Apply for a Review of an Admissibility Decision

It is a decision to exclude a complaint from the Service Complaints system before investigation.

The Ombudsman has the power to review these decisions and make a final decision about whether the complaint should be accepted into the system.

You have 4 weeks and 2 days from the date your decision was posted or emailed to ask the Ombudsman to review it.

If you made a complaint and it was not accepted for investigation, you can ask the Ombudsman to review this decision.

If your complaint was investigated but your request for an appeal was not accepted, you can ask the Ombudsman to review the decision not to accept the appeal.

If you don’t make your application to the Ombudsman within 4 weeks and 2 days, you need to provide reasons for this and your application might not be accepted.

If the incident you want to make a Service complaint about happened before 1 January 2008 and your complaint was not submitted before 31 December 2015, the Ombudsman has no legal power to look at the matter.

This is because a Service person can only make a Service Complaint if the matter they are complaining about occurred when they were subject to Service law.  Service law commenced on 1 January 2008. Prior to this, Service personnel were subject to the laws of their individual Services (Army Act 1955, Navy Discipline Act 1957 and the Air Force Act 1955.)  For incidents that occurred before 1 January 2008, personnel had until the 31 December 2015 to make a complaint and it is not possible to make a Service complaint now. It may be possible to raise your historical complaint in another way.