Job summary
- Main area
- Complaints Department
- Grade
- Band 8a
- Contract
- 6 months (This is a 6 month fixed term contract)
- Hours
- Part time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 318-26-T0231
- Employer
- Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Gloucestershire Royal Hospital
- Town
- Gloucester
- Salary
- £57,528 - £64,750 (pa, pro rata if part-time)
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 27/04/2026 23:59
Employer heading
Head of Complaints, Band 8a
Band 8a
At Gloucestershire Hospitals, our people are at the heart of everything we do. As the county’s largest employer, we are proud to provide high-quality acute, elective, and specialist services to more than 650,000 people across our county. Our care is delivered across Gloucestershire Royal, Cheltenham General and Stroud Maternity Hospital.
With over 9,000 employees representing more than 95 nationalities, bringing together a mix of cultures and experiences to the care that we deliver. Whether you’re beginning your NHS journey or looking to take the next step in your career, this is an exciting time to join us. We’re investing heavily in innovation, research, and transformation, with more than 100 active clinical studies and major developments underway across our hospitals.
We take pride in working as one team, driven by a shared ambition to grow, develop, and continually improve. Every contribution is valued and by combining our collective strengths, we support not only our diverse communities but one another. You can expect a warm, supportive culture and colleagues who are passionate about teamwork, professional development and delivering exceptional care. We offer structured development programmes, mentoring and leadership opportunities to help you progress in your career.
We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone feels they belong. By joining our Trust, you will benefit from a comprehensive package that includes flexible working opportunities, generous annual leave, the NHS pension scheme, competitive bank rates, local discounts, access to on-site nurseries, reduced public transport costs, reward and recognition schemes and a wide range of health and wellbeing initiatives.
Be part of Gloucestershire Hospitals, explore your future with us today.
Job overview
The post holder will be responsible for overseeing the Complaints services across the Trust, including line managing the teams, to ensure that the Trust complies with all external requirements and best practice in these areas. This will include robust investigations and timely responses, whilst working in partnership with patient safety colleagues, governance teams, senior managers and Trust staff. Oversee and lead responses to high level complaints and ensure they are responded to appropriately and within timeframe e.g. Public Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), Members of Parliament (MPs) and the Care Quality Commission. They will create responsive strategies to ensure that patient feedback is responded to and acted upon to improve services and will engage with senior staff across the Trust to ensure that these are implemented locally. They will be responsible for accurate data capture, analysis and recording of complaints and PALS data in the complaints management system and associated activity/performance dashboards, creating new systems when required. They will ensure that all complaints are logged, investigated and answered with specified timescales in accordance with the Trust and NHSE and legal and regulatory standards
Main duties of the job
- The Trust’s expert on NHS complaints handling, providing specialist advice to senior managers and Board members.
-Critical role providing leadership to the Trust’s Complaints Team, including a wide range of monitoring and reporting responsibilities to Governance, Delivery and Assurance Groups, ensuring delivery of a consistently excellent complaints service to the Trust’s patients, their families and carers and members of the public.
- Co-develop and lead complaints-related service improvement initiatives with Associate Directors (Safety, Experience and Effectiveness)
- Vital role in identifying and cascading organisational learning from complaints.
- Key point of operational interface between Divisions and the corporate complaints function.
Working for our organisation
Joining our Complaints Team means being part of a supportive, values‑driven service that plays a vital role in listening to patients and families, responding with compassion, and turning concerns into meaningful learning and improvement. You will work alongside experienced colleagues who care deeply about fairness, kindness and doing the right thing—supporting people at difficult moments while helping the Trust improve the quality and safety of care. This is a role where your empathy, judgement and professionalism will genuinely make a difference.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
- Deal with delicate and confidential matters using sensitivity and judgement honed by significant experience of working in NHS complaints and customer care.
- Provide complaints expertise to staff at all levels of the organisation, including in complaints management, identification of themes and trends, policies and processes and statistical analysis.
- Use patient complaints, enquiries, and feedback to monitor the quality of hospital services, identify any problem areas and support the divisions with improvement interventions.
- Produce timely and reliable complaints data for a range of Corporate and Divisional dashboards and meetings
- To ensure responses for complaints where there is a Coroner’s Inquest align with the process and with the requirements of the Coroner and the Coroner’s Officer are appropriate and manage relevant members of staff in respect of managing such complaints.
- Ensure alignment with incident or complaints investigations
- Responsible for the accurate maintenance of all data entered into the complaints database (DATIX); including manipulation in order to provide regular feedback and reports which facilitate the identification of trends, action required and shared learning points and other reports on request. Monitor the database to ensure that it provides the information required for reporting complaints received by the Trust
- Act as chair for contentious meetings making independent, on the spot, decisions to negotiate and resolve concerns and issues that are sensitive and serious in nature, in situations and when staff and patients will not be in agreement
- Provide detailed information as stipulated within tight timescales in response to requests made by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
- Provide high quality data for a range of regulatory and governance purposes (e.g., annual quality reports, CQC inspections, Clinical Commissioning Group contracts)
- Write the Trust’s Quarterly and Annual Complaints reports for the senior governance committees, including Trust Board.
- Liaise with senior managers to identify and address service-level performance issues identified through patient feedback and complaints.
- Promote the importance of welcoming complaints and feedback from patients and the public in monitoring and improving hospital services.
- Take the lead for collecting and collating evidence to demonstrate compliance with the Care Quality Commission’s standards on complaints management.
- Investigate and respond to Complaints relating to Complaint Handling
- Ensure appropriate mechanisms are in place to receive and act upon regular feedback from people about their experiences of using the Trust’s complaints service – both staff and complainants
Person specification
Professional Development, Education and Training
Essential criteria
- Educated to masters degree level or demonstrable related relevant experience
- On-going learning and professional development in relevant fields, e.g., complaints resolution, customer service, patient and public involvement, mediation
- Evidence of on-going training and development in a management or supervisory role
Desirable criteria
- Training in mediation and facilitation skills
Knowledge, Skills and Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience in, and specialist knowledge of, the field of NHS complaints
- Understanding of legislation and regulatory frameworks, national and local policies relating to NHS complaints management and patient support
- Experience of working with staff in a health, social care or other complex service orientated environment
- Experience of writing and providing written reports, which includes thematic analysis to support operational and corporate need
- Advanced knowledge of all Microsoft Office applications
- Experience of managing a team and acting as a positive role model for team members
- Excellent communication skills and presentation skills, both written and oral and the ability to liaise with staff at all levels
- Teaching skills and the ability to develop and deliver training sessions and programmes related to complaints
- Ability to extract performance insights from complex data sets
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Jo Mason-Higgins
- Job title
- Associate Director of Safety
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 0300 4 22 5744
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