How a Sheffield climbing club took complaints out of the parents' chat

Siân Mortimer chairs Loxley Juniors Climbing Club in Sheffield: 58 young climbers aged eight to 17, three sessions a week at a bouldering wall in Hillsborough, and a competition squad of 12. In the 2024-25 season the club received nine complaints, took a median of 19 days to answer them, and lost two families along the way.

Where the club started

Siân is a physiotherapist at a Sheffield hospital who joined the committee when her daughter started climbing at nine. She became chair in 2024. The club runs Tuesday and Thursday evening sessions and a Saturday morning session, with four coaches, a welfare officer and around ten regular parent helpers.

For years, complaints were rare enough not to need a system. Then the club started a competition squad.

• Selection for the squad's first regional bouldering competition in October 2024 was announced in the parents' group chat. Within an evening, 63 messages had been posted under it.
• Complaints arrived by text to the head coach, by email to the secretary, in person at the wall and in the group. Nobody kept a list.
• Two complaints in the 2024-25 season took more than five weeks to get any written answer, because each committee member assumed someone else was dealing with it.
• Two families left before Christmas 2024. Both said, in their leaving messages, that they had not felt listened to.

What was actually wrong?

The club was not getting unusual complaints. It was handling ordinary ones in the worst possible place.

When Siân went back through the season, she counted nine complaints: five about squad selection, two about session changes announced late, and two about fees. None of them was unreasonable on its face. What turned them into rows was the audience. A parent unhappy about selection posted in a group of 70 adults, a coach defended the decision in the same thread, and from then on both sides were arguing in front of everyone they knew.

The committee also found one message from the spring that had been treated as a fees complaint but was really a worry about how a helper spoke to a child. It had been passed to the welfare officer, but eleven days late.

"Every one of those complaints was fixable. What we got wrong was letting them land in a chat where 70 people watched us get defensive. By the time anyone on the committee picked it up, the parent had already decided we didn't care."

What Loxley Juniors set up in Bitir

The committee agreed the new arrangements in August 2025, following the shape in our guide to handling complaints in clubs and classes, and launched them at the start of the autumn term.

1. A one-page procedure, pinned in the parents' channel. The first line names the welfare officer and says any worry about a child's safety goes to her the same day, outside the complaints route.
2. A private line to the managers. Parents message the club's managers directly in Bitir, so a complaint reaches Siân, the secretary and the head coach without reaching every family.
3. Two deadlines, written down: acknowledgement within two working days, a written reply from the person responsible within ten.
4. A stage two review by two committee members who had no part in the original decision, also within ten working days.
5. Published selection criteria, posted and pinned by the head coach at least three weeks before each competition, with the number of places and the date selection closes.
6. A public-reply rule for coaches and committee: never argue a complaint in the group. Reply once to say you will be in touch privately, then do it that evening.

The selection criteria caused the most debate. The head coach worried that publishing them would invite parents to argue every borderline call. Siân's view, which the committee backed, was that parents were arguing anyway, just without the criteria in front of them.

What changed in the numbers?

Siân compared the 2024-25 season with September 2025 to the end of May 2026.

Of the seven complaints in 2025-26, six were closed at stage one. One, about a mid-term change to Saturday session times, went to stage two. The reviewers agreed the change had been announced with too little notice, the club apologised in writing, and Saturday changes now need four weeks' notice.

The single selection complaint was closed in four working days. The head coach pointed to the published criteria and the climber's results at the two qualifying sessions, and offered a review session on footwork before the next round. The family stayed.

"The procedure fits on one side of A4 and I was embarrassed by how simple it was. But the number that matters to me is the families. Last season two left angry. This season nobody did, and one of the parents who complained is now on the committee."

What Siân does in Bitir

• Private messages to managers, so complaints reach the committee rather than the whole parents' channel.
• Pinned posts for the complaints procedure, the welfare officer's contact and the current squad selection criteria.
• Role permissions that make the welfare officer, secretary and head coach managers, and keep other coaches out of complaints they are not part of.
• Announcements for changes that come out of a complaint, such as the four-week notice rule for Saturday sessions.
• Attendance registers for each session, which the head coach uses as evidence of qualifying sessions when selection is questioned.

What she would tell another club

• Count last season's complaints and how long each took. The number will be worse than you think.
• Put the safeguarding contact on the first line of the procedure, not the last.
• Publish selection criteria before selection, every time.
• Agree as a committee that nobody answers a complaint in the group chat.
• Write the deadlines down. A complaint answered in six days is a different complaint from one answered in six weeks.

What's next

Loxley Juniors is adding a short end-of-season poll for parents this summer, asking whether they know how to raise a concern and who the welfare officer is. Siân wants both numbers above 90 percent before the 2026-27 squad is selected, and she plans to report them at the AGM alongside the complaints log.

Related reading: handling complaints in clubs and classes, and a parent code of conduct for the touchline.