Our Firm’s Complaints Procedure
D J Webb & Co is committed to providing a high quality of service and client care to all our clients. For example, we seek to provide clear information about costs, the appropriate ‘legal process’ and the progress of a legal assignment. With good communication we are normally able to ensure increase client satisfaction. Nevertheless, should any dissatisfaction arise, we appreciate that handling complaints effectively is an important part of upholding public trust and confidence in the solicitors’ profession. When dealing with complaints, we aim to be reasonable, fair, proportionate and accessible. Indeed, we shall seek to use any concerns or complaints as a way of improving our service.
We have decided that our complaints procedure (which has always provided to a client on request or in the event of a complaint) should also be set out on our firm’s website for clarity and ease of reference. The procedure is set out below.
Our Complaints Procedure
In the first instance we ask that you raise your concerns with the person at this firm directly handling your matter but if the matter remains unresolved, it will be been passed to the practice’s Complaints Handler, Mr David Webb, who is the Principal of this firm.
Step One: Acknowledging Your Complaint
In the absence of exceptional circumstances, Mr Webb will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint within 2 working days of receiving your complaint. This letter of acknowledgement may also be an opportunity to ask you to clarify our understanding of your concerns and what you would like by way of resolution. It will also explain the next step of the process (by enclosing a copy of this Complaints Procedure), and ask for your communication preference (for example, whether you wish for us to respond by letter or by email).
For the avoidance of doubt, you will not be charged for any legal time spent in processing your complaint. Should you wish to continue to instruct the firm, making a complaint will not in any way adversely affect the professional manner in which we shall seek to thereafter deal with your case.
Step Two: Investigating Your Complaint
Mr Webb will record your complaint in our Central Register, open a file in respect of the matter, and fully investigate your concerns. This may involve one or more of the following steps:
Mr Webb will ask the person dealing with your case to provide him (in writing) with their view of your complaint, together with the complete file relating to your matter. Thereafter, Mr Webb will make an independent assessment and he will send you a detailed written reply and/or invite you to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve the matter. This substantive letter should, in the absence of special circumstances, be sent to you within 14 days of your complaint being received.
If Mr Webb himself acted for you, he will request that Mr Ravi Khosla of this firm should consider your complaint in line with the procedure set out above.
Mr Webb may occasionally ask an independent local solicitor from another firm to investigate your complaint and report to him. However, this will depend upon the individual case. We will then send you the independent solicitor’s written reply and/or invite you to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve your concerns. This substantive letter should, in the absence of special circumstances, be sent to you within 10 working days of your complaint.
We should reiterate that at any stage we would welcome the opportunity to meet with you. Within 2 working days of any meeting, we shall write to you to confirm what took place at that meeting and any solutions we have agreed with you.
Step Three
At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you can write to us again. Mr Webb will then arrange to have the decision reviewed and a written response sent to you within the following 10 working days. This may happen in one of the following ways:
Either Mr Webb will review the decision himself, or
Mr Webb will arrange for someone else in the firm who has not previously been connected with the complaint to review the decision.
We would draw to your attention that if a complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction within 8 weeks of our firm receiving a complaint, you have the right to pursue your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman (see the contact details and time frame for contacting the Legal Ombudsman below).
Step Four
There may come a point (either within, or outside, the 8-week period mentioned above) where we are satisfied that we have fully considered the complaint but where an individual still feels aggrieved. Should this be the case we shall issue a letter summarising the complaint, how it was handled and why we consider our ‘internal’ complaints procedure to be at an end. However, that letter will also include a statement confirming that we will be happy to consider any further correspondence from you which provides new evidence or raises new areas of complaint not previously considered. (If further evidence or areas of complaint are raised, we will assess this information and consider appropriate action.)
At this stage we shall also again remind you of your right to raise your concerns with the Office of the Legal Ombudsman, who will consider the complaint independently. This is the ‘external’ complaints procedure. We shall again provide the contact details of the Legal Ombudsman which are found both on our website and at in our Terms and Conditions of Business. For the record, the contact details are:
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website address: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
Address: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH
In our letter we shall also remind you that the Legal Ombudsman’s usual time limits for accepting a complaint are as follows:
It is being made within 6 months of receiving a final response from our firm to your complaint; and
It is being made no more than 1 year from the date of act/omission which is the subject of the complaint, (in other words, within 1 year of the problem happening): or
It is being made no more than 1 year from when you should reasonably have known there was a cause for a complaint (if the problem happened more than a year ago).
Alternative complaints bodies (such as ProMediate) also exist and are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both parties to the dispute consent to use such a scheme. However, our view is that the Legal Ombudsman would be the appropriate choice.
Reporting Concerns and Complaints to the Solicitors Regulation Authority
The Legal Ombudsman can help you if you are unhappy about poor service such as for example, poor communication, failure to satisfactorily provide information about legal costs, or the time taken for work to be done, etc.
On the other hand, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (‘SRA’) can help if you are concerned with matters such as a solicitor’s behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking/losing your money, or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic.
If you have any such concerns, you can raise them with the SRA. Information about how to complain is found in the following websites: