Share your feedback with the city
The City is dedicated to enhancing customer service and welcomes your feedback. Whether you want to offer general feedback and ideas, a compliment, or a complaint, the City encourages you to share your thoughts.
The City welcomes general feedback as this helps us design future changes to services and products to meet the needs of the community. The City considers the following as general feedback:
- Suggestions for changes to a service or product
- Helpful information relating to a service or product
- Letters, emails or certificates of appreciation.
A request for service is a request for the City to take a form of action in relation to a service or product which the City is responsible for providing. The following are some examples:
- Street tree pruning
- Request an additional waste bin
- Repair a pothole in a road
- Request for general information about City services, products, facilities or policies and process.
The City prides itself on providing excellent customer service. The City welcomes you to provide positive feedback in the form of a compliment where you feel you have received excellent service.
All compliments received are entered into the City’s system and relevant action is taken by management to ensure the staff or team are appropriately acknowledged for the service provided to you.
A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction about the standard of the service, products, actions, or lack of action by the City, or its contractors.
What is not considered a complaint:
- Requests for service – a request for the City to take action in regard to a service or product the City is responsible for delivering.
- Situations outside of the City’s jurisdiction e.g. WA Police matters such as anti-social behaviour, hooning.
- Disagreements or complaints about neighbours or situations on their property e.g. dividing fence issues, noise etc.
- Situations where other options exist e.g. appeals via the State Administrative Tribunal, parking appeal process.
- Requests for information – an enquiry for information about a service, product, policy, process or facility.
While the City makes all efforts to deliver consistently high levels of service, we acknowledge that sometimes we may not be able to meet the expectations of all residents. Our service standards are detailed in the City's Customer Service Charter and Codes of Conduct.
The City believes complaints are a valuable resource and welcomes constructive feedback. It is through the analysis of complaints we can monitor the quality of our services and products; identify recurring issues or trends and make improvements to further improve the customer experience to our community.
Noise in residential areas can come from various sources, and those responsible, whether individuals or businesses, are often unaware of the impact it has on their neighbours.
To report damage or maintenance requirements of a City asset or area, please complete the form below for a response and action.
How to provide feedback, requests for services, compliments or complaints
Lodge feedback, requests for services, compliments or complaints online.
Lodge via the myJoondalup customer portal
Alternate methods include:
- Phone: call the Customer Relations Advocate on 9400 4000
- In-person: via the City’s Customer Care Centre, Leisure Centre or Libraries
- Post: Write to the Customer Relations Advocate at City of Joondalup, PO Box 21, Joondalup WA 6919
Complaint review process
All complaints received are managed in accordance with the City’s Complaint Management Protocol, based on best practice principles identified by the Ombudsman WA and Australian Standards. The following process is followed where a complaint is not resolved at the first point of contact.
- Receive and response. Where a complaint is not addressed immediately at the first point of contact eg. your complaint is submitted online, the City will acknowledge receipt within seven business days.
- Investigation of your complaint:
- All complaints are investigated in an objective and unbiased manner with the utmost confidentiality.
- Your complaint will be registered in the City’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System.
- Your complaint will be assigned to the Customer Relations Advocate, or the most appropriate officer for investigation.
- You may be contacted for further information, if required.
- Complaint resolution. You will be provided a resolution to your complaint within seven business days of receipt. Where issues require more detailed investigation, the City will provide updates and an indication of when the review of the complaint is estimated to be completed.
Complaint structure and appeal
The City follows a four tier approach to complaint handling:
- Tier 1: Internal review conducted by frontline teams. All staff are empowered to review and respond to complaints raised, including the escalation to a supervisor. In situations where a customer may be displeased with the review of a complaint, the matter may be further reviewed through an escalation process from Tier 2 onwards.
- Tier 2: Internal review conducted by the Coordinator, Business Unit Manager or Director of the area responsible for the service.
- Tier 3: Internal review conducted by the Director or Chief Executive Officer.
- Tier 4: You may choose to seek an independent external review – see below.
Important note: While the City places great importance on the investigation of complaints, in some rare cases, it may determine that a complaint or behaviour be considered:
- trivial in nature
- irrelevant
- vexatious
- false or misleading
- repetitive in nature – where the City may have suitably responded to, or dealt with, the same or similar matter on a previous occasion.
In these situations, often disproportionate amounts of time and resources would be spent, resulting in negatively impacting operations and affecting services to other members of the community. It may be determined by the Chief Executive Officer, or delegate, to not review the complaint, or cease to respond further. In such situations, the complainant may choose to seek external review.
Independent external complaint review
Where you remain dissatisfied with the complaint review process at the City, you may choose to seek an independent external review from the following agencies:
- Ombudsman WA (complaints about local government administrative decision making).
- Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries (complaints of breaches of the Local Government Act 1995 or Regulations).
- State Administrative Tribunal or SAT (complaints about government decisions of guardianship and administration, equal opportunity, vocational regulation, resources and development including town planning and commercial and civil disputes).
Important note: Should you request a complaint to be reviewed by one of the above external agencies, the City may be requested to provide information, including your personal information and previous correspondence, so that the review may be undertaken effectively.
Alternate methods to lodge a complaint
- Elected Members
- Ombudsman WA
- Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries
- State Administrative Tribunal
- Local Member of Parliament
- A solicitor.
When making a complaint via other sources, it is expected that all reasonable efforts have been made to resolve the matter with the City beforehand.
Community mediation
Where a matter is not within the City’s jurisdiction, or you are unable to resolve an issue with neighbours (for example, dividing fence issues, neighbour disputes), you can access a free and confidential mediation service provided by independent, professional mediators. For more details, visit the City's Mediation service page.