The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has published a new complaints policy, clearly setting out the process for stakeholders to follow to raise concerns about the services the aviation regulator provides, the conduct of its staff, or to complain about any problems they encounter with its work.
The complaints policy is available at www.caa.co.uk/complaints

Andrew Haines, CAA Chief Executive, said: “We are absolutely committed to providing a high standard of service to everyone we deal with. However, we recognise that sometimes things can go wrong for a number of reasons and our stakeholders may feel that they are not receiving the level of service that we should deliver.

“Complaints are a valuable source of feedback and help us to identify areas we need to improve – and our stakeholders have made clear they feel we should be more open about our policy on handling them. To help those we regulate understand our approach and the most effective way to give us feedback, we want to ensure that our policy is fully accessible and it is easy for anyone to share a concern or make a complaint.”

The policy also sets out the CAA’s intention to respond to all complaints within 20 working days – and explains how people can take their complaint further if they are unsatisfied with the initial response from the CAA.

The policy does not cover complaints in relation to the businesses we regulate, for instance in relation to noise, or compensation, and also does not in any way impact on legal processes where they exist in relation to decisions we make, for instance legal challenges to price control decisions. These areas are dealt with by existing CAA processes, however, the complaints webpage does provide stakeholders with easy access to those.