Pothecary Witham Weld incorporating Haslam & Payne Solicitors is committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.
Our Complaints Handling Procedure
If you are a client of the firm and have a concern or a complaint, please contact our Practice Manager, Lucy Donnelly, as soon as you are aware of the problem, so this can be addressed. Lucy can be contacted on 020 7821 8211, by email or by post at 84 Eccleston Square, London SW1V 1PX. You will not be charged by us for investigating your concern or complaint.
What Will Happen Next?
- We will send you a letter or email acknowledging receipt of your complaint within three working days of your raising your concerns, enclosing a copy of this procedure. We will also let you know the name of the partner nominated to investigate your complaint.
- We will then record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint. We will then investigate your complaint by examining the relevant file and speaking to the member of staff who acted for you.
- If appropriate we will then invite you to meet the investigating partner to discuss and, it is hoped, resolve your complaint. We would hope to be able to meet with you in this way no longer than 14 days after receiving your complaint. If you would prefer not to meet, or if we cannot arrange this within an agreeable timescale, the investigating partner will write to you fully setting out his/her views on the situation and any redress that we would feel to be appropriate. S/he will endeavour to do so within 14 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
- Within three working days of the meeting, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions that have been agreed with you.
- At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again within 14 working days of receipt of our letter to explain why you remain unhappy with our response and we will review your comments.
Depending on the matter we may at this stage arrange for another partner to review the decision. - We will write to you within 10 days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
- We have eight weeks to consider your complaint. If we have not resolved it within this time and you are still unhappy you may complain to the Legal Ombudsman and ask them to look into your complaint. You can contact the Legal Ombudsman by:
• Post: PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ
• Telephone: 0300 555 0333 between 9am to 5pm
• Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk - The Legal Ombudsman deals with complaints by consumers and very small businesses. This means some clients may not have the right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman, e.g. charities or clubs with an annual income of more than £1 million, trustees of trusts with asset value of more than £1 million and most businesses (unless they employ no more than nine full-time staff, have an annual turnover in excess of €2 million, or a balance sheet total in excess of €2 million.). This does not prevent you from making a complaint directly to us about the service you have received or about the bill.
- You must usually refer your complaint to the Ombudsman within six months of our final written response to your complaint and no more than one year from the date of the act or omission about which you are complaining occurring (or no more than one year of you becoming aware of it).
The Legal Ombudsman has the ability to allow an Ombudsman to exercise discretion to extend the one year time limit for specific clients if, on the evidence, it is fair and reasonable to do so.
Further details can be found on the website of the Legal Ombudsman. - The Solicitors Regulation Authority can also 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.
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and
explain why.