Sustrans is committed to listening and learning. We welcome feedback where our work can be improved or where expectations have not been met, giving us the chance to monitor and improve our services.

Providing feedback

Your feedback will be dealt with more swiftly if you are able to contact the right team, please see Contact Us for details.

Making a complaint

We are sorry if you feel you need to make a complaint, the following information will help you understand our complaints procedure.

This procedure does not cover:

• Day to day queries and feedback: Including, but not limited to, issues relating to National Cycle Network routes, land use and ownership, use of personal data. We expect most concerns, feedback and day to day issues to be addressed quickly by the relevant team, see Contact Us for details.
• Complaints in relation to the work of other organisations: Sustrans works in partnership with a range of organisations and where appropriate we will ask you to refer your complaint to the organisation best placed to deal with it.

We consider a complaint to be an expression of dissatisfaction or concern a person external to Sustrans has about activity undertaken by Sustrans, or about actions or lack of actions by Sustrans, our employees or volunteers.

Our investigation and response to complaints will be fair and without bias. As part of our complaints procedure, we will:

• take all complaints seriously and handle them in a considerate and appropriate manner
• address complaints promptly
• learn from complaints and take action to improve the way we work
• treat complaints in confidence, as appropriate

Generally, we are only able to consider complaints from the person affected, so are not able to correspond with third parties about complaints. We are not able to respond to anonymous complaints.

Please let us know your complaint straight away, and certainly, within three months of the time, you were first aware of the situation. We do not handle complaints that date back further than this.

All complaints must be directed to complaints@sustrans.org.uk or Feedback and Complaints, 2 Cathedral Square, College Green, Bristol, BS1 5DD.

Please note that if you use abusive, threatening or inappropriate language, we will reply but will advise you that this is unacceptable and your complaint is unlikely to be investigated.

What happens next?

We will do everything we can to respond to your complaint within 30 working days of acknowledgement. If this is not possible, we will explain why and give a new deadline.

If you are dissatisfied following a response to your complaint and you wish to escalate your complaint to the next level, this should be done within 15 working days of the date of our response, again by email to complaints@sustrans.org.uk or in writing to Feedback and Complaints, Sustrans, 2 Cathedral Square, Bristol, BS1 5DD. We will not consider complaints outside this timescale.

If you remain dissatisfied with our final stage reply and your complaint is:

• unrelated to Sustrans’ fundraising: You have reached the end of the complaints procedure and Sustrans is unable to take the matter further.
• about Sustrans’ fundraising: You can contact the Fundraising Regulator.

This policy was issued on 25 January 2021.