Legal complaints

Complaints policy

We are committed to providing a high quality legal service to all of our clients. When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it and this will help us to improve our standards.  

You must first of all try to resolve the issue with the fee earner in charge of your case. We often find that a proper conversation about issues can resolve matters early. However, if that has not proved successful, please follow the process below which sets out procedure and also your ultimate remedies if you still remain dissatisfied.

OUR COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

If you have a complaint, please contact David White who is our Client Care Partner. You can contact him at the Hoddesdon office. The address of that office is Rathmore House, 56 High Street, Hoddesdon, Herts EN11 8EX Telephone (01992) 442911 

David White will supervise the handling of the complaint.

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What will happen next?

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1. 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 the complaint. This may not be Mr White. You can expect to receive our letter within 7 days of receiving your complaint.

2. We will record your complaint in our Central Register and then record in our Complaints File a dossier or file for your complaint and we will do this within 7 days of receiving your complaint.

3. We will then start to investigate your complaint and this may involve one or more of the following steps:-
   3.1 We may ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 14 days.
   3.2 We may examine their reply and the information in your complaint file or dossier. We may then ask them for more information. This will take up to 7 days from receiving their reply and the file.

4. If it is still unresolved we may invite you to meet one of the senior members of the practice to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. We will do this within 10 days of receiving all the details we need from the member of staff who acted for you.

5. Within 7 days of a 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 if it is not possible or if the complaint can satisfactorily be dealt with in correspondence, we will be sending you a reply to your complaint and this will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within 7 days of us completing our investigation.

6. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will be carried out by another senior member of our firm or someone else in the firm at a senior level.  

7. If appropriate, we will then let you know the result of the review within 7 days of the end of it. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.

8. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact:
   Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 15870, Birmingham B30 9EB

Any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within 6 months of the date of our final written response on your complaint but for further information, you should contact the Legal Ombudsman on (0300) 555 0333 or at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk.

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If we have to change any of the timescales above we will let you know and explain why.

You also have the right to object to our bill by contacting the Legal Ombudsman and/or applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.

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The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help if you are concerned about our behaviour. Please visit their website to see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.