COMPLAINTS HANDLING POLICY

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. In the first instance, it may be helpful to contact the person who is working on your case to discuss your concerns. We will do our best to resolve any issues at this stage. Alternatively, please follow our formal complaints procedure.

COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE 

If you have a complaint, please contact us with details. Generally, we attempt to consider your complaint and respond within 4 weeks. In some cases, this may not be possible, in which case we will advise you of the likely timescale and reason for any delay. If we have not resolved it within this time, you may complain to the Legal Ombudsman.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT

1. We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within 5 working days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
2. We will then investigate your complaint. This will involve passing your complaint to our Client care partner, Mrs. Nabeela Arshad, who will review your matter/file and speak to the member of staff who acted for you.
3. We may then invite you to a meeting to discuss and, hopefully, resolve your complaint. If we do so, and within 5 days of the meeting, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions agreed with you. Alternatively, we shall respond to your complaint in writing within 28 days of sending you the acknowledgment letter.
4. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for another partner to review the decision.
5. We will write to you within 14 days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
6. If you are still not satisfied, you can then contact the Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ about your complaint. Normally, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint or within 6 Years of the act or omission about which you are complaining occurring (or, if outside this period, within 3 years of when you should reasonably have been aware it). For further information, you should contact the Legal Ombudsman on 0300 555 0333 or at enquires@legalombudsman.org.uk.

1. COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

We aim to offer all our clients a professional, efficient, and effective service, and we are confident that we will do so in this case. However, if you would like to discuss how the service to you could be improved or should there be any aspect of our service with which you are not satisfied, or about our bill, please raise the matter with the person handling your matter. If you are still not satisfied, you are entitled to make a formal complaint to our Client Care Solicitor, Ms. Nabeela Arshad who is responsible for implementing the firm’s complaint procedure.

Our Complaints Procedure is as follows:

1. We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and perhaps we may need to ask you to confirm or explain the details of it to us. We will give you the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint. The target to respond to the complaint is ten working days from the date of receipt of the complaint. However, we aim to acknowledge the complaint within 2 working days from the date of receipt;

2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint usually on the day that we receive it;

3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve our interviewing the member of staff who acted for you. We may need some time to do this (for example, if they are on leave) and we will try to give you an estimate of the time this will take if it is longer than 10 working days. We shall need to consider the papers and any response from our member of staff;

4. At the end of this time, if convenient to our offices, we may ask you to meet our Client Care Solicitor, to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. Alternatively, the Client Care Solicitor may telephone you to discuss the matter with you personally;

5. If there is a meeting or telephone discussion, we will write a letter to you within 5 working days of it confirming what was agreed;

6. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, we will write to you with a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include any suggestions that we have to resolve the matter;

7. If, for whatever reason you are still not satisfied, you can contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways: (a) the Client Care Solicitor will review their own decision within one week, (b) a different solicitor may be asked to review the complaint. This will be done in 2 weeks;

8. We will let you know the result of the review within 5 working days of the end of the review. At that time, we shall write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. If you are still not satisfied with what we have said we will advise you to contact, at this stage, the Legal Ombudsman at PO Box 6806 Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ, their telephone number is  0300 555 0333 and e-mail is enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk.