Our Complaints policy
We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need our clients to tell us about it to help improve our standards. Whenever possible, please raise any initial client care problems with the person acting on your case to give them the opportunity of resolving matters with you. Often, matters can be quickly resolved in this way.
Our Complaints procedure
If you have a complaint about our service, or our bill/fees, contact our Complaints Manager, Richard Pinning with the details. You can do this by writing to him at our offices, by email at Richard.Pinning@cbtcsolicitors.co.uk or by telephone 0121 553 2576. If your complaint is against Mr Pinning, it will be investigated by another senior member of the firm.
What will happen next?
- We will send you a letter or email 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 five working days of us receiving your Complaint.
- We will pass your Complaint to our Complaints Manager, who will record your Complaint in our central register.
- They will then start to investigate your Complaint. This will normally involve reviewing your file and discussing your Complaint to the member of staff who acted for you and/or their immediate supervisor, if appropriate.
- We will send you a detailed written reply to your Complaint, including our suggestions for resolving the matter. We aim to send this to you within 15 working days of sending you the initial acknowledgement letter.
- At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you should contact us again. We will ask another senior member of the firm to review the Complaint and the Complaint Manager’s suggestions for settlement.
- We will let you know the result of the review within ten working days from the date of receiving your review request. We will write to you confirming our final position on your Complaint and explaining our reasons.
- If we need to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why. In any event the process will not take longer than eight weeks.
The Legal Ombudsman
If you are still not satisfied with our handling of your Complaint, or we have failed to respond to your Complaint within 8 weeks, you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the Complaint. We would hope that this does not become necessary and that we can resolve matters between ourselves. Contact details are as follows:
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EHW
0300 555 0333
enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
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.
Complaints about your bill/our fees
The procedure above also applies to Complaints arising concerning our fees. There may also be a right to object to the bill by applying to the Court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974; The Legal Ombudsman may not consider a Complaint about a bill if you have applied to the Court for assessment of that bill.
Raising concerns with our regulator
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) 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. Further information is available at www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.