Complaints handling policy and procedure

Complaints Handling Policy and Procedure

1. 1. Our Complaints Policy

   SAS Daniels LLP is fully committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all of our clients. However, if you are concerned with the service you have received or something goes wrong please do tell us about it. This will help us to address your concerns and to improve our standards.

2. 2. Our Complaints Procedure

   If you are not happy you may want to complain and we will try to resolve your complaint quickly, fairly, confidentially and impartially.

   1. In the first instance, please consider contacting the solicitor with whom you have been dealing to see whether your concerns can be resolved quickly and informally.
   2. If this is not possible or you feel the matter is serious and/or not suited to informal resolution, please put your complaint in writing and address it to Justine Clowes who is the Compliance and Client Care Partner at SAS Daniels. Her postal address for correspondence is Churchill Chambers, Churchill Way, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 6AY. Her email address is justine.clowes@sasdaniels.co.uk. She will then speak to the Group Head who has overall responsibility for the type of work you asked us to help you with. The first response to your complaint will be sent to you by the Team Head. If your complaint is about the Team Head, then your complaint should still be addressed to Justine Clowes who will then allocate the matter to another Partner within the relevant team.
   3. Please help us by ensuring that you set out your complaint as fully as possible so that we know how to direct our investigation. This will speed up the process and help us to provide a response as quickly as possible. Please also let us know what kind of remedy you are seeking from us. Depending upon the circumstances, these might include any of the following:
      1. An apology
      2. Fixing the problem
      3. Improving our service
      4. Offering to meet and explain the service being provided
      5. Offering compensation
      6. Offering to carry out work free of charge

3. 3. What will happen next?

   1. We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within 3 working days of receiving it. We will enclose a copy of this procedure if you have not already received a copy.
   2. Within 7 days of receiving your complaint we will write to you to confirm who will be dealing with your complaint, we will set out our understanding of it and detail any further information we may need from you in order to fully investigate your complaint. We will ask you to provide this information within a specified time frame.
   3. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a specific file for it.
   4. Once we have received all of the information requested from you, we will write to you within 5 working days to acknowledge your reply and to confirm that we are commencing our investigation. Normally this would involve us obtaining a report from the solicitor who has been acting for you; considering that report; reviewing the file and pursuing any further investigations which may be relevant. We would normally expect that the investigation process would take up to 15 working days. If it seems appropriate we will suggest a meeting at this stage in order to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint.
   5. If we do not invite you to a meeting we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within 5 working days of us completing our investigations.
   6. If you are dissatisfied with our decision, you can ask us to review it. Any request for a review should be made in writing and should set out clearly why you believe the initial decision was wrong. Any request for a review should be made within 10 working days of the date upon which we write to you with our decision.
   7. Any review will be dealt with by Justine Clowes as Compliance and Client Care Partner unless she made the original decision. In such a case the review will be undertaken by another senior member of the firm who has had no previous dealings with the matter. A review would normally be completed within 10-15 working days of receiving your request and we will then write to you with our final decision within 5 working days of completing the review.
   8. If you are still dissatisfied, you may be entitled to complain to the Legal Ombudsman about our service. This service is not available to all clients however such as large businesses.  The Ombudsman would generally expect clients to follow a firm’s internal complaints procedure first. You can find further information about the Ombudsman on the website www.legalombudsman.org.uk. You can write to the Ombudsman at Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH or by email on enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk or call on 0300 555 0333. If you wish to raise a complaint with the Ombudsman then you should not delay bringing it to their attention once our own complaints process has concluded as there are some time limits on when this must be done. For example, normally you must raise a complaint with the Ombudsman within six months of the firm’s own final decision on how to resolve your complaint. In addition, the Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within:Until 1st April 2023, under the current rules, complaints must normally be made:
      • no later than six years from the act/omission; or
      • three years from when the complainant should have reasonably known there was cause for complaint.

      After 1st April 2023, complaints must normally be made:

      • one year from the date of the act or omission being complained about; or
      • one year from the date when the complainant should have realised that there was cause for complaint
   9. In some situations (usually due to the absence from the office of the persons referred to in this procedure) we may have to change some of the time scales set out above and if this is necessary we will ensure that you are informed in writing and told why