Our service to you is extremely important to us and we strive to offer our clients a fast, friendly and reliable service for their conveyancing needs. We rely on our good reputation being passed on by our clients to their family and friends for recommendations and so we take very seriously any feedback you can provide to us to help us improve our service to you.

However, if something is not to the standard that you would require and you would wish to make a complaint, we would welcome your feedback so that we can have the opportunity to listen to what you have to say and to be able to respond to resolve any concerns that you may have.

How to make a Complaint

As a Client you would have received from us at the outset of the transaction our ‘Client Care Letter’ which would have been supplied in accordance with Law Society regulations to confirm the arrangements for our services to you. In our Client Care Letter, we confirm details of our Complaints Procedure for you should the same be required.

If, however, the same is not available to you any Complaints can be raised with either of our Complaints Partners, namely Mr Simon Leo (simon@hjlsolicitors.com) or Mrs Leigh Roberts (leigh@hjlsolicitors.com) who will be happy to assist you through the process to hear what you have to say.

In that respect it is important that we have from you a clear understanding of your complaint and ask that you please write into us at our office address or by email to the relevant Complaints Partner. It will be important to know as much as possible so that we can investigate as quickly as possible, so please let us know what your Complaint is about, who is the Complaint in respect of, how you would like your Complaint resolved and any other information that you may have available that you believe relevant to your Complaint.

How we address your Complaint

Once we hear from you, we will respond to you within five working days of receipt of your Complaint to confirm receipt and to ask any further information that may be relevant to assist with our investigation of your Complaint. Also to seek further information from the person concerned that the Complaint is being made against.

We aim to be able to provide you with a comprehensive reply to your Complaint within fifteen working days however it may take a little longer if the same involves the retrieval of your file from our GDPR compliant storage facility but we will of course keep you updated in that respect. We would aim to conclude investigations to you and to resolve your complaint within eight weeks from the date of your Complaint.

If you do not agree with our conclusion to your Complaint

Whilst we would hope any Complaint raised would be resolved during our internal process described above, in the event that you remain dissatisfied and would like to take matter further you are able to refer your claim for independent review to the Legal Ombudsman.

The details for the Legal Ombudsman are at their website of www.legalombudsman.org.uk and will have useful guidance and links to better assist you with the process of raising a formal complaint. They will first ask if you have been able to resolve your Complaint via our internal process and if so to then raise a Complaint with the Legal Ombudsman you must do so:

• Within six months of receiving from us a final response to your Complaint;
• No more than six years from the date of the act / or omission; and
• No more than three years from when you should reasonably have known there was a cause for a Complaint.

The contact information for the Legal Ombudsman is:

Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 686, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ

Telephone no: 0300 555 0333

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Other Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) bodies are also competent to deal with Complaints about our legal services to you. ProMediate are a certified ADR Company and further details about them can be found on their website of www.promediate.co.uk

If you are unhappy about our behaviour as opposed to our service if for example you feel that we have been untruthful to you, or that we have stolen from you, or we have treated you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic, or that we have broken SRA rules then you are able to raise your complaint with the Solicitors Regulation Authority whose website is www.sra.org.uk and they will be able to assist you further. The contact information for the SRA is:

Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham B1 1RN

Telephone: 0370 606 2555

Email: contactcentre@sra.org.uk

We hope this has been of assistance to you but if there is anything further we can clarify for you please let us know.