Complaints Procedure
Our Complaints Policy
HB 121 Solicitors are 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 Procedure
If you have a complaint please contact Mr Nicholas Hughes, who is the
person responsible for dealing with client care issues. You can contact him
by post at 7 Church Street, Kidderminster, Worcestershire DY10 2AD.
What will happen next?
- We will send you a letter or email acknowledging receipt of your
complaint within five working days of us receiving the complaint,
enclosing a copy of this procedure.
- We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally involve
reviewing your file and speaking to the member of staff who acted
for you. If your complaint relates to a matter where the file has been
closed, we may need to obtain your file from our archive storage
facility, which may take 1 - 2 working days.
- The appropriate Director will send you a detailed reply to your
complaint, including suggestions for resolving the matter, within 15
working days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
- At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again
and we will arrange for a Director who has not had any dealings with
your matter to review the initial decision.
- We will write to you within 10 working days of receiving your request
for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and
explaining our reasons.
- If you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Legal Ombudsman
(LeO) at the Office for Legal Complaints on 0300 555 0333, or by
writing to:
Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0LH
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
The LeO will not normally deal with complaints unless our complaints
procedure has been exhausted and allows us to do this within eight weeks.
The LeO can investigate complaint s up to six years from the date of the
problem happening or within three years of when you found out about the
problem.
A complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must be made:-
- Within six months of receiving our final response to your complaint
- No more than one year from the date of the act or omission being
complained about or;
- No more than one year from the date when you should reasonably
have known that there was cause for complaint.
(Please note the LeO will not handle complaints from large businesses (see
the LeO website
www.legalombudsman.org.uk
Objecting to our bill(s)
You may have the right to object to our bill by applying to the court for an
assessment of the bill under Part Ill of the Solicitors Act 1974.
Non-payment of our bill(s)
You should be aware that the firm may be entitled to charge interest if all
or part of our bill(s) remains unpaid.
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and
explain why.
