Regulation 16: Receiving and acting on complaints
Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/2936)
Last verified by Verivius on 19 May 2026. Next review due 17 Aug 2026.
Plain British summary
Every complaint must be investigated and proportionate action taken on anything the complaint or investigation surfaces. You have to run an accessible system for identifying, receiving, recording, handling and responding to complaints from service users and other people. If CQC asks for a summary of complaints, responses, and related correspondence, you have 28 days from the day after the request to provide it.
Full text on legislation.gov.uk. Treat quotes on this page as targeted excerpts, not as a substitute for the regulation.
Targeted verbatim quotes (3)
“Any complaint received must be investigated and necessary and proportionate action must be taken in response to any failure identified by the complaint or investigation.”
Reg 16(1): the headline duty
“The registered person must establish and operate effectively an accessible system for identifying, receiving, recording, handling and responding to complaints by service users and other persons in relation to the carrying on of the regulated activity.”
Reg 16(2): the system requirement
“The registered person must provide to the Commission, when requested to do so and by no later than 28 days beginning on the day after receipt of the request, a summary of [complaints, responses, and any other relevant information requested].”
Reg 16(3): CQC request response window
What Verivius does for you
Complaints lifecycle
Complaints are logged with complainant detail, subject, severity, response-due timestamps, and a full audit trail. The 28-day CQC summary request can be served from the register directly.
What this regulation does NOT say
Industry-folklore claims that are commonly attributed to this regulation but do not appear in the primary source.
There is a statutory response deadline for individual complaints (e.g. 28 days).
The 28-day figure in Reg 16(3) is for responding to a CQC request for a summary, not for responding to the complainant. The Local Authority Social Services and NHS Complaints (England) Regulations 2009 (SI 2009/309) set separate timeframes for NHS complaints, and many providers adopt a 20-working-day acknowledgment-to-final-response target as policy. Verivius records the response timing each tenant configures; the underlying deadline depends on which regime applies to the complaint.