Complaints Handling Procedure

1. Complaints policy 

1.1 We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service and dealing with all our clients fairly.  When you are not completely satisfied with the service you receive, we need you to tell us about it so we can promptly and fairly address the issue. This will help us to improve our standards.  

2. What is a complaint?

2.1 We regard a complaint as any communication from you that you are in any way dissatisfied with the service you have received.

3. What it the cost of dealing with a complaint?

3.1 There is no charge to you for any work undertaken investigating and dealing with your complaint

4. Complaints Procedure

4.1 If you have a complaint, you are always welcome to raise the matter informally with the person dealing with your matter. Where you wish to raise a complaint more formally then contact our Client Care Manager, Julianne Hamling. This can be done by letter, email or telephone – julianne.hamling@hpjv.co.uk

4.2 To help us understand your complaint please tell us. 

I. Your full name and contact details. 

II. What you think has gone wrong

III. What you hope to achieve as a result of your complaint 

5. Your complaint will be acknowledged within 3 days of receipt by us and recorded on a central register with the firm. 

6. Your complaint will be dealt  by Julianne Hamling, Client Care Manager, but we reserve the right to ask a third party to deal with the complaint. 

7. We will investigate your complaint which normally involves:

I. Asking the member of staff who acted for you to respond and  examining their reply

II. Reviewing your complaint 

III. Reviewing your files(s) 

IV. Meeting with the person who dealt with your matter. 

8. We may need to ask you for further clarification/information/documents, if so, we will ask you to provide the information within a specific period of time.

9. We will write to you at the end of our investigation to tell you what we have done and what we propose to do to resolve your complaint.  Where possible we aim to do this within 28 days after we have sent our initial acknowledgement.  If we require more time to fully respond or to gather further information, we will write to you to let you know. 

10. At this stage if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for a Director of the firm to review matters.

11. If we are unable to resolve your complaint within eight weeks of the complaint being made then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with lawyers.

12. 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 from when you should reasonably have known there was cause to complain.  It is a requirement that you have raised a complaint with us and allowed us 8 weeks to deal with your complaint.  If you are not satisfied with our reply after 8 weeks has expired, you can refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you.

You can contract the Legal Ombudsman at:

Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Phone: 0300 555 0333 between 8.30am – 5.30pm

Calls to 03 numbers will cost no more than calls to national geographic numbers (starting 01 or 02) from both mobiles and landlines.

Calls are recorded and may be used for training and monitoring purposes.

For minicom call 0300 555 1777

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Post: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough. SL1 0EH

13. The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, losing your money or treating you unfairly. You can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority. https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor

14. Alternative complaints bodies (such as Ombudsman Services; www.ombudsman-services.org) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme. We have, however, chosen not to adopt an ADR process. If, therefore, you wish to complain further, you should contact the Legal Ombudsman.