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Complaints Policy and Procedure

Complaints Policy and Procedure

Our Complaints Policy and Procedure

Our Complaints Policy

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal 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.

Our Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint, please contact Claire Armer, Director in any of the following ways:

  • By email to Armer@newtons.co.uk
  • By phone to 01423 789050
  • By post to our main office address, Attention Mrs C Armer, Newtons Solicitors, St James Business Park, 5 Grimbald Crag Court,  Knaresborough HG5 8BQ

If we need to change any of the responsibilities or time scales set out below, we will let you know and explain why.

What will happen next?

  1. Within one working week we will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint enclosing a copy of this Complaints Policy and Procedure. We may ask you to explain or confirm any of the details. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint.
  1. We will register your complaint on our central register and fully investigate your complaint by examining the relevant file.
  1. We will write to you setting out our detailed response to your complaint within 8 weeks of receipt of your complaint, where appropriate offering redress. Alternatively, and if appropriate, we may invite you to the office for a meeting along with the staff member involved to discuss and, we hope, to resolve your complaint no longer than 8 weeks after first receiving your complaint. If you would prefer not to meet, please let us know straight away. Within five working days of that meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and to record any points that have been agreed with you.
  1. Dependent on the type of complaint made it may take longer than 8 weeks for us to respond due to the size or complexity of your matter or the availability of staff to answer questions as part of our investigation. We will advise you if the complaint is taking longer to resolve and provide you with a revised timescale.
  1. Where we can, we will look at a range of remedies, from a sincere apology to a reduction in any bill and/or reimbursement of money sent to us.
  1. If, after receiving our written response any issues remain unresolved for you, please let us know. We will then arrange to review our decision. We will aim to do this within 10 working days of you contacting us again. This review will happen in one of the following ways:
  • Claire Armer will review her own decision; or
  • We will arrange for someone in the firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it.
  1. We will let you know the result of the review within 5 working days of the end of that review. At this time, we will write to you setting out our final response and explain our reasons.
  1. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with lawyers. 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.
  1. The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted as follows:
  • By phone on 0300 5550333
  • Online at Legal Ombudsman
  • By post to The Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ

General Enquiries