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Our colleagues have the right to come to work without fear of abuse or intimidation. We ask that everyone who interacts with the Council to treat our colleagues with respect and courtesy.

We aim to deal fairly and consistently with all our customers, service users and members of the public, including those whose actions we consider unacceptable. We believe that everyone has a right to be heard, understood and respected.

We aim to provide a service that is accessible to all and will make every effort to accommodate the needs of our customers. The behaviour or actions of customers using our service can sometimes make it difficult for us to deal with their issue or complaint.

This policy

• explains how we treat customers in a fair and positive way while managing actions that result in unreasonable demands on our services or on our colleagues
• explains how we may restrict or change access to a service when we consider a customer’s actions to be unacceptable
• is required to address a very limited number of cases where actions become unacceptable as they involve abuse of our colleagues, stop us doing our work or providing a service to other customers.

This is to ensure we can protect our colleagues and the services we provide to our customers.

Unacceptable actions are grouped under the following four headings with further details under each heading

• aggressive or abusive behaviour
• unreasonable demands
• unreasonable levels of contact
• unreasonable use of the complaints process.