Letter to make a formal complaint about discrimination

You can use this template letter to write a formal discrimination complaint. 

If you haven’t told the organisation about discrimination yet, it’s usually best to make an informal complaint first. Check how to make an informal complaint.

If you don’t like the response to your informal complaint, use this template letter to make a formal complaint.

We don’t send your formal complaint letter for you. Once you’ve written it you’ll need to send it to the organisation that discriminated against you. 

Before you write your formal complaint, you need to:

• check if a formal discrimination complaint is right for your situation

• get evidence to show what happened - you’ll need to send copies of your evidence with your formal complaint

 Check our advice on making a formal discrimination complaint.

Writing your letter

You’ll need to fill in some details about your problem. The template letter tool will use your answers to create your letter.

To write your letter you’ll need to include:

• the name and address of the organisation you’re complaining to

• details of when and where the discrimination happened

• a few sentences describing what happened - including what people said and how they behaved

• the protected characteristics that the discrimination was about, for example sex or race - you can use our 3-step process to check the protected characteristics

• a short explanation of what you want the organisation to do about the discrimination - for example, give you an apology, pay you compensation or change their policies

• the dates and details of any other complaints you’ve made about the discrimination - including complaint reference numbers, if you have any

We will not store the information you include in your letter. If you close the webpage or go to a different page, your answers will be deleted. 

It might help to open our advice about formal complaints on another tab or screen to help you fill in the answers. Check our advice about how to make a formal complaint about discrimination.

Press ‘Preview’ to check your letter. If you’d like to change anything, press ‘Edit’ to go back to the form.

Sending your letter

There are different ways you can send your letter. You can:

•  download it and attach it to an email

•  download it and print it out to send in the post

•  copy and paste it into an email or the organisation's online complaints form

You need to check the organisation’s complaints process to find out how you should send your complaint. For example, if you need to fill in an online complaints form, you’ll need to copy and paste your letter into the form.

If the organisation doesn’t have a complaints process, you can send your letter in the best way for you.

You should also save a copy of the letter for your records.