Ms Susan McKay:

I do not think the three-month deadline is too short. One of the things the Press Council has always boasted is the fact that it is a fast service. You ideally want to be dealing with a complaint during the period when the issue is still relevant. Three months is a decent length of time for people to bring a complaint. It is not complicated to bring a complaint; I think the problem is that people need to be educated a bit more about how to do so, how to do so intelligently and how to use the code to get the best likelihood of the outcome they want to get. I think three months is a reasonable amount of time to get a complaint in. There is no evidence that it is causing difficulties for people. It allows time for people to choose to go a different route if they want to do so.