BARK & CO SOLICITORS LTD
COMPLAINTS HANDLING POLICY
Our Policy
We are committed to providing a high-quality service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards and ensure that we provide you with the service to which you are entitled.
Who to contact
If you are unhappy with any aspect of the service which you have received or the costs which you have been charged it is often best to raise your concerns immediately with the Director responsible for the work. You were supplied with their contact details when you first instructed us.
However we understand that you may wish your concerns to be more formally investigated or you are unhappy with any response you have already received.
If you want your complaint to be formally investigated, please write to Giles Bark-Jones.
What will happen next?
We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint letter within three days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
Responsibility for investigating your complaint will be assigned to the member of the firm best placed to carry out the investigation. He/she will normally review the file and speak to those who carried out the work.
If appropriate you may be invited to a meeting to discuss, and hopefully resolve, your complaint. If we propose a meeting you will be contacted within 14 days of the sending of the acknowledgement letter.
If a meeting takes place we will write to you within 3 days after it takes place confirming what took place and setting out any solutions which were agreed with you.
If a meeting is not possible, or you do not want to meet, we will send you a detailed written reply to your complaint setting out any suggestions for resolving the matter. We would normally expect to send this reply within 21 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter. If we are not able to send you a full reply within that period we will update you and tell you when we expect to be able to write to you again.
At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you should contact us again and we will arrange for someone unconnected with this matter to carry out a further review. This further review will normally be conducted by another senior member of the firm.
We will write to you within 21 days of receiving your request for a review confirming our final decision on your complaint and explaining our reasons
You may have a right to refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman. You cannot normally refer a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman unless 8 weeks have passed since your complaint to us, but you may do so earlier if we have notified you of our final decision and you remain dissatisfied. The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted via their website www.legalombudsman.org.uk, or by telephone 0300 555 0333 or write to: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL10EH.
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 you realising there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you
You may have a right to refer your complaint to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA). The Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) can be contacted via their website www.sra.org.uk or by telephone 0370 606 2555 or write to: Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN.
We are required to inform you that alternative complaints bodies (for example https://www.disputeresolutionombudsman.org/) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should you and our firm each agree that we wish to use such a scheme. We do not propose to use any such alternative complaints body under this complaints procedure.