Feedback and complaints

At City of Adelaide, we aim to give you a great experience every time you contact us or use one of our services. Your feedback on our processes, decisions, services and staff is really important to us because we use it to monitor and improve our services for the benefit of all of our customers.

We do our best to ensure that your feedback is heard, reviewed, and actioned. We do this in line with our policies:

• Complaints Handling Operating Guidelines

• Unreasonable Complainant Operating Guidelines

You can assist us in this by:

• Providing as much information as you can about your experience.
• Advising us if matters are urgent or time sensitive.
• Being respectful in your dealings with us.

If you have a general enquiry please submit an online enquiry using the form below and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

To help us improve our service and your experience, we welcome our suggestions on how we can improve. We also understand that you may have some requests that would like to make and we’d also love to hear if you have had a positive experience with Council.

You can provide suggestions, requests and compliments to us by the channels below:

We always aim to provide the great experience, however, we understand this doesn’t always happen. To help us improve our service and your experience, we often rely on you, our customers, to let us know when we have an opportunity to do so.

If you have had a negative experience with Council, we want to hear about it. You can provide your complaint to us through the channels below:

We will always aim to solve your issue the first time you contact us. If we can’t offer you an immediate resolution, we will give you details about our next steps: how long it will take us, what is involved in getting you a resolution, and who in Council is helping to get that resolution.

We may not always be able to resolve your issue the way you want us to, but we always aim to act within our legislative and policy frameworks, in a fair and reasonable manner.

If you don’t receive the outcome you expected, firstly you can request an internal review of a Council or officer decision under Section 270 of the Local Government Act 1999 by submitting details of the decision you wish to have reviewed and the reason you believe the decision should be reconsidered to:

If you are still dissatisfied following the outcome of the Section 270 review you can contact the Office of the Ombudsman who will conduct an external review of our decision.

Full details of the Section 270 Review process can be found in the Complaints Handling Operating Guidelines.

If you think a council member has breached the behavioural requirements for council members you can make a complaint by sending it to [email protected] or GPO Box 2252 Adelaide 5001. 

A complaint must:

• be addressed to the chief executive officer
• be marked with “Confidential Council Member Complaint”
• provide the name of the council member who has allegedly breached the behavioural requirements
• provide the name and contact details of the complainant, the name and contact details of the person submitting the complaint (if different to the complainant) and the name and contact details of any witnesses or other persons able to provide information about the complaint
• be specific (including identifying the behavioural requirements the complainant alleges have been breached)
• provide as much supporting evidence as possible to assist an investigation, including the grounds and circumstances of the complaint (e.g. where, when, impact of the behaviour, actions taken to try and resolve the issue, relevant records or documents)
• identify the outcome being sought
• be lodged within six (6) months of the alleged conduct occurring (the person responsible for managing the complaint may allow a longer time limit. This will be assessed on a case-by-case basis).

For more information about council member behavioural requirements, integrity and general duties, please refer to Chapter 3 of the City of Adelaide Standing Orders.

To provide feedback on projects and activities proposed for the City of Adelaide visit yoursay.cityofadelaide.com.au.