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Quarterly customer service complaint outcomes - July to September 2025

Introduction

SEPA’s Complaints Handling Procedure is in accordance with the requirements of the Model Complaints Handling Procedure published by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) and requires us to publish quarterly a report on complaints outcomes and actions taken to improve services.

This report covers Quarter 2 (the period July 2025 to September 2025 inclusive).

Stage 1 complaints

A total of 17 Stage 1 complaints were handled in the reporting period – three were upheld and 14 not upheld.

Of the 17 complaints, one concerned a SEPA vehicle being parked inappropriately. We upheld the complaint and issued an apology to the customer. Employees have been reminded of their responsibilities when using SEPA vehicles.

Another complaint involved a customer who did not receive a response to their enquiry in good time. We upheld the complaint and issued an apology. As part of our Stage 1 response, we also responded to the customer’s original enquiry.

A third complaint involved the late response to a planning consultation. We upheld the complaint and apologised to the customer. Employees have been reminded of the protocol for requesting an extension for a consultation response, and the procedures SEPA follows.

Stage 2 complaints

Six Stage 2 complaints were handled within the reporting period – three of these were upheld in part, and three not upheld.

Of the three upheld in part, one complaint related to our Stage 1 response and our use of technical language. We upheld this in part as we did not clearly explain our use of a technical term referred to in our response. We also upheld the customer’s point that we did not pick up on his request for his complaint to be escalated to Stage 2.

We upheld two points of complaint in another case as we found that SEPA failed to respond to reasonable questions from the customer. We issued an apology to the customer and arranged for responses to the questions to be provided.

The third complaint upheld in part was related to the Stage 1 complaint noted in the section above involving a late response to a planning consultation response. We upheld one point of complaint in part as it was found that the customer was not given a full explanation for the delayed response.