Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the dentists or any of the staff working in this practice, please let us know.

Our complaint system adheres to national criteria. Comments and suggestions cards are in our waiting rooms.

The person responsible for dealing with any complaint about the service which we provide is Dr Victoria Holden, Principal Dentist.

We hope that most problems can be sorted out easily and quickly at the time they arise and with the person concerned. Alternatively, speak to a receptionist who will direct you to the practice manager. If the manager is not present, the receptionist will arrange for the manager to phone you to discuss the complaint at the earliest opportunity.

If your problem cannot be sorted in this way and you wish to make a written complaint, we would like you to let us know as soon as possible – ideally, within a matter of days or, at most, a few weeks – because this will enable us to establish what happened most easily. If it is not possible to do that, please let us have details of your complaint:

within 6 months of the incident that caused the problem; or
within 6 months of discovering that you have a problem, provided this is within 12 months of the incident.
Alternatively, you may ask for an appointment in order to discuss your concerns.

What We Shall Do

We shall acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and aim to have looked into your complaint within 21 working days of the date when you raised it with us. We shall then be in a position to give you an explanation or offer a meeting with those involved.

In investigating your complaint, we shall aim to:

find out what happened and what went wrong
enable you to discuss the problem with those concerned, if you would like this;
ensure you receive an apology where this is appropriate;
identify what we can do to make sure the problem does not happen again.

Complaining on Behalf of Someone Else

Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of confidentiality. If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we have to know that you have permission to do so. A note signed by the person concerned will be needed unless they are incapable of providing this because of physical or mental illness or are a child under 16 years.

Useful Contacts

We hope that, if you have a problem, you will make use of our practice complaints procedure. We believe this will provide the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our practice. However, this does not affect your right to complain to the Dental Complaints Service if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us or you are dissatisfied with the result of our investigation.

Dental Complaints Service
The Lansdowne Building
2 Lansdowne Road
Croyden
CR9 2ER
Tel. 08456 120 540
E-mail: info@dentalcomplaints.org.uk

The General Dental Council
37 Wimpole Street
London
W1M 8DQ
Tel. 020 7887 3800
E-mail: complaints@gdc-uk.org