BIG001-1038 - Independent Complaint Reviewer

This is a Prior Information Notice (PIN) only: publication and call for competition will be conducted once scope of work is fully defined and approved.

Opportunity The customer complaints process for The National Lottery Community Fund involves a three stage process. Stages 1 and 2 of the process are internal reviews and stage 3 is an independent review. Beyond the independent review the customer may approach the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).

The service being procured is for the independent stage. Six other lottery distributors are also signed up to this process and would be signatories to the contract. The additional distributors are Arts Council England, Arts Council Wales, British Film Institute, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Sport England and UK Sport. The Lottery Forum have asked that this procurement occurs.

The service required is for an independent complaints reviewer to consider and provide an expert view on the complaint submitted. This would be to review whether the relevant distributor followed process, whether the processes were fair and if the distributor has acted in a discriminatory manner.

The independent reviewer would liaise with both the distributor and also the customer to collect information and views. Agreement with both parties on a terms of reference would be achieved. The independent reviewer would then take their own deliberations and produce a report for both the lottery distributor and customer on their findings.

The independent reviewer can make non-binding recommendations to the relevant distributor to improve processes or practices. They would not be able to make judgement on whether funding decisions were correct as this is a discretionary power of the distributor.

We are unable to predict how many complaints would reach the independent review stage, therefore contract value may vary based on more or less complaints.

Additional information: Update:

There is currently an average of four independently reviewed complaints per year.

We expect the bids for this contract to be based upon an hourly rate. The hourly rate will be taken in to account when evaluating the bids submitted. As a public body we will require the contract value to have an upper limit for the costs charged per year. We would not expect the contract yearly value to be achieved if the average number of complaints reviews remain the same although we can consider an increase in value in one year if the numbers of complaints are high and therefore the hours billed are higher than expected.

Although there is a basic workflow which will be included in the ITT we would expect the independent reviewer to liaise with both the complainant and the lottery distributor. All complaints are unique in respect of their range and complexity and we would expect the appointed reviewer to consider what is required in each instance.