All leaders will have their own way of managing the volume of communication they receive but there are a number of strategies and practical steps that can support the effective management of complaints, and adverse communication.

• Be clear about your complaints’ policy and your governing body’s involvement in its management
• Ensure that agreed timeframes within any policy are adhered to
• Consider whether a dedicated email account would be useful for parental communication in order to manage leaders’ accessibility
• Clarify with both support staff and middle and senior leaders your expectations of their management of complaints and parental communication; consider whether staff record all of their communication, are responses followed up by email, are hard copies kept of discussions and agreements, of telephone calls?  We have many examples where
• Do you have a policy for managing duplicate and/or serial and consistent complaints, or those which are unreasonable?

Best practice guidance for school complaints procedures 2020 - GOV.UK

The Office of the Independent Adjudicator defines the characteristics of a ‘frivolous’ or ‘vexatious’ complaint as

• complaints which are obsessive, persistent, harassing, prolific, repetitious
• insistence upon pursuing unmeritorious complaints and/or unrealistic outcomes beyond all reason
• insistence upon pursuing meritorious complaints in an unreasonable manner
• complaints which are designed to cause disruption or annoyance
• demands for redress that lack any serious purpose or value”  

Schools should not refuse to accept further correspondence or complaints from an individual they have had repeat or excessive contact with as any application of a the notion of ‘serial or persistent’ should be against the subject of complaint itself rather than the complainant.

We suggest that you have a policy for managing duplicate serial complaints

When to Consider Stopping Responses

You must be able to say yes to all of the following:

• You’ve taken every reasonable step to address the concerns.
• The complainant has received a clear statement of your position and their options.
• They repeatedly contact you making substantially the same points.

You may give strong consideration to stopping if:

• Communications are abusive or aggressive.
• They make personal insults or threats towards staff.
• You believe their intent is to cause disruption or inconvenience.

But do not just stop responding just because someone is difficult or asks complex questions.

Consider your communication strategy for persistent correspondents

If behaviour causes significant disruption:

• Restrict their contact to a single point of contact (one email address?).
• Limit the number of contacts per term.
• Seek help from your local governor services team.
• Suggest the complainant appoint a third party (eg Citizens’ Advice) to act on their behalf.
• If behaviour escalates to harassment, seek legal advice.

You must however still provide statutory information under the Education (Pupil Information) (England) Regulations 2005.