Our complaints policy

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients.  If something goes wrong, we encourage you to tell us about it.  This will help us to improve our standards.

If you have a concern or a complaint, about our service or the fees we have charged, please contact us with the details. Please first raise your concerns with your solicitor. We find that very often, concerns raised in this way can be quickly resolved. If however it is not possible to resolve your concern, please refer it to our client care officer.

1. We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within seven days of receiving it, and letting you know the name of the person who will be dealing with it.
2. Your complaint will then be investigated. The investigation will usually be carried out by our client care officer, Lesley Curtis (or in her absence another Director), who will review your file and speak to the person who has been acting for you.
3. If it seems appropriate, Lesley Curtis will then telephone you for a discussion, and/or invite you to a meeting, which we hope will resolve your complaint. She will normally do this within 21 days of acknowledging receipt. Sometimes complaints can be resolved without the need for a meeting.
4. Within seven days of the telephone call or meeting, Lesley Curtis will write to you to confirm what took place, including a reply to your complaint, with her suggestions for resolving the matter and any solutions she has agreed with you.
5. Alternative complaint bodies such as ProMediate (www.promediate.co.uk) exist to deal with complaints about legal services, and this may be appropriate should both you and our Firm wish to use such a scheme.

Sometimes it will be necessary to vary the timescales above to make sure that we deal with your complaint properly. If we need to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.

If you are still not satisfied, you have the right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman Service, which is ultimately responsible for ensuring that complaints are dealt with appropriately. Normally the Legal Ombudsman expects you to give us 8 weeks to try to resolve the matter. If after 8 weeks your complaint has not been resolved, you can then refer it to the ombudsman. If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, then you can refer the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, but you should do so within six months of the response to your complaint. For more information on how the Legal Ombudsman works visit www.legalombudsman.org.uk or call 0300 555 0333. The postal address is PO Box 6806,Wolverhampton,WV1 9WJ

There are also other time limits applying to complaints to the ombudsman. If you are unsure about what timescale applies you should contact the Legal Ombudsman. Ordinarily the act or omission giving rise to the complaint can be referred to the Legal Ombudsman within one year from the date of the act or omission being complained about or one year from the date when the complainant should have realised that there was cause for complaint.