Making a complaint

Devon Wildlife Trust is committed to delivering all our work to a good standard and to high levels of inclusivity and customer care. This process supports this commitment. It exists to provide a fair complaints procedure that is clear and easy to use for volunteers, supporters and other members of the public who wish to raise a concern or report any concerns about serious wrongdoing on behalf of the organisation.

We will treat all feedback from members of the public – both positive and negative – with respect and endeavour to deal with any concerns raised about our work promptly and politely and in line with high standards of customer care.

We always love to hear from you, so if you have general feedback, observations or constructive criticism to share with us and don’t know who to contact, please  call us on 01392 279244 or email us. 

Contact us by email 

How to complain

Register the complaint with Devon Wildlife Trust (in writing by post or by email) within three months of the incident occurring. We would appreciate it if you could clearly mark/identify your communication as ‘complaint’ so that we know you are making a formal complaint and we can direct, log and handle it properly.

Complaint is Made

We will acknowledge your complaint within 14 days, but often, we will respond sooner.

Complaint is Investigated

We will investigate your complaint and tell you of the outcome of in writing within 28 days of receiving the complaint. If it takes longer, we will let you know in writing when you can expect our response.

Record of the complaint

We will keep a record of the complaint for at least 24 months from the date the complaint was made.

If you are not satisfied with our response

We very much hope that you feel any complaint you have raised has been satisfactorily addressed. However, if you are not satisfied with our response, we ask that you escalate your complaint by writing to DWT’s CEO/Directors via letter or by emailing rrivett@devonwildlifetrust.org.

Please clearly reference/identify your correspondence as ‘escalated complaint’ and be sure to provide information about the nature of the original complaint, the date it was raised and why you are dissatisfied with the response.

Please note that the CEO/Director will not respond to any complaints that have not first been subject to the process above.

• Your communication to the CEO/Director will be acknowledged within 14 days of receipt.
• The escalated complaint will be investigated, and we will tell you of the outcome of the investigation in writing within 28 days of receiving the escalated complaint. If an investigation takes longer, we will let you know in writing when you can expect our response.

If the complaint is related to the CEO, follow the process above, but address the escalated complaint to the DWT Chair.

If you are still not satisfied with our response

Escalation to the CEO/Director marks the end of our complaints process and we expect that most complaints will be resolved and/or have been thoroughly investigated by this point. We recognise that this will mean that there may be some individuals who are still not satisfied, but in the interest of managing staff time and wellbeing, will not engage in
prolonged communications around complaints that have been dealt with through the process detailed in this document.