Commentary on Sections Part 8: Supplementary Section 48: Complaints
108.This section requires Qualifications Wales to publish information that sets out the ways in which it will deal with complaints that it receives, whether they are about the exercise of its own functions, specifically relate to the award of an approved or designated qualification, or are about any other activities of a recognised body which are relevant to its recognition. This section requires Qualifications Wales to decide what arrangements it will follow in respect of any of these types of complaints, and to publish these arrangements. The arrangements may be different according to the type of complaint. Qualifications Wales may consider that, once it has handled a complaint to a certain point, there is a need to refer the complaint to an independent third party and these published arrangements may make provision for this. Subsection (4) defines a person as being ‘independent’ for this purpose where the person is neither a member of Qualifications Wales nor a member of its staff (or, in the case of the independent person being a body, if none of its members is a member of Qualifications Wales or a member of Qualifications Wales’s staff).