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.
If you have a complaint, please contact the person nominated to deal with such matters named in the Client Care Letter sent to you at the outset of your matter. Failing that, please contact our Managing Director, Samantha Woods based at our Crawley Office 18 Brighton Road, Crawley, West Sussex RH10 6AA (Tel: 01293 526031). You will need to write to her and she will liaise with the person in charge of the department involved in your complaint.
What will happen next? (i) 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 7 working days of us receiving your complaint.
(ii) We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint. We will do this within 5 working days of receiving your complaint.
(iii) We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps: We may ask the member of staff who acted for you to comment on your complaint within 5 days. We may examine their reply and the information in your complaint file. We may then ask them for more information. This will take up to 3 days from receiving their reply.
(iv) We may invite you to meet our Managing Director to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. We will normally do this within 21 days of receiving your complaint. Alternatively, we may send you a detailed reply to your complaint. We will normally do this within 21 days of receiving your complaint.
vi) At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again. We will then arrange for someone in the Firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it. They will do this within 10 working days. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint and 8 weeks has passed since your complaint was submitted to Ms Woods, you may refer the matter to the Legal Ombudsman at:
Complaints to the Legal Ombudsman have to be made to them within 1 year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned, or within one year of you becoming aware that there may be an issue. The requirement to refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of our final response to you remains the same.
If your complaint is because you feel we have not been truthful with you, stolen from you, shut down without telling you or broken the SRA rules (which can be found on their website) then you will need to direct your complaint to the SRA (rather than the Legal Ombudsman). A report form can be accessed on their website (www.sra.org.uk) or you can contact them on 0370 606 2555 or by email at contactcentre@sra.org.uk. Their address is The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham 47. Alternative complaints bodies such as Promediate http://www.promediate.co.uk/ 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 time-scales above, we will let you know and explain why.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. Read our Cookie Policy
