Complaint Resolution 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, please contact the member of staff dealing with your matter. If this does not resolve the problem or you feel it would not be appropriate, please contact Miss Sarah Scott our Client Care Partner. You can write to her at Ward Gethin Archer, 10-12 Tuesday Market Place, King’s Lynn PE30 1JT, telephone her on 01553 66 00 33, or e-mail her at sarah.scott@wardgethinarcher.co.uk . If Miss Scott is on holiday, or unable to deal with your complaint promptly, it will be passed to Mr Michael Judkins. Michael Judkins is also the first point of contact for any client complaints at our Ely office to make it easier for clients to meet to discuss their complaint face to face rather than travelling between offices. Our Ely offices can be found at Market Place, Ely, Cambs. CB7 4QN.

What will happen next?

• We will send you a letter, fax or e-mail acknowledging your complaint. We may need to ask for more details of your complaint. 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 or e-mail within three days of us receiving your complaint, enclosing a copy of this procedure.

• We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint.

• We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps:
  • We will ask the member of staff who acted for you to give his/her observations on your complaint (orally, or in writing) within five days.
  • We will need to consider the reply and, where appropriate, the information in your complaint file and your case file. We may ask the member of staff dealing with your matter for more information. This will take up to three days from receiving their reply and the file.

• We will invite you to meet Sarah Scott (or Michael Judkins)) to discuss and we hope, resolve your complaint. We will do this within 14 days of the letter acknowledging your complaint.

• Within 3 days of the meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions we have agreed with you.

• If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within 21 days of the letter acknowledging your complaint.

• At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:
  • Sarah Scott or Michael Judkins will review their own decision within five days.
  • We will arrange for someone in the firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it.

• We will let you know the result of the review within 14 days of receiving your request for a review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. We will also give you the name and address of the Legal Ombudsman. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact them about your complaint.
  
  Legal Ombudsman
  PO Box 6806
  Wolverhampton
  WV1 9WJ
  
  Any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within 6 months of the date of our final written response on your complaint but for further information, you should contact the Legal Ombudsman on 0300 555 0333 or at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
  
  If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why. Our reference to days means working days, and assumes that the member of staff is not absent from work because of holiday, illness, court commitments, etc.