Our Charter

Together we achieve great things.

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Coeliac UK is proud to support a vibrant and diverse gluten free community; one that works together in our common interest, whilst representing and respecting stakeholders whoever they are, wherever they live.

Our staff, volunteers, members, supporters, commercial partners, researchers and support providers are expected to treat everyone with respect and provide an inclusive experience for all.

Our vision is that no life should be limited by gluten and our values of being informed, independent and illuminating are at the forefront of everything we do.

Our commitment

Coeliac UK will:

  • keep you up to date with the work we are doing and changes that might affect you
  • respond to any queries you have in a courteous, timely and professional manner
  • acknowledge receipt of emails or letters within three working days and respond within seven
  • respect any personal data you share with us, or that we get from other organisations, and keep it safe, in accordance with current data protection regulations and the charity’s privacy policy
  • provide you with opportunities to engage safely and respectfully with the other members of the community through our website and Coeliac UK events. We commit to ensuring these are safe spaces by mediating to protect participants from abusive or offensive behaviours.

Together we will:

  • champion the values of integration, diversity and inclusion
  • act with integrity and honesty at all times
  • engage with the community constructively and in the spirit of respect, mutual trust and good faith
  • treat personal data responsibly, only holding or sharing it in line with current data protection regulations and current privacy policy.

Contacting us

Coeliac UK staff and volunteers are committed to providing positive experiences to the entire community through all aspects of our work.

Our community is vibrant and inclusive and we actively encourage sharing stories and experiences to help others.

There are many ways for you to share your feedback, by telephone, email: generalenquiries@coeliac.org.uk, letter, in surveys, on social media and in person.

Feedback can be about:

  • a service we provide
  • the behaviour of our staff and volunteers
  • your experience in the community
  • the validity of the information we provide
  • our fundraising practices 
  • our data processing and procedures.

We may ask your permission to include your story, testimonial and positive experience across our printed and digital collateral to help highlight our work across our community.

Sometimes we may not meet your expectations. If something goes wrong, please tell us and we will respond to all feedback fairly and promptly.

We use all feedback as an opportunity to know what is working and what needs to be improved.

Complaints

Unfortunately sometimes it may be necessary to raise a complaint; this can be done informally or a formally

In either case, we may need to contact 3rd parties for information to be able to process your complaint. If so we will inform you of this and will keep you updated on our progress.

Informal complaints can usually be resolved straight away and raised directly with the team concerned. You can provide your feedback in writing, by email or by phone.

You can expect our response to:

  • include an explanation of our understanding of the circumstances which led to the complaint
  • detail a course of action that will be taken to remedy the situation and apologising if  we have done something wrong
  • provide the next steps to take if you are dissatisfied with our response
  • follow up confirmation in writing (including email) if initial contact is over the phone within three to seven working days.

If you are unhappy with the response to your informal complaint, you can escalate it to a formal complaint but please provide as much information about why you feel the issue is not resolved and what outcome you expect.

Formal complaints can be escalated to the relevant team Manager or Director and will be acknowledged within three working days and a written response (including email) within seven working days. For data protection and Subject Access Requests please see below.

If you remain dissatisfied with our response to your formal complaint, you can direct your complaint to our Chief Executive Officer. In this case, our Chief Executive Officer will address the reasons why you were dissatisfied, but will not reinvestigate the circumstances surrounding the original complaint.

In the unlikely event of an agreement not being reached between our Chief Executive Officer and the complainant, the complaint will be forwarded to our voluntary Board of Governors for their consideration.

Only the Chief Executive Officer or the Board of Governors has the authority to agree upon a resolution, once the formal complaints procedure has been instigated.

Data protection and Subject Access Requests (SAR)

Any complaints regarding data protection and SARs follow the formal complaints process above and:

  • must be raised as soon as you become reasonably aware of the incident
  • in line with our privacy policy we have 28 days to complete a SAR
  • we will need to contact our third party providers to complete our investigations
  • we are not required to report a SAR to the ICO however, in the case of a possible data breach we will do so ahead of any investigation.

Please address any data protection queries to generalenquiries@coeliac.org.uk

Recurrent or abusive enquirer

Should there be a time when a complaint is illegitimate or there is a perceived malicious behaviour towards an employee, volunteer or the charity, this may lead to the withdrawal of services and further communications from the charity.

We will also tell you if you are taking up an unreasonable amount of time, such as raising the same issue when we have already helped or cannot help further or asking for confidential information we cannot share, as this could prevent us from helping others.

If a new complaint is raised, this will be treated without prejudice and in line with the above informal and formal processes.

Payment processing

We always seek the most cost effective solutions in our work to ensure we use donations, membership fees, sponsorship income and trust funding in the best way possible. All income enables us to plan our work for the future and continue to provide information and support services, fund crucial research and represent our community through awareness raising and campaigning activities.

For some payment processing we do need to use third party agencies, for example to collect Direct Debit payments. You can see more information within our privacy policy under ‘How we keep your data secure and who processes your data’.
We will process all income securely and as quickly as possible, this includes but is not limited to:

  • membership fees
  • donations
  • catering training
  • dietetic consultations
  • shop merchandise
  • raffle
  • events.

You can find further information about specific payment processing, dispatch times and delivery policies within the FAQ sections for the relevant activities.

Refund requests

We do hope that you do not need to request a refund for any of the services or activities you engage in with us. A full refund may not always be appropriate and there may be different factors to consider. If you have made a payment in error or require a refund for another reason please contact the appropriate Coeliac UK team as soon as possible.

Refunds on membership fees may not always be possible, but we never want the membership fee to be a barrier to receiving information and will consider any request on an individual basis so get in touch if you would like to discuss alternative fee options.

If you become aware that your card has been used fraudulently, please contact your card provider.