Complaints under Competition Act 1998

The Competition Act 1998 gives the UK competition authorities wide-ranging powers to investigate and take action against anti-competitive activity in the UK. The Competition Act is primarily aimed at resolving problems with the way that markets work.

You do not have to be directly involved in an activity to make a complaint. You may get in touch with the ORR if you suspect that any company supplying services relating to railways is involved in activities that are prohibited by the Competition Act 1998.

Format

There is no set format for making a complaint under the Competition Act 1998. You should outline the nature of your complaint and include as much information as possible. You should note that to be effective, we need supporting evidence to back up your allegation. It would be helpful if you include details of your relationship (if any) with the business(es) concerned, notes of telephone conversations, copies of any correspondence and anything else you may consider relevant. When we have considered the material you have provided, we may need to ask you for more details.

Complaints are an extremely important source of information about anti-competitive activity and we actively encourage complaints from businesses and individuals who suspect that a breach of the Competition Act is taking place.

We will let you know how we propose to deal with your complaint and will keep you informed of progress. You may be contacted for further information.

Confidentiality

In order to investigate a complaint fully, we will generally need to divulge the information we have obtained to the company being investigated. If you consider that any of the information you have provided to back up your complaint contains commercial information relating to a business/individual, and that its disclosure might seriously damage its business (or individual) interests, you should clearly mark it as confidential and explain why you think it should be treated as such. However, you should try to keep the amount of such information to a minimum to enable your complaint to be pursued effectively.

If we consider it absolutely necessary to disclose any of the confidential information that you have provided, we will, where practicable, discuss this with you beforehand.

We will not make public the identity of a complainant without his or her consent. There are circumstances where it is also possible to protect the identity of the complainant from the undertaking being investigated. If you are concerned about the disclosure of your identity, you should raise this at the earliest opportunity.

More details are available on ORR's powers under the Competition Act 1998.

Contacting the ORR Competition team:

Email: competition@orr.gsi.gov.uk

John Trippier
Executive, Competition Policy
Telephone: 020 7282 2122
Fax: 020 7282 2043

Nick Wortley
Executive, Competition Policy
Telephone: 020 7282 3984
Fax: 020 7282 2043