GovWire

The Fish Health Inspectorate (FHI) are committed to providing a professional and fair service to everyone. Our Customer Service Charter sets out what customers can expect from us. In return we ask that customers respect our staff. We will not tolerate threatening, abusive, or violent behaviour. Under these circumstances no member of staff should be required to or feel obliged to deal with any customer either face to face, over the phone or in correspondence.

Purpose of this policy

This policy means we can manage unacceptable customer behaviour consistently and fairly. It sets out clearly what we consider to be unacceptable and the steps we may take to deal with such behaviour. It applies to everyone who accesses our services.

The Equality Act 2010 protects individuals against discrimination, harassment, and victimisation. We meet the requirements of the Act through the following principles:

Definition of unacceptable behaviour

Unacceptable behaviour means acting in a way that is unreasonable, regardless of the level of someones stress, frustration, or anger. It may involve acts, words or physical gestures that could cause another person distress or discomfort.

Principles

You can expect that our employees will always:

• treat everyone who contacts us with respect, empathy, and dignity
• provide a fair, open, proportionate, and accessible service
• listen and understand
• behave in line with the Civil Service Code

We expect people accessing our services to:

• treat us with respect, empathy, and dignity
• be courteous
• engage with us in a way that does not hamper our ability to carry out our work effectively and efficiently for the benefit of all

Aggressive or abusive behaviour

This is behaviour or language (written or spoken) that could cause our staff to feel afraid, threatened or abused. This includes threatening emails, telephone calls, meetings, and comments on social media or elsewhere.

For example:

• insulting or degrading language, including inappropriate humour, innuendo or malicious allegations
• any form of physical violence or threats of physical violence
• derogatory, racist, sexist, ageist, or homophobic remarks
• comments relating to disability, perceived gender, religion, belief, or any other personal characteristics

How we will respond to incidents of unacceptable behaviour

We do not expect our employees to tolerate unacceptable behaviour when communicating with our customers. When this happens, our employees have the right to:

• place callers on hold
• end the call
• not reply to an abusive email or letter - we will only review these communications to ensure no new issues have been raised
• leave site immediately

Before taking such action, we will always warn customers that they are behaving in an unacceptable way to give them the chance to change their behaviour. However, a warning will not be given in extreme cases to protect our staff, for example, when a physical threat is made.

Where these circumstances arise, we will take the following steps:

• we will ask customers to modify their behaviour and explain why
• if the behaviour continues to be unacceptable, our employees will remove themselves from the situation. If the communication is by telephone, the caller will be told that the call will be ended
• the employee will inform their manager who will keep a record of the incident. In all cases a manager will investigate the situation and decide what action to take. This could include limiting a customers contact with us
• we will refer the matter to the police where a criminal offence has been threatened or committed

Contacts

Fish Health Inspectorate

Email: fhi@cefas.gov.uk

Telephone: 01305 206 700Out of hours: 01305 206 630.

Monday to Thursday, 9am to 5pm and Friday 9am to 4:30pm