Complaints Procedure
At Askews Solicitors, we are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it. We see a complaint as an opportunity for improvement in client care rather than as a personal attack on the firm. All complaints are addressed in an equitable, objective and unbiased manner through our complaints management process. This process will help us to improve our standards.
Our Complaints Procedure
If you have a complaint, please contact Mr Kieron Doran, our Client Care Director. You can contact him at our Middlesbrough office.
The Client Care Director will pass your complaint to the director or senior member of staff in charge of the department involved in your complaint.
What will Happen Next?
We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and possibly 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. We will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days of our receiving the complaint. If we feel that we require further information to deal with your complaint properly, we will ask for that further information at this point.
We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint. We will do this within three working days of receiving your complaint.
We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps.
- We may ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 7 days.
- We may examine the file and the Client Care Director (or if more appropriate another director in the firm) will send to you a detailed reply to your complaint within 21 days of our letter in which we acknowledge receipt of your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter.
At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:
- We will arrange for someone in the firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it. They will do this 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. We will let you know how long this process will take.
We will let you know the result of the review within five days of the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. Please note that if you are not satisfied with the outcome of your complaint you can contact the Legal Ombudsman, an independent organisation with powers to resolve complaints about legal services when issues have not been resolved between an individual and their lawyer, their details being as follows:-
Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EH
Website: https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Switchboard: 0300 555 0333
International: +44 121 245 3050
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.
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain way.
What to do if you are unhappy with our behaviour
The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help 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.
Visit www.sra.org.uk to see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.