I have a licensing complaint
Licensees and prospective licensees should follow our procedure to submit a complaint. It should be used if you believe:
- We have failed to follow our own procedures, including any undertakings to licensees detailed in our code of conduct relating to licensees (“the Licensee Code”)
- We have charged you incorrectly
- We have been discourteous or unprofessional
- We have unreasonably delayed or failed to take action in our dealings with you
- We have given you wrong or misleading information
If the complaint is about the terms and conditions of our licences, or about any other matter not mentioned above, we will endeavour to address it.
If you’re complaining about music in the workplace or at a live event, please contact PPL PRS Ltd who handle public performance licensing.
What happens next?
We aim to respond to your complaint in full within 20 working days. If we are unable to respond to your complaint within that time frame, we will let you know and advise you of when we will be in the position to do so.
If you are unhappy with our substantive response we will advise you on how you can dispute it. All disputed responses are reviewed by a senior manager and you will receive a response from the Executive Director of Membership, International and Licensing, or relevant senior manager.
- Confirm or vary the earlier decision giving reasons for doing so, or
- Advise of any further actions being taken regarding the complaint and the associated timescales
If you are still dissatisfied once we have completed our investigation and provided a response, we may advise that there is nothing more that we can do under our complaints procedure. We call this a 'deadlock' letter.
Further action
Once we have sent you a deadlock letter, you have the option to refer the matter to Dispute Resolution Ombudsman Limited within 12 months of the letter. You may also refer your complaint to the ombudsman if, for any other reason, we have failed to resolve the complaint to your satisfaction within nine months of submitting your complaint.
The Ombudsman is an independent service set up to review complaints made to PRS for Music, which are eligible for consideration by the Ombudsman. The service is free to use.
The Ombudsman does not have jurisdiction to investigate a complaint if it relates to a matter of commercial policy or copyright law, including the terms and conditions of our licences or licensing schemes. Where the complaint would be more properly dealt with by the Copyright Tribunal (because for example, it is a complaint about our charges or other terms and conditions of our licence or licensing scheme applicable to you) or a court or another judicial or regulatory body, we will explain this.
The Ombudsman can be contacted by phone: +44 (0)330 241 3209 or by e-mail: info@disputeresolutionombudsman.org
We will abide by the ombudsman’s final decision and put in place any remedy the Ombudsman requires. The Ombudsman may ask us to provide an apology or explanation, put right any errors and/or pay compensation up to £10,000.
The Ombudsman will accept complaints within its remit and under their code. The Ombudsman has no jurisdiction to consider or investigate complaints about our commercial policy, including our tariffs, or matters of copyright law. Where a complaint concerns the process that we followed in arriving at particular tariff, the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction is confined to the question of whether that process was followed in relation to the individual complainant, not to its outcome.
