We will consider your complaint and review our procedures.  This will help us to improve our standards.

• If you have a complaint, please first contact the person dealing with your matter to try to resolve any issues through informal discussion.
• If you are still not satisfied then you should write to our Operations Director, Mrs Jayne Schofield with full details of your complaint, heading your letter ‘Formal Complaint.’ Details would include specific actions complained of, people involved, dates, calls/letters/emails.
• We will acknowledge such formal complaint and tell you the name of the person (the Complaint Handler) to whom your complaint has been referred.
• Your complaint will be investigated as soon as possible by the Complaint Handler. The Complaint Handler might ask you for clarification or for further information or detail in order to better understand the complaint and to provide a substantive response.
• When full details of your complaint have been received and considered, the Complaint Handler will send you a written response giving reasons for either accepting or rejecting some or all of your complaint and including any suggestions for resolving the matter.
• If having received our response you are still not satisfied, you can write to us again and we will review.

We estimate that we will:

• acknowledge a formal written complaint within one week of receipt;respond to a complaint within three weeks of receipt of full details;conclude dealing with the complaint within eight weeks.

These estimated timescales are subject to matters beyond our control and your cooperation in the process. If these estimates are not complied with, we will explain why this has occurred.

What to do if we cannot resolve your complaint

The Legal Ombudsman can help you if we are unable to resolve your complaint ourselves. They will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case.

Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your case with us first.  If you have, then you can take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

• 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 have reasonably known there was cause for complaint

For more information about the Legal Ombudsman contact:

Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH

www.legalombudsman.org.uk

enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Telephone: 0300 5550333