This Complaints Handling Procedure tells you how we will deal with your complaint and how long it is likely to take. It also provides important information about what you can do if you are not happy with the way in which we are dealing with your complaint, or about our final decision.
Designated Complaints Handler
If you have any concerns about our service, our work, or our charges, you should discuss these first with
the individual who has day-to-day control of your matter.
If this person cannot satisfactorily address your concerns and you wish to make a complaint, please contact
our Client Care Director, Mr M B Khan, Solicitor.
You can write to him at 546/547 Green Lane, Goodmayes, Ilford, Essex, IG3 9RJ or send an Email
to khan@alcsolicitors.london.
Step One: Acknowledging your Complaint
Within seven working days of receiving your complaint, we will acknowledge your complaint and record it
in our Complaints Register, a separate file will be opened in which we will store any correspondence and
other documents relating to your complaint.
Step Two: Investigating your Complaint
We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally involve passing your complaint to our client
care director, Mr Khan, who will either himself, or appoint an appropriate individual to review your matter
file and speak to the member of staff who acted for you.
Examples of how we may deal with your complaint are as follows:
If your complaint is straightforward, we might make suggestions as to how we can put things right
or we may offer you some form of redress;
If your complaint is more complicated, we might ask you to confirm, explain or clarify any issues;
We may ask to meet with you to discuss things face-to-face and we would hope to be in a position
to meet with you no longer than fourteen working days after first receiving your complaint. If you
would prefer not to meet, or if we cannot arrange this within an agreeable timescale, we will write
to you fully setting out our views on the situation and making suggestions as to how we can put
things right, or asking you to confirm, explain or clarify any issues.
Whichever form our investigation takes, we will aim to give you our final decision within eight weeks of
receiving your complaint (or sooner if possible).
Step Three: Appealing against our Final Decision
If you are not satisfied with our final decision, please let us know and we will review our decision again. We
will let you know the result of any appeal within Fourteen days of receiving your appeal.
Step Four: The Legal Ombudsman
If you remain dissatisfied with our final response to your complaint you may be eligible to refer your
complaint to the legal ombudsman provided you do so within 6 months of our final response to you in
respect of your complaint.
Any complaint made to the Legal Ombudsman must be made within 1 year from the date of the problem
which brought about your complaint or within 1 year from the date that you should have reasonably
known that there was cause for complaint.
The Legal Ombudsman will not normally accept a complaint unless we have been given the opportunity to
respond first. However you will be able to escalate matters to the Legal Ombudsman if:
a. The complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction within 8 weeks from the date that it was
made;
b. The Legal Ombudsman considers that there are exceptional reasons to consider the complaint
sooner, or, without it having been made to the firm first;
c. Where the Legal Ombudsman considers the resolution through our internal complaints procedure is
not possible due to a breakdown in the relationship between you and the firm.
Anyone making a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must be:
An individual;
An enterprise with less than ten staff or with a balance sheet of less than 2 million Euros as defined
by the European Recommendation 2003/361/EC of 6 May 2003;
A club, association or society with an annual income of less than £1 million;
A charity with an annual income less than £1 million;
A trustee of a trust with a net asset value of less than £1 million;
A personal representative or the residuary beneficiaries of an estate where a person with a
complaint died before referring their compliant to the Legal Ombudsman.
If you do not fall into the list of above complainants then the only option open to you is to seek
redress through the firm’s Complaints Handling Procedure or by mediation, arbitration or by action
through the Courts.
Contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are:
Address: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.co.uk
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has confirmed that the following Alternative Dispute
Resolution (ADR) entities are currently available to deal with disputes in the legal services sector:
Ombudsman Services, ProMediate and Small Claims Mediation in the event you wish to engage in
mediation concerning your complaint. However, we are not agreeable to enter into ADR mediation until
the Legal Ombudsman have been approved as an ADR provider.
Complaints about your bill
The above complaints procedure also applies to complaints arising concerning our bill. There may also be a
right to object to the bill by applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors
Act 1974; and that if all, or part, of a bill remains unpaid, the firm may be entitled to charge interest.
Raising concerns with our Regulator
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) can help you 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. You can find information about raising your concerns with the SRA
at www.sra.org.uk in the ‘For the public’ section.
