Haworth Brotherton Solicitors
lawyers in thornton cleveleys

Complaints

Complaints Procedure

Our Complaints Policy

We are committed to providing a high quality legal service to our clients.  When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it.  This will help us improve our standards

Our complaints procedure

If you have a complaint, please contact the solicitor that has been dealing with your matter, or their supervising Partner. These details will be on your original engagement letter. We are happy to deal with your complaint by phone in the first instance, or by letter or email, as you prefer.

What will happen next?

  1. If the matter cannot be resolved after a conversation or initial correspondence, you may progress your complaint to our Client Care Partner – Andrew Brotherton.

  2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a separate file for your complaint.

  3. A letter will be sent to you acknowledging your complaint within 5 workings days. We will tell you how long it will take us to investigate your complaint. This is normally takes around three to four weeks, but it could be less or more (either due to the circumstances of your complaint, illness or holidays). In any event this should never be more than eight weeks after acknowledging receipt of your complaint.

  4. Your complaint will be investigated.  This will normally involve the following steps:-

    ·        We will review your file and if necessary talk to the person dealing with your case.

    ·        We will send you the result of our investigation by post or email. 

    ·        We may invite you to a meeting to discuss your complaint and hopefully resolve it.

    ·        We will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions we have agreed with you.

  5. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you should contact us again.  We will then arrange to review our decision.  This will happen in one of the following ways:-

     ·        Another partner in the firm will review the Client Care Partner’s decision within ten days.

     ·        We will invite you to agree to independent mediation within five days.  We will let you know how long this process will take.

  6. If we are unable to resolve your complaint you have the right to refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, an independent and impartial body.  The Legal Ombudsman contact details are:

                 Legal Ombudsman
                PO Box 6167
                Slough SL1 0EH

                Telephone: 0300 555 0333

                Email address: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
                Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

    The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within six years of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within three years 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.

    However, please note that from 1st April 2023 these time limits are changing. From the 1st April the Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within a year of the date of act or omission about which you are concerned or within a year of you realising there was a concern. The requirement to refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you remains the same.

  7. The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour.  Examples include dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic.

You can raise your concerns with the https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor