Hello, Kathy.
There is no particular magic to it – I simply refer to my earlier letters (listing the dates of each letter) and note that as I have not yet received a response to those letters I want to open a formal complaint against HMRC. This forces the caseworker to forward the letter to their manager, and, knowing that their work is about to be subject to scrutiny, there is coincidentally a burst of activity on the file. It is this burst of activity, far more than the actual complaint, that we are trying to generate with our letters.
My one tip would be to put the word ‘complaint’ clearly in the subject line. Before I started doing that some of my complaints were missed because nobody actually bothered to read the text of the letter. By putting the complaint in the subject line it is harder for them to miss it.
Taurean Drayak
Elliot, Bond & Banbury