Complaints Procedure
If you have a complaint with regards to any of our services, please contact Ron Thompson (Director & Supervising Solicitor) at ron@havensolicitors.co.uk, or by telephone on 07525817513.
However, if the complaint is in connections with a Conveyancing matter please contact Daniel Bates in the first instance, Danie is the Head of Conveyancing at the practice. You can contact Daniel Bates at daniel@paragonlegals.co.uk.
Kevin Hughes, the Firms COLP/COFA will also be involved in the investigation all complaints. Kevin van be contacted via email at kevin@havensolicitors.co.uk
We take complaints very seriously as we strive to provide a quality legal service but only by better understanding what has gone wrong can we hope to maintain our standards so if you have any complaint please let us know.
What happens next?
1 We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint. This may ask you to confirm or explain the details as set out in that letter. You can expect to receive our acknowledgment within ten working days of us receiving your complaint.
2 We will record your complaint separately from your matter and it will be filed separately.
3 We will acknowledge your reply to our acknowledgement letter (if appropriate) and confirm what will happen next. You can expect to hear from us within ten working days of us receiving your reply. We may have further questions as a result of your reply, but we will always attempt to respond to your communications within ten working days.
4 We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps:
- we may ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint usually within thirty working days of the letter sent in point 3 above.
- If Daniel Bates acted for you, Ronald Thompson will consider your complaint. He will send you his detailed reply.
- we may examine the reply and the information in your complaint file. We may then ask for more information. This will take up to thirty days from receiving the reply and the file. If the matter is particularly complex, it may take longer but we will advise you of this.
- If the matter is complex, involves multiple matters or entails reviewing multiple folders or files, we will advise you of the estimated time that it will take to investigate your complaint. There may be multiple requests of you throughout this investigation for clarification or information.
- We may invite you to meet Daniel or Ronald with Kevin, to discuss and, it is hoped, resolve your complaint.
6 Within ten working days of any meeting, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any suggestions we have agreed with you. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within ten working days of us completing the investigation.
7 At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again. We may then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:
- Ronald Thompson will review the initial decision within ten working days. In the event that Ronald Thompson dealt with the initial compliant, this may be passed to another person to review the initial decision.
- we will invite you to agree to independent mediation. We will let you know how long this process will take.
8 We will let you know the result of the review within ten working days of the end of the review. At this time, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Legal Ombudsman at P O Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ about your complaint. Any complaint to the Legal Complaints Service must usually be made within six months of the date of our final decision on your complaint but for further information, you should contact the Legal Ombudsman. If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.
9 In addition to those steps referred to above, any complainant still has the right to make a complaint to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. The complaint can be submitted to the SRA in writing to :
Report Team
The Cube
199 Wharfside Street
Birmingham
B1 1RN
DX 720293 BIRMINGHAM 47
report@sra.org.uk