Complaints policy

Policy last updated 1 October 2025.

See change log for recent updates to this webpage.

Find out what's changed and why in the most recent updates to this policy. 

At Girlguiding we believe in doing our best.

But we know we don’t always get everything right.  

This policy explains how Girlguiding manages, addresses and learns from complaints. It helps us do our best to make guiding even more enjoyable and accessible to everyone.

It applies to all adult volunteers, adult members (all referred to as volunteers in policies), and staff in Girlguiding.

It can be used by parents and carers of young members, prospective members, supporters, and third parties.

Volunteers should read this policy alongside the complaints procedure. Girlguiding employees should use the staff procedure on the intranet.

Definitions used in this policy 

Our glossary lays out a few definitions of key terms that are used across our policies - take a look.

• Third party – someone affected by Girlguiding activities, for example a partner organisation, the owner of a venue we use, or the public.

Girlguiding’s commitment to managing complaints

We use our complaints policy and procedure to manage all complaints we receive at any level of Girlguiding.

It covers complaints about:

• The standard of experience you may have received from Girlguiding.
• The behaviour of anyone who played a part in delivering that service.
• Girlguiding policies, communications and resources.

We encourage you to let us know about your complaint or issue as soon as you can so we can address it quickly.

A complaint is a concern brought to us about a specific situation, event, volunteer, or member of staff. It doesn’t include any concerns raised about Girlguiding as a whole, or services we provide.

We consider comments made about Girlguiding that don’t relate to a specific incident or volunteer as feedback. These can be positive, negative, or neutral.

We welcome all feedback and review it regularly to find ways to improve. You can send feedback to [email protected].

Most complaints are best dealt with locally and, where possible, should be reported and resolved locally. Complaints can be made to the Girlguiding HQ complaints team, but they may decide it can be resolved locally.

Some complaints will need to be investigated in line with our investigation procedure. This is decided by the Girlguiding HQ complaints team and involves cases where there’s a possible breach of a Girlguiding policy or procedure.

The Girlguiding HQ complaints team can’t investigate a concern or complaint that’s reported on behalf of someone else. If someone has asked you to report a concern or complaint for them, you should encourage them to get in touch with the complaints team directly.

We take all complaints seriously. However, we reserve the right to dismiss complaints that we consider to be abuse, trivial, or malicious. We don’t engage in repetitive discussions about closed complaints. Following the outcome of a complaint you can ask for an appeal using our appeals procedure.

If a complaint is about a volunteer breaching our policies or procedures, we’ll manage it in line with our managing concerns about adult volunteers policy.

Expectations

Anyone making a complaint must:

• Do so in good faith. This means you believe it’s substantially true, doesn’t contain allegations you know to be false, and isn’t made maliciously or for personal gain.
• Submit it as soon as reasonably possible. We’ll consider complaints regardless of when the incident took place, but significant delays may make us less able to address your complaint.

We only deal with complaints that meet these above criteria.

Anyone handling a complaint must:

• Manage the complaint promptly.
• Treat it seriously and consider what can be learned from it.
• Handle all information sensitively, as set out in our managing information policy.
• Respect the anonymity of the person making the complaint, if they’ve asked to stay anonymous.
• Make a report to our Girlguiding HQ complaints team where there’s evidence to suggest a volunteer has breached a Girlguiding policy or our code of conduct.
• Let our Girlguiding HQ complaints team know immediately about any serious incidents reported to local Girlguiding, or country or region offices.

How Girlguiding manages and learns from complaints

• We treat information we receive as part of complaints sensitively, using our managing information policy and our privacy notice. We only share information about a complaint with people who need to know.
• You can make a complaint anonymously, though it might make it harder for us to investigate. We’ll always ask your permission before we pass details of a complaint to your local Girlguiding team. Read our complaints procedure to find out more about making an anonymous complaint.
• We’re committed to learning from any complaints and feedback where we can. Girlguiding HQ, countries and regions and commissioners all share the lessons we’ve learned so we can make Girlguiding the best it can be for our young members.
• We regularly report all complaints that lead to investigation under our complaints procedure at local guiding level to the local county commissioner and the country/region office.
• Breaches of this policy by adult volunteers will be managed under the managing concerns about adult volunteers policy and procedure.
• Staff breaches will be managed in line with the relevant HR policy and/or procedure.