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Complaints

COMPLAINTS POLICY

CLIENT COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

Our complaints policy

We 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 enable us to look into the matter and do our best to resolve things satisfactorily. It will also help us to improve our standards.

Our complaints procedure

If you have a complaint, please contact Mahir Gul, our Complaints Manager. You can write to him at Pace Solicitors, Gor-Ray House, 758 Great Cambridge Rd, Enfield, EN1 3GN. Alternatively he can emailed on mgul@pacesolcitors.com. If we have to change any of the people responsible or any of the timescales set out below, we will let you know and explain why.

What will happen next?

1. Upon receipt of your complaint, we will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint. Within three days of receiving your complaint, we will send you a letter or email acknowledging your complaint and confirming the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint. We may also ask you to kindly clarify any unclear details and where necessary, provide further information. If it seems appropriate, we may suggest a meeting at this early stage.

2. We will then proceed to investigate your complaint further by examining any associated client matter you have with us and where appropriate, speaking with anyone who might be able to assist with our investigation.

3. If appropriate (and you have not already done so), we will then invite you to meet our complaints manager (or the person dealing with your complaint) to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. We would hope to be in a position to meet with you in this way no longer than 14 days after first receiving your complaint. If you would prefer not to meet, or if we cannot arrange this meeting within a reasonable timescale, we will write to you setting out our views on the situation and any redress that we feel to be appropriate.

4. If a meeting does take place, then within three days of the meeting, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any suggestions or actions that we have agreed with you. Our letter will also set out our views on the complaint and any redress that we feel to be appropriate.

5. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, please let us know. We will then arrange to review our decision. We will aim to do this within ten further days, and this review will usually happen in one of the following ways.

• The Complaint Manager (or person in charge of your complaint) will review their own decision.
• We will arrange for someone in the firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it.

6. Once our review has been completed, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.

The Legal Ombudsman provides that once you have made a complaint, we have up to eight weeks to respond to you. If you are not happy with our final response, or we have not responded within the eight weeks, you can then ask the LeO to look into the complaint for you.

Generally, you can ask the LeO to look at your complaint if you are referring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within either:

• One year of the problem happening or one year from when you found out about it; and

• You are referring your complaint within six months of our final response.

If your complaint does not meet these time limits, the LeO may not be able to investigate it. A final response is when we have nothing further to say about your complaint and or we tell you that if you are still unhappy, you can proceed to contact the Legal Ombudsman in accordance with the deadlines set out above. The details are: 

Legal Ombudsman, PO BOX 6806, Wolverhampton, WVl 9WJ. Tel. No: 0300 555 0333. E mail: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk. Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

The Solicitors Regulation Authority

In the highly unlikely event that you need to make a complaint, and your complaint is not about our service, but is about our conduct, the SRA (Solicitors Regulation Authority) deals with conduct issues rather than the Legal Ombudsman which deals with service issues.

The contact details of the Solicitors Regulation Authority are as follows:

Website: www.sra.org.uk
Telephone, 0370 606 2555
Address: Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham B1 1RN
email: report@sra.org.uk