HIE Service Charter

Visitors

  • Our main offices will be open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. (Any exceptions or variations will be publicised.)
  • Visitors to our offices will be seen promptly at their appointed time.
  • Visitors without an appointment will be seen within ten minutes of their arrival by a member of staff who will either deal with their enquiry or arrange an appointment.
  • Front-line staff will wear name badges.

Special needs

  • We will do everything we can to make our services available to everyone. Please let us know about any special needs in advance and we will do our best to help.

Phone

  • Reception staff will answer all phone calls within five rings and give the name of the organisation.
  • Other members of staff will identify themselves by name when receiving calls.
  • Incoming calls on direct lines will normally be answered within five rings. When staff are not available, their calls will be answered by colleagues, or voice-mail, which may take slightly longer.
  • Answerphone machines will only be used in receptions outside normal office hours, on public holidays, during staff development, in cases of emergency, or in exceptional circumstances.
  • We will return all telephone, voice-mail or answerphone messages by the end of the next working day, unless we have told you otherwise.

Correspondence

  • We will reply to all letters, faxes and e-mails that call for a response within seven working days of receiving them. If we need more time, we will briefly acknowledge your correspondence and let you know when to expect a full response.

HIE assistance

  • HIE has a streamlined process for dealing with applications for financial assistance of up to £25,000. Our target is that such applications will be processed within an average of 12 working days.
  • Our target for processing applications from £25,001 to £100,000 is that they will be processed within an average of 30 working days.
  • In all cases you must submit all the information we need to process the application.

Performance

  • We review our customer service standards regularly and independent researchers measure our performance against targets. We publish the results in the annual report.
  • Audit Scotland assesses the HIE's overall performance and value for money www.audit-scotland.gov.uk

Information and openness

  • You can get information about our plans and services by phoning, writing, calling in at our offices, emailing us at hie.general@hient.co.uk or visiting our website
  • HIE complies with the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (FOI), which governs the way in which public organisations process requests for information.  Details of how to exercise your rights under the act can be found on this website and in each of our offices across the network.  The act is enforced by the Scottish Information Commissioner, whose website is www.itspublicknowledge.info

Consultation

  • We consult our customers and partners regularly through day-to-day contact, meetings and customer surveys. Your views on our services, and your understanding of our role, are important to us.
  • The Network consults extensively when reviewing its policies, plans and priorities.

Accounts

  • We follow the Government's policy on payment performance and aim to pay all invoices, not in dispute, within 30 days (or the agreed terms if different).

Your suggestions

  • To help improve our services, we would like to know what you think about the standard of our service. We welcome all of your comments and suggestions.
  • Please complete a Comments and Suggestions Form on our website (right), or email hie.general@hient.co.uk

Complaints

  • If you are not satisfied with the quality of our service, we want to know about it. We take all complaints seriously, and have an effective, easy-to-use complaints procedure.
  • If you complain directly to the member of staff dealing with you, it may be possible to solve the problem quickly on the spot.
  • If the problem is not resolved by the member of staff you are dealing with, please send details of your complaint to: Lara Pollard, Customer Service Manager, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, FREEPOST IV74, Inverness, IV2 7BR, Tel: 01463 244502, Email: lara.pollard@hient.co.uk.
  • Please refer to the leaftlet 'Are you happy with our service?' for full details of our complaints procedure.


Unacceptable actions by customers

  • HIE's policy on unacceptable actions by customers sets out our approach to the relatively few customers whose actions or behaviour we consider unacceptable. Copies of that policy are available on request free of charge from HIE offices or by visiting our website www.hie.co.uk

 

The above information is available to download as a PDF document from the related documents section (right) in A4 size and in Gaelic. 


Link to HIE contact details