Complaint Resolution Procedure

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:

  • Post: Ward Gethin Archer, 10 Tuesday Market Place, King's Lynn, PE30 1JT
  • Telephone: 01553 660033
  • Email: sarah.scott@wardgethinarcher.co.uk

If Sarah Scott is on holiday, or unable to deal with your complaint promptly, it will be passed to Anna Hall.

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:

    • 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.

    4. We will invite you to meet Sarah Scott (or Anna Hall) 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:

    • Sarah Scott (or Anna Hall) 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.

    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.

#askWGA

We are here to help, giving you clear and practical legal advice when you need it.

Got a question?
Contact us and one of our experts will get back to you as soon as possible.

Offices and phone lines are open:
Monday to Friday:   8:45am - 5:00pm

Please read our privacy policy to see how we use your data.

Can’t find what you’re looking for?     Browse our A-Z of Legal Services