Shentons’ Complaints Policy for clients
We are committed to providing a high-quality service to all our clients and prospective clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards. This policy is available on our website or upon request.
A complaint is defined as an oral or written expression of dissatisfaction which alleges that the complainant has suffered (or may suffer) financial loss, distress, inconvenience or other detriment.
We aim to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction (or otherwise issue our full response) within 8 weeks of you making the complaint.
Our complaints procedure
If you are unhappy with any aspect of how your matter is being handled, please speak promptly to the person who is dealing with it: we find that concerns can often be resolved quickly and easily this way. However, if you remain dissatisfied, please contact us with full details so that this may be investigated. We would like complaints to be in writing either by letter, addressed to Chloe Jay, our Client Care Partner, at Star Lane House, Staple Gardens, Winchester SO23 9AD or email to cjay@shentons.co.uk. If you cannot put your complaint in writing, please telephone Chloe Jay on 01962 844544. She will discuss your complaint with those involved and reply to you.
What will happen next?
- We hope it is obvious, but we confirm we will not charge you for dealing with your complaint.
- We will send you a letter/email acknowledging your complaint and we may ask you to confirm or explain the details set out. We will also confirm that Chloe Jay will be dealing with your complaint unless it is more appropriate that another partner handle the matter. You can expect to receive our letter/email within three working days of us receiving your complaint.
- We will record your complaint on our central registrar. We will do this within three working days of receiving your complaint.
- 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. We may examine their reply and the information in your complaint file. We may then ask them for more information. This will take up to three days from receiving their reply and the file.
- We may invite you to meet Chloe Jay to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. Within two days of the meeting, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions we have agreed with you.
- If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, or we perhaps consider it is not required, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will all happen within 8 weeks of us receiving your complaint. If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain the reason why.
- If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman (LeO, address PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH, telephone 0300 555 0333, website https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/ email enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk,) to consider the complaint. The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within one year of it being reasonable for you to have realised there was a concern. You will normally need to bring a complaint to the LeO within 6 months of receiving a final written response from us. We normally have 8 weeks in which to resolve complaints.
- Do not send original documents to the Legal Ombudsman. They will scan any documents you send to make computer copies and then destroy the originals.
- At the end of our internal complaints handling process, in our final letter of response to you, we will ask you to let us know whether you accept our response and to do so by a set date. However, if you remain unhappy then we will remind you of how you can progress your complaint with the SRA or Legal Ombudsman, as set out above.
What to do if you are unhappy with our behaviour
The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. Their website explains how you can raise your concerns https://www.sra.org.uk/home/contact-us/ you can call them on 0370 606 2555 or write to the SRA at The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN.
