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
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 Sarah Scott, our Client Care Director. You can contact her by:
If Sarah Scott is on holiday, or unable to deal with your complaint promptly, it will be passed to Sally Dean.
What will happen next?
1. 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.
2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint.
3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps:
4. We will invite you to meet Sarah Scott (or Sally Dean) to discuss and we hope, resolve your complaint. We will do this within 14 days of the letter acknowledging your complaint.
5. 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.
6. 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:
7. 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 hope that we will be able to resolve your complaint satisfactorily. However, if you remain unhappy with our response then you can refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, an independent complaints body established under the Legal Services Act, who can investigate complaints about the legal service you have received from us.
The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within one year of you realising there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you.
The Legal Ombudsman’s contact details are: -
Alternative complaints bodies (such as Ombudsman Services, The Brew House, Wilderspool Park, Warrington, WA4 PHL www.ombudsman-services.org) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services, should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme.
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.
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Offices and phone lines are open:
Monday to Friday: 8:45am - 5:00pm