Our Complaints Procedure

OUR COMPLAINTS POLICY

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 PROCEDURE

If you have a complaint, contact, in the first instance, the Fee Earner responsible for your matter. If the Solicitor is unavailable Darlene Storrar, Complaints Officer, will be able to assist and in her absence Jane Devine (Deputy Complaints Officer).
If your complaint relates to a matter being handled by Mrs Darlene Storrar, you may speak to Mrs Jane Devine, the Deputy Complaints Officer.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

1. 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 receive our letter within 10 working days of us receiving your complaint.
2. We will record your complaint in our Central Register and open a separate file for your complaint. We will do this within 5 working days of receiving your complaint.
3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps:-

We will pass your complaint to Mrs Darlene Storrar, Complaints Officer, within 3 working days.
Mrs Darlene Storrar will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 10 working days.
Mrs Darlene Storrar will then examine their reply and the information in your complaint file, and if necessary, she may also speak to them. This will take up to 5 working days from receiving their reply and the file.

4. Mrs Darlene Storrar will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include her suggestions for resolving the matter. She will do this within 10 working days of completing the investigation.
5. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you should contact us again within 15 working days of receiving the response at 4. above, when we will arrange to review our decision.
6.We will let you know the result of the review within 10 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.

If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain the reasons.

If you still remain dissatisfied with how your complaint has been handled and the decision on it, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining why we consider our handling of it, and our decision (and the result of any review) were reasonable.

The Legal Ombudsman is the designated scheme for dealing with legal services complaints, However, we are also obliged to inform you that other Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service providers exist, eg ProMediate (www. promediate.co.uk), and offer a consumer complaint resolution service. However, we are not obliged to and do not agree to use this or other ADR providers.

You are at liberty to contact the Legal Ombudsman, whose address is PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ. Their e-mail address is enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk, their website is www.legalombudsman.org.uk and telephone number 0300 555 0333. This organisation has been set up by the Office for Legal Complaints under the Legal Services Act 2011 and its job is to resolve legal complaints in a fair and independent way. The time limit for you to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman is no later than 6 years from the date of the act or omission giving rise to the complaint but within 6 months of the conclusion of our internal complaints procedure or 3 years from the date you should reasonably have known there are grounds for complaint (if the act/omission took place before 6th October 2010 or was more than 6 years ago).