COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

Our complaints policy

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

Our complaints procedure

If you have a complaint contact us with the details.

What will happen next?

1. We will send you a letter of acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or provide details of your complaint. 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 five working days of us receiving your complaint.

2. We will record your complaint in our central register and, if we feel appropriate, open a separate file for your complaint. We will do this within 5 working days of receiving details of your complaint.

3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps.

• We will pass your complaint to John Petrou, our Client Care partner in this instance, within 5 days.

• He will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 5 working days of this.

• 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 five working days from receiving their reply and the file.

4. John Petrou may then invite you to a meeting and discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. He will do this within 5 working days.

5. Within 5 working days of any meeting John Petrou will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions he has agreed with you. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, John Petrou will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include his suggestions for resolving the matter. He will do this within 5 working days of completing the investigation.

6. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways.

• Another partner of the firm will review the decision within 10 working days.

• We will ask our local Law Society or another local firm of solicitors to review your complaint within 10 working days. We will let you know how long this process will take.

• We will invite you to agree to the independent mediation within 10 working days. We will let you know how long this process will take.

• We will let you know the result of the review within 5 working 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. If you are not satisfied with the final response, you may refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman . The Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within six months of our final letter The Legal Ombudsman will usually only consider a complaint if our internal complaints procedure has been exhausted within the last six months.

The Legal Ombudsman’s contact details are as follows: Telephone: 0300 555 0333 Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk Address: Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6806 Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ

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