These data are a count of written complaints made by or on behalf of patients about NHS services in England. They consist of a quarterly data collection for complaints about NHS Hospital and Community Health Services (secondary care) and an annual collection for complaints about primary care (GP and Dental) services, with further detail on each below.

KO41a Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) secondary care complaints

These data are collected from HCHS secondary care providers via the quarterly KO41a collection. Following the suspension of the KO41a collection and publication in March 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, these were resumed in September 2020. These data are currently collected and published for two quarters together to reduce the collection burden on NHS secondary care providers.

KO41b primary care (GP and Dental) complaints

These data are collected from primary care (GP & Dental) providers via the annual KO41b collection. This collection was not conducted for the 2019-20 data year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, to reduce the burden on primary care providers.

NHS Digital then conducted a consultation on the KO41b Primary Care complaints collection in early 2021. The results of the 'Consultation on changes to the Data on Written Complaints in the NHS – Primary Care (GP and Dental) KO41b collection' are available at: https://nhs-digital.citizenspace.com/workforce/consultation-on-changes-to-the-data-on-written-com/

Data will be collected for the 2020-21 data year from August 2021 and should be published by January 2022. This data collection will reflect some of the changes proposed in the KO41b consultation.