A letter arrives. Your claim is declined, your entitlement is recalculated, your application is refused, or nothing arrives at all and the silence has lasted months. The instinct is to go back to the same counter and explain yourself more loudly, which almost never works, or to talk about lawyers, which is expensive and usually premature.
There is a third path, it is written into Kenyan law, and very few people use it because nobody explains it. The Fair Administrative Action Act, No. 4 of 2015, gives every person affected by a decision of a public body a set of concrete, enforceable entitlements — including reasons in writing, a stated appeal route, and time limits that bind the administrator as well as you. Retired people meet these situations more often than most, because pensions, health cover, tax and county charges all generate decisions that arrive as a fait accompli. Pursuing one costs time and transport more than it costs fees, and while a case runs, apps like I am Beezy turn ordinary phone time into small earnings that arrive without you having to be anywhere in particular.
What counts as a decision you can actually challenge?
Wider than most people assume, and the width is the point. The Act reaches any action, omission or decision of a body performing a public function that affects a person's legal rights or interests.
Omissions count as much as decisions
A refusal is a decision. So is a recalculation, a suspension, a deregistration and a condition attached to an approval. So, crucially, is doing nothing. Section 7 of the Act lists unreasonable delay or failure to act in the discharge of a duty imposed by law among the grounds for review — which means the file that has been sitting on a desk since March is a challengeable matter and not merely bad luck.
The grounds that actually decide cases
Section 7 sets out a long list, and the ones that carry most ordinary complaints are recognisable without legal training: the decision was made in bad faith; relevant considerations were not taken into account; the administrator acted on the direction of someone not empowered to give it; the decision is not rationally connected to the reasons given for it; there was an abuse of discretion; or the decision violates a legitimate expectation. Note that last one. If an office told you in writing how something would be handled and then handled it differently, that is a named ground rather than a grievance.
The delay ground carries a condition
Section 7 does not let you complain about delay in the abstract. A court or tribunal will not entertain that ground unless the administrator was under a duty to act, the action was required within a period specified by law, and the administrator refused, failed or neglected to act within that period. So before you build a case on delay, find the provision that sets the period. Without it, the strongest-feeling complaint is the weakest one.
The first move: ask for reasons in writing
Do this before anything else, including before you complain to anyone. It costs the price of a letter, it starts a clock, and it converts a wall into a document you can argue with.
The thirty-day rule
Section 6 gives every person materially or adversely affected by an administrative action the right to be supplied with the information needed to pursue an appeal or review, including the reasons for the action and any relevant documents. Section 6 requires the administrator to furnish those reasons in writing within thirty days of receiving the request. That is not a courtesy and it is not discretionary. Section 4(2) states the same right in the plainest possible terms: every person has the right to be given written reasons for any administrative action taken against him.
What silence buys you
Here is the part almost nobody knows, and it changes the balance of the conversation entirely. Under section 6, where an administrator fails to furnish the reasons, the decision is presumed — in later review proceedings, and in the absence of proof to the contrary — to have been taken without good reason. An office that ignores your request has therefore weakened its own position rather than protected it. Keep proof that you asked and proof of the date.
How to word the request
Short, dated, specific. Identify the decision by reference number and date, state that you are materially and adversely affected by it, request the reasons and the relevant documents under section 6 of the Fair Administrative Action Act, and ask for confirmation of the internal review route. Deliver it in a way that produces a receipt — a stamped copy, a registered letter, an email you keep. Two sides of paper is more than enough.
Exhaust the internal route before anyone mentions a court
This is the step that most self-represented complainants skip, and skipping it is fatal rather than merely inefficient.
| Stage | What it is | The clock |
|---|---|---|
| Written reasons | Your request under section 6 of the Fair Administrative Action Act | Administrator must reply within thirty days of the request |
| Internal review or appeal | The body's own review mechanism, which the decision letter must tell you about | Set by the Act governing that body — read the letter and the statute |
| Specialised tribunal | For example, the Dispute Resolution Tribunal under the Social Health Insurance Act, No. 16 of 2023 | That Act gives one month from the date of the decision |
| Higher appeal from the tribunal | To the High Court | The same Act allows twenty-one days from the date of the tribunal's order |
| Judicial review | High Court or a competent subordinate court | Without unreasonable delay, and only after internal remedies are exhausted |
Why section 9 exists
Section 9 of the Fair Administrative Action Act says a court shall not review an administrative action unless the internal mechanisms for appeal or review and all remedies available under other written law are first exhausted. If the court is not satisfied that they were, it will direct you to go and exhaust them. That is months lost and, in practice, deadlines missed. Do the internal step even when you are certain it will fail, because doing it is what unlocks everything after it.
