How does our review challenge process work?

If the home care provider believes that a review does not comply with our review policy (e.g. defamatory, not submitted by a valid connection, not submitted within 12 months of the experience), then the home care provider has the option to challenge the review and email us the reasons why they believe the review does not comply. 

Factors to consider before challenging a review

It is important to understand, before challenging a review for factual accuracy, that in line with other review websites, our general approach is that we take a neutral stance in factual disputes between home care providers and reviewers. If a home care provider disagrees with the reviewer over the experience, we recommend that the home care provider writes a reply to the review sharing their version of events so that website users can see both perspectives.      

Guidance for creating a positive reply to a negative review.   

For an allegation of factual inaccuracy to be considered defamatory, it will have to be shown that all three of these criteria are met:  

• the stated fact is demonstrably false, however negative or critical  
• it is a statement of fact and not a statement of opinion (a statement of opinion will trigger the range of possible defences under the Defamation Act 2013 and the common law)   
• the statement has caused, or has the tendency to cause, serious harm to reputation. The threshold for defamation is high, for example, the review contains allegations of abuse, material negligence or criminal activity. We will only ever publish a review once the subject has had the opportunity to reply so that any reply is published alongside the actual review.  Every decision we reach in respect of a statement being defamatory is based on a fair reading of the review as a whole and its context within a review website. 

Please note that challenges based on any of the following will not be upheld:   

• Previous positive reviews submitted by this reviewer or anyone else    
• Internal Investigations, whether open or closed    
• Safeguarding cases and investigations by your regulatory authority, whether open or closed    
• Unsatisfactory Ratings    
• Behaviour of the reviewer or other family members which is not mentioned in the review comment    
• Mental health or capacity of the reviewer  

Submitting a challenge

After considering the above points, if the home care provider feels that challenging a review is justified, then the home care provider should email the reviews team the reason why they believe the review to be non-compliant with the review policy. If the review is pending publication, the email should be sent before 2 pm on a working day prior to the automatic publication date of the review.  

Please ensure your challenge does not give any personal information as per GDPR guidelines. Where possible, please remove any names of staff, residents or relatives.    

Once our Compliance Team have reached their decision on whether your challenge is upheld or not, we would prefer to contact you directly by telephone to advise you of the outcome, please let us know the best number to reach you on.  

Receipt of the challenge  

We will acknowledge receipt of your challenge and then the review is suspended from ‘Pending Publication’, or if it is ‘Published’, temporarily removed from the site for the duration of the challenge process. The review is also not visible in your control panel during the challenge process.  The challenge process will usually be completed within 5 working days, occasionally this may take longer.   

If a challenge is submitted without the reason why a review does not comply with the review policy, we will inform the home care provider that the challenge needs to be submitted again with this information. The review will not be suspended and remain ‘Pending Publication’ or ‘Published’.  

Moderation of the challenge

Reviews that are challenged by home care providers are put forward to our compliance committee which is overseen by lawyers and meets on a weekly basis. Each review, together with any correspondence / comments from the home care providers and reviewers, is examined, discussed and then deemed to be compliant or non-compliant with our review policy. The identity of the home care provider is anonymised to the lawyer in the weekly meeting so that the process is as objective as possible. We make our decisions after careful consideration and with legal advice.  We do not publish reviews which in our view are defamatory.   

Challenge upheld or not upheld

We will notify the home care provider whether their challenge is upheld or not upheld.  We do not provide details of the information or discussions from the review compliance committee for data privacy and legal reasons.      

If the challenge is not upheld, the review will be set to ‘Pending Publication’ and the home care provider has 7 days to add a reply to the review before it is published.   

If the challenge is upheld, that particular review will not be published and the reviewer is notified. The review will become visible again in your control panel and will move to the ‘Reviews not Published’ section, where you will be able to see the full details. If the review does not comply on the grounds of content standards, the reviewer may choose to submit a new review, which will then again go through the review moderation process.