Our complaints procedure
If you have a complaint, please contact Neil Watts, our Managing Partner or Mr Kim Kennedy, our Senior Partner. You can write to him at Town Hall Chambers, St Runwald Street, Colchester, CO1 1DS. Neil Watts and Kim Kennedy will discuss your complaint with the relevant fee-earner and will conduct a full, impartial review. If we have to change any of the responsibilities or the timescales set out below we will let you know and explain why.
What will happen next?
1. Within three days we will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain any details. If it seems appropriate we will suggest a meeting at this stage. Neil Watts will deal with your complaint at this stage.
2. We will then record your complaint in our central register. Correspondence relating to your complaint will be kept in the central file. Neil Watts will also investigate your complaint by reviewing the relevant file and discussing the matter with the fee-earner concerned. He will respond to you within 14 working days of acknowledging your complaint. If a longer timescale is required, he will write to you and advise you how long will be needed to review the issues. This, however, will only happen in exceptional circumstances, such as Neil Watts or the fee-earner concerned being on annual leave.
3. If you are not happy with Neil Watts’ response, Mr Kim Kennedy will review the complaint further. He will respond to you within 14 working days of the request to review the complaint being received.
4. If appropriate he will then invite you to meet us 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 working days after first receiving a request to review. If you would prefer not to meet, or if we cannot arrange this within an agreeable timescale, he will write fully to you setting out our views on the situation and any redress that we would feel to be appropriate.
5. Within three working days of any meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and any suggestions that we have agreed with you. In appropriate cases we could offer an apology, a reduction of any bill or a repayment in relation to any payment received.
6. We will always do our best to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction. In the unlikely event that you are still not satisfied when we have written to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons, you are free to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman at PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH, although we hope that this will not be necessary. Normally complaints to the Legal Ombudsman must be made within six months of our final response in respect of your complaint. The LEO will only consider complaints where the act that you are complaining about was committed in the last 12 months or you are raising the complaint within 12 months of the date on which you should have been aware that there was an issue.