Admissibility Review

You have 4 weeks and 2 days from the date your decision was posted or emailed to ask the Ombudsman to review it.

If you made a complaint and it was not accepted for investigation, you can ask the Ombudsman to review this decision.

If your complaint was investigated but your request for an appeal was not accepted, you can ask the Ombudsman to review the decision not to accept the appeal.

If you don’t make your application to the Ombudsman within 4 weeks and 2 days, you need to provide reasons for this and your application might not be accepted.

If your Service decides that the appeal cannot proceed because it was:

• ruled out of time; or 
• ruled inadmissible for not being brought on a valid ground; 

You can either:

• ask the Ombudsman to review this admissibility decision. If the Ombudsman disagrees with the decision made, the complaint will go back to your Service to appoint an Appeal Body; or 
• ask the Ombudsman for a Substance and/or Maladministration investigation, if you do not want the appeal admissibility decision reviewed. 

If you ask the Ombudsman to review the appeal admissibility decision and the Ombudsman upholds the Service's decision that the appeal cannot proceed, this means that the Service Complaint is finally determined. You then have the option to apply to the Ombudsman for a Substance and/or Maladministration investigation. You will have 6 weeks and 2 days from the date of our appeal admissibility decision to submit such an application to the Ombudsman.

To find out more information about Substance and/or Maladministration investigations, follow the link below: 

If the incident you want to make a Service Complaint about happened before 1 January 2008 and your complaint was not submitted before 31 December 2015, the Ombudsman has no legal power to look at the matter.

This is because a Service person can only make a Service Complaint if the matter they are complaining about occurred when they were subject to Service law.  Service law commenced on 1 January 2008. Prior to this, Service personnel were subject to the laws of their individual Services (Army Act 1955, Navy Discipline Act 1957 and the Air Force Act 1955.)  For incidents that occurred before 1 January 2008, personnel had until the 31 December 2015 to make a complaint and it is not possible to make a Service Complaint now. It may be possible to raise your historical complaint in another way.

When an application is received by our office, our Enquiries Team will check to ensure you have provided the information required before your application form is considered complete. 

Your application will be assigned to one of our investigators in the order of the date it was received by our office. The investigator will conduct an initial case review to determine whether we can accept the matter for investigation. Depending on what you have asked for in your application, we will review the documents you provided to assess whether you have met the following eligibility requirements:

•    The application was made within the time limit (unless there are just and equitable reasons).
•    The application is not deemed frivolous, vexatious, or malicious.
•    The complainant was subject to Service law at the time the ‘wrong’ occurred.