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NHS complaints • PALS • ICB

Turn a difficult NHS experience into a focused, evidence-based complaint.

A strong complaint is not the longest email. It identifies what happened, what should be answered, what evidence supports the concern and what outcome is being requested.

In short: we can help structure NHS concerns, identify the right organisation, organise supporting evidence, analyse responses and prepare proportionate escalation. We are not the statutory NHS complaints advocacy service and will signpost when that route is more appropriate.
On this pagePALS or complaint?Build the complaintAnalyse the responseICB / commissioner

PALS, informal resolution or formal complaint?

Some issues can be resolved quickly through a provider's Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) or patient-experience team. Others need a formal complaint because there is a disputed decision, repeated failure, unresolved harm/impact or a need for a written investigation and response.

We help parents think about the outcome first rather than automatically escalating everything to the highest possible level.

Build the complaint around the actual decision

Four questions

  1. What happened?
  2. What should the organisation specifically address?
  3. What evidence supports that point?
  4. What outcome are you asking for?

Keep separate

Protective action, allegation, clinical opinion, commissioning restriction, complaint finding and formal legal finding are not interchangeable concepts. Clear correspondence avoids collapsing them together.

When the response is long but the answer is missing

We can map each question against the response and identify whether it was:

AnsweredPartly answeredNot answeredAnswered with no evidenceReferred elsewhere

That makes follow-up much more effective than sending the original complaint again with “you haven't listened” added to the top.

When an ICB / commissioner may matter

If the issue concerns commissioning, patient choice, primary-care commissioning responsibilities or a service-level decision outside the provider's control, the relevant ICB or commissioner may need to answer part of the problem. We help identify that distinction; we do not assume every provider problem belongs with the ICB.

Independent NHS complaints advocacy exists.

Free statutory/commissioned NHS complaints advocacy may be available locally. In Your Corner should complement that support, not pretend to be the statutory service.

Written & reviewed by William McAllister, Founder, In Your Corner.

Practical parent-advocacy guidance, not legal or clinical advice. Reviewed 18 August 2026 against the official sources linked on this page. See how we write, check and correct guidance.

Official sources / further reading

NHS England complaints policy ↗NHS Constitution for England ↗

Process and policy can change. This page was reviewed 18 August 2026. Official sources take priority over this general information.

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