If you have a complaint, please contact Mrs Melanie Winship-Lee, our Client Care Partner. Please set out your complaint in writing and send to her at Suite 5, Avenue House, Greenwell Road, Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, DL5 4DH or email at melaniewinship-lee@hewitts.co.uk.
What will happen next?
1. We will acknowledge your complaint in writing within three days of our receiving your letter of complaint.
2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint.
3. If we require further information before we can investigate your complaint, we will request this as soon as possible and will endeavour to do so when acknowledging your complaint within the three working days.
4. We will then commence an investigation into your complaint. This may involve obtaining information from the member of staff or partner who acted for you and liaising with senior staff members to assist on any technical matters. We will endeavour to complete this investigation and reply to you in detail within 14 days of our acknowledgment of your letter.
5. We will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. We will endeavour to do this within 14 days of acknowledging your correspondence. This time is necessary to fully investigate