The exception, and why it will probably not be you
Section 9 allows a court, in exceptional circumstances and on application, to exempt a person from exhausting a remedy where the exemption is in the interest of justice. That is a real door and it is a narrow one. Plan on the ordinary route and treat the exception as something a lawyer might raise, not as a shortcut you can rely on.
The decision letter is legally obliged to help you
Section 4 requires an administrator, where an action is likely to adversely affect rights, to give prior and adequate notice of the nature and reasons for the proposed action, an opportunity to be heard, notice of a right to review or internal appeal where applicable, a statement of reasons, and the information and evidence relied on. If your letter contains none of that, the absence is itself part of your complaint. Photocopy it before you do anything else.
Meeting the cost of a long appeal with I am Beezy
Appeals in Kenya are rarely defeated by fees. They are abandoned because of fare, photocopying, phone credit and the sheer number of half-days spent travelling to be told to come back — costs that fall hardest on someone living on a fixed income.
What the app pays for
On I am Beezy the content is the work: videos, articles and advertisements are presented to you, each view is credited, and the balance goes out to the mobile payment method you already use. Users who are on it most days report the equivalent of about KSh 10,400 to KSh 31,300 over a fortnight — converted at 149.21 shillings to the euro, the Central Bank of Kenya daily indicative rate on 4 August 2026, and worth redoing at whatever the rate is when you read this.
Budget the case before you start it
Write down the likely number of trips, the fare, the cost of copies and certification, and the time. Compare it honestly with what is at stake. Some decisions are worth fighting for the principle; many are worth fighting because the amount recurs every month and the fight happens once. Knowing which of the two you are in prevents the abandonment that happens at month four.
When does the Ombudsman help, and when does it not?
The Commission on Administrative Justice, generally known as the Office of the Ombudsman, is the constitutional body most useful to an ordinary complainant, and the most misunderstood.
What it handles
The Commission is established under Article 59(4) of the Constitution and the Commission on Administrative Justice Act, 2011. It addresses maladministration in the public sector, and it states its power to investigate complaints of delay, abuse of power, unfair treatment, manifest injustice or discourtesy. It also oversees implementation of the Access to Information Act, 2016 — which matters when the documents behind a decision are being withheld from you.
How to lodge a complaint
Complaints go through the Commission's own complaints management system, published on its website, and it lists a main line on +254-20-2270000, a toll-free number on 0800-221349 and an email address at info@ombudsman.go.ke. Section 5 of the Fair Administrative Action Act expressly preserves your right to use the Commission on Administrative Justice Act procedure, so this route does not close off the others.
What it will not do
It is not a court, it does not substitute its own decision for the administrator's on the merits of a technical entitlement, and it is not a shortcut past a tribunal with a statutory deadline. Use it for the behaviour — the delay, the discourtesy, the refusal to give documents, the runaround — and use the tribunal for the entitlement. Many complainants need both, running in parallel.
Writing the letter that gets read
| Section of the letter | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Identification | Your name, the reference number, the date of the decision, the office that made it |
| The decision | One sentence stating what was decided, in their words not yours |
| The effect | How it materially and adversely affects you — this is what gives you standing |
| The request | Reasons in writing under section 6, the documents relied on, and the internal appeal route |
| The date | Your date, plus a note that thirty days runs from receipt |
Keep it to one page
The officer reading it has a queue. A page they can act on beats five pages they will put aside. Narrative, history and grievance belong in the file you keep, not in the request that starts the clock.
Tone is strategy, not politeness
Cite the section, state the request, leave out the anger. A letter that quotes the Act calmly gets escalated to someone senior; a letter that accuses gets filed. You are trying to reach the person who can reverse the decision, and that person has not yet done anything to you.
Keep one file and one timeline
Every letter sent and received, every date, every name, every receipt for a fare. When a matter reaches a tribunal eight months later, the person with the dated file wins arguments the person with a good memory loses. Number the pages as you go.
None of this requires a lawyer to begin, and beginning is what most people never do. Ask for the reasons in writing, take the internal route even when it looks pointless, watch the short clocks on the specialised tribunals, and keep the Ombudsman for the behaviour rather than the entitlement. Read the Fair Administrative Action Act yourself on the Kenya Law website — it is short, it is in plain English, and knowing three of its sections changes how every public counter in the country treats you. And to keep something coming in during the months a case takes, an account on I am Beezy is free to open and earns from your phone between appointments.
