Complaints procedure

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 your complaint.  You can expect to receive our letter within four days of us receiving your complaint.
2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a separate file for your complaint. We will do this within two days of receiving your complaint.
3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps:

• • We will pass your complaint to Mr. Arya Roe, who is responsible for Client Care, within three days.
  • If Mr. Roe is not available or the complaint is about him then another partner will be allocated responsibility for this.
  • He will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 7 days.
  • He will then examine their reply and the information in your complaint file and, if necessary, he may also speak to them. This will take up to seven days from receiving their reply and the file.

8. The Partner dealing with the matter will then invite you to a meeting and discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. He will do this within a further three days.  He may choose to write to you instead if he considers the specific complaint merits this.
9. Within two days of the meeting Mr. Roe will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions he has agreed with you.
10. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, Mr. Roe will send you a detailed reply to your complaint.  This will include his suggestions for resolving the matter.  He will do this within seven days of completing the investigation.
11. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you may contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision.  This will happen in one of the following ways:
    • Another member of this firm will review Mr. Roe’s decision within 10 days.
    • We will ask our local Law Society or another local firm of solicitors to review your complaint within five days. We will let you know how long this process will take.
    • We will invite you to agree to independent mediation within five days. We will let you know how long this process will take.
12. We will let you know the result of the review within 5 days of the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
13. If you are still not satisfied 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:
    • Telephone: 0300 555 0333
    • Email on enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
    • Post: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167,Slough, SL1 0EH
14. Furthermore, The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. You can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority on their website at sra.org.uk
15. If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.

This procedure was last reviewed on 1^st July 2024.

(1) If the complaint is about Arya Roe or a file he has dealt with then it will be dealt with by Robert Thornton Smith (reference is this procedure to Arya Roe will in those circumstances be to Robert Thornton Smith).