stages of our complaints procedure before they look into it.

We welcome all feedback, including concerns, complaints or comments on what we have done well. We want to do everything we can to learn to do more of what we do well and improve where we can do better.

We aim to meet the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s UK central government complaint standards when handling complaints. These standards help us provide a quicker and simpler complaints handling service that:

  • promotes a learning culture
  • welcomes complaints in a positive way
  • is thorough and fair
  • gives fair and accountable responses.

Complaints about legislation or government policy

This page tells you how to complain if you’re unhappy with our service to you.

This complaints procedure does not cover complaints about government policies or laws. If you want to complain about a policy or a law, you should contact the department or your local MP.

Freedom of Information Act 2000 and Environmental Information Regulations 2004

Step 1

If you are unhappy with the way we have handled your request for information (an FOI request or a request handled under the Environmental Information Regulations), or with the decisions made in relation to your request, you may complain in writing to:

FOI Team
Department for Transport
3rd Floor
One Priory Square
Hastings TN34 1EA
United Kingdom

Email: FOI-Advice-Team-DFT@dft.gov.uk.

An independent DfT official who was not involved in making the original decision will then carry out an internal review of our department’s handling of your request.

We aim to complete internal reviews within 20 working days, although in complex cases we may occasionally need longer.

The independent reviewer will write to you setting out their decision.

You should also write to the same address if you have a complaint about our publication scheme.

Step 2

If you are unhappy with the results of DfT’s internal review, you may appeal to the Information Commissioner.

If you have a question about the outcome of a Data Protection Act query, contact the data protection officer.

Data protection complaints

Data protection law requires DfT to make appropriate enquiries when a person complains to us about how we:

  • have looked after their personal data
  • responded to a ‘rights’ request they made, such as a data subject access rights request (DSAR)

While we take our obligations under data protection law seriously and have numerous controls in place to ensure that breaches or other compliance failings do not occur, sometimes things still go wrong. If that happens, and you personally are affected, we want to make it easy for you to complain to us in the way that best suits you.

In handling your complaint, DfT will:

  • send you an acknowledgement within the legally required maximum 30 days from receipt, although note that we usually acknowledge correspondence within 5 working days
  • get back to you as soon as possible if we need you to clarify your complaint
  • make appropriate enquiries into your complaint
  • let you know the outcome of your complaint, normally within 30 days of receipt
  • if we need longer than 30 days, we will let you know about our progress and when we expect to respond in full

Each part of DfT has its own team for handling data protection complaints. If your complaint relates to one of our agencies or other bodies, we encourage you to use their own complaints process to ensure that your complaint is dealt with as speedily as possible.

The easiest way to make a complaint to DfT is to use our online complaints form. Completing this form gives us the information we need to handle your complaint promptly.

See our personal information charter for more information about each agency or other bodies and their contact details.

Alternatively, you can send an email to: dataprotectionofficer@dft.gov.uk.

You may want to use the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) template to write this email.

You can also contact our general enquiry switchboard on: 0300 330 3000 between 8:30am and 5:30pm.

You should ask the general enquiry switchboard to write down the details of your complaint. It will then be forwarded to the appropriate team to deal with. See the ICO’s guidance to understand how best to set out your complaint.

Or you can write to:

Data Protection Team
Department for Transport
3rd Floor
One Priory Square
Hastings, TN34 1EA
United Kingdom

In some cases, we may require proof of your identity before we can investigate your complaint. If so, we will let you know without delay, usually at the same time as acknowledging your complaint.

If a third party is making the complaint on your behalf, we will need to see a suitable and verifiable signed authority from you before we can proceed with your complaint.

If you need clarification on any information we provide when you receive our response, let us know. Data protection law requires us to be accountable for how we use your personal data. It is important to us that our response is clear.

If you remain dissatisfied with our response, you have the right to report your complaint to the ICO.

If your complaint relates to one of our executive agencies and you do not wish to deal with them directly, we may need to share the details of your complaint with the relevant agency so that they are able to investigate it. 

For further information about how your personal data will be used when we handle your complaint, see the privacy notice below.

Privacy notice

Each part of DfT has its own separate complaints-handling process.

The personal data and other information you provide will be passed to the relevant part of DfT or to the relevant DfT family delivery body (such as DVLA, DVSA or National Highways) so that your complaint can be investigated and responded to by the appropriate team or body.

The personal data you provide will be used only in relation to the handling of your complaint.

Where the complaint is for the central DfT to respond to, your data will be held for up to 4 years and then deleted.

Where your complaint is for a DfT agency or other delivery body to respond to, your data will be held in accordance with that body’s retention policy for complaints.

Find out more about DfT’s privacy policy.

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