Complaints Policy and Procedure
If you have any queries or concerns, then you should in the first instance either phone or write to the Solicitor or member of the team who is working on your case, with details of your complaint, to see if matters can be resolved quickly. If you remain dissatisfied, then we would request that you contact Mr A Sriharan who is our Complaints Manager, with the details of your complaint.
Mr A Sriharan will acknowledge your complaint within seven days of receiving it.
Your complaint will be recorded in a central register for monitoring and management information purposes and a separate file will also be opened for the complaint. Mr Sriharan will then fully investigate your complaint and request you to meet him and discuss and resolve the complaint amicably with potential solutions. In case you do not wish to attend the meeting, Mr Sriharan will prepare a full report and send it to you in writing within 4 weeks inviting you to accept his report which will include his suggestions to resolve this matter to your satisfaction. He will do this within seven days after your meeting or after your indication not to attend the meeting.
At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again with your reasons and a review will be arranged. Another partner of the firm will review Mr A Sriharan’s report within ten days.
We will let you know the result of the review within five days from the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
If we have to change any of the time scales above, depending on the complexity of the complaint, we will let you know and explain why.
If you are still not satisfied with the suggested solution(s) within eight weeks of your complaint being known to us, and you are still unhappy then you have a right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) at the conclusion of our complaints process.
The Legal Ombudsman now 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 LeO can be contacted at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
Address: PO Box 6167,Slough, SL1 0EH
You can access https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/make-a-complaint/
If the Legal Ombudsman thinks your case involves a breach of our Principles, they will refer your case to the SRA. Likewise, if you report a solicitor for poor service to the SRA, the SRA will refer you to the Legal Ombudsman.
The SRA do not have the power to award compensation for poor service, or to reduce or refund your legal fees. However, you should report the matter directly to the SRA if you think a firm or anyone regulated by the SRA has breached an SRA Principle. Reports can be made through the SRA website at https://www.sra.org.uk