What are the formal requirements of the complaint

Written complaint

Complaints to the Ombudsman must be in written form.

Name and address

The Ombudsman must know a complainant’s name and address. In principle, the Ombudsman does not investigate anonymous complaints.

In many instances, we inform the authority or person which/who the complaint concerns about the complainants’ names and points of complaints. In some instances, we also forward the complaint to the authority. Others may also be entitled to gain access to some of the information in the case.

Whistleblower

If unlawful or negligent matters in the public administration have come to your attention, you can contact the Ombudsman anonymously without stating your name (as a whistleblower). However, it can be important to our assessment of for example the credibility of the information that we know the name of the person contacting the Ombudsman.  

Please note that we cannot promise to keep a name confidential once we know the name. If we are informed of a name verbally, we must make a note of it in the case files. Once we have made a note of the name, we cannot delete it.

Complaint form

It is not a requirement to use the complaint form. However, we recommend that complainants use the form and at the same time attach the decisions they are dissatisfied with and/or any other important documents.

A complaint can also be sent via Digital Post  or by secure e-mail. You can access Digital Post at for example Borger.dk.

Attachments to the complaint

The decisions, which are the subject of the complaint, and any other documents relevant to the case must be submitted with the complaint. We are happy to accept any other documents which may be important to the case.

We do not have direct access to the authorities’ case files.

We recommend complainants to submit documents via Digital Post which you can access at for example Borger.dk.

We cannot download files from external links – for IT security reasons, among other things.

The language of the complaint

Anybody can complain to the Ombudsman. We always do our utmost to understand the complaints we receive, whether they are written in legal terminology or in everyday language. It is not necessary to get a lawyer to write the complaint.

If it is not clear to us what the complaint is about, we will in most cases inform the complainant of his/her possibilities or ask the complainant to write more precisely what the complaint is about.