We are committed to providing a high quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.
Our Complaints Policy
If you have a complaint contact us with the details.
What will happen next?
- We will record your complaint in our central register and open a separate file for your complaint. We will do this within one working day of receiving your complaint.
- We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain the details set out. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint. You can expect to hear from us within two working days of us receiving your complaint.
- We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps:
- We will pass your complaint to James Hunt, our Client Care Manager, within three working days.
- He will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within five working days.
- He will then examine their reply and the information in the client file and, if necessary, he may also speak to them. This will take up to three working days from receiving their reply and the file.
- James will then invite you to a meeting and discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint.
- Within two working days of the meeting James will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions he has agreed with you.
If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, James will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include his suggestions for resolving the matter. He will do this within five working days of completing the investigation.
- At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you should contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:
- Another principal of the firm will review James’ decision within ten working days.
- We will ask our local Law Society or another local firm of solicitors to review you complaint within five working days. We will let you know how long this process will take.
- We will invite you to agree to independent mediation within five working days. We will let you know how long this process will take.
- We will let you know the result of the review within five working days of the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. We will include the name and address of a suggested alternate complaints body which may be used if you and we both agree to use such a scheme.
- After 8 weeks, or if you are still not satisfied after receiving our final response, you may contact the Legal Ombudsman our Consumer Complaints Service. You can make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman at https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/helping-the-public/make-a-complaint/. You can also call them on 0300 555 0333 or write to them at Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806 Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ.
- In certain circumstances you can make a complaint to the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority. These include allegations of dishonesty and more information can be found here: http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page.
If we have to change any of the above in relation to your complaint we will let you know and explain why.
