How we handle unacceptable behaviour

We understand your situation could be stressful and you might be frustrated – but our staff have the right to do their jobs without being treated badly.

We will not accept aggressive behaviour while helping you, for example:

• swearing
• abusive language
• discrimination like racism and sexism
• being violent or threatening violence

We will also tell you if you are taking up an unfair amount of time as this could stop us from helping other people. For example, if you:

• keep demanding things in a short amount of time
• ask to speak to a specific member of staff when it’s not possible, or contact lots of staff to try and get a different outcome
• keep changing issues or raising unrelated ones
• demand help for something outside our advice areas
• keep raising the same issue when we’ve already helped you or we can’t help more
• ask for sensitive or confidential information we are not allowed to share
• make lots of complaints without giving us the chance to resolve them, or make an unreasonable number of data protection rights requests

What we will do if your behaviour is unacceptable

We will give you a chance to change your behaviour, but if you continue, we might:

• terminate our client engagement agreement with you
• end the conversation
• limit how much time we spend on the phone with you
• stop helping you by phone and only communicate with you via email
• only help you with certain issues

In very serious situations we might:

• stop helping you completely
• call the police
• block contact from you

If we decide to stop helping you it means you can’t access IRU services – so we might not respond to any contact from you.

We will give you a chance to change your behaviour before we stop helping you – unless your behaviour threatens the safety of our staff or other people. We will always try to tell you why we have stopped helping you.