Complaints Procedure
OUR COMPLAINTS POLICY
We are committed to providing high-quality legal service to all of our clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our service and standards.
OUR COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE
We aim to resolve any complaint you have about our service as quickly as possible. If you are unable to reach a satisfactory resolution with the Fee Earner who has conduct of your matter then please contact Vishal Sharma, our Partner using the contact details below. If we have to change any of the responsibilities or the timescales set out below, we will let you know and explain why.
Suite D, 224 Regency Court, Upper Fifth Street, Milton Keynes MK9 2HR Tel: 01908 909910. E-Mail: vishal.sharma@goughthorne.com
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?
1. Within 7 days we will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain any details. If your issues of complaint have not been specified, we will ask you for clarification.
2. We will then record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint. We will also investigate your complaint by examining the relevant file.
3. Once we have received all relevant information, we will undertake a full review of your file and discuss your complaint with the acting Fee Earner or Partner.
4. The latest date which a complete answer will be given to your complaint will be no more than 35 days after we have received your complaint.
5. If appropriate and at our discretion, we may then invite you to meet us to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint.
6. In the alternative we may write to you with our findings without a meeting.
7. The assessment of your complaint will be based upon a thorough and fair investigation. We will explain in writing our findings and where the complaint is upheld, we will offer remedial action or redress promptly.
8. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, please let us know. We will then arrange to review our decision. We would
generally aim to do this within 10 working days. 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; or
• We may invite you to agree to independent mediation. We will let you know how long this process will take.
9. We will let you know the result of the review within 35 days of receiving your appeal. At this time, we will write to you confirming our final position explaining our reasons. We will also give you the name and address of the Legal Ombudsman. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact them about your complaint. We very much hope that this will not be necessary.
10. In the event that the nature of the complaint(s) is found to be such that the continued relationship of lawyer and client is untenable then we shall write to you to explain such and invite you to take over the conduct of your matter or pass it to another lawyer of your choosing. That does not of course mean that we will not deal with your complaint but to make this decision there would have been a review of the matter by at least two senior personnel. If you are not content with the findings you may then contact the Legal Ombudsman. Their address is: –
PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ Tel: 0300 555 0333 E-Mail: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk www.officeforlegalcomplaints.org.uk www.legalombudsman.org.uk
11. Unless it is agreed there are good reasons not to do so, the Legal Ombudsman will expect you to allow us to consider and respond to your complaint in accordance with the procedure set out above before they will consider it. You can refer your complaint up to 6 months after you have received our final written response to your complaint. You can also use the Ombudsman service if we have not resolved your complaint within 8 weeks of receiving it. A complaint can be referred to the Legal Ombudsman up to six years from the date or act or omission or up to 3 years after discovering the problem. The Ombudsman deals with service-related complaints; any conduct-related complaints will be referred to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
12. Gough Thorne is committed to the application of Outcomes Focused Regulation and the principles of Treating Customers Fairly in accordance with, respectively, the requirements of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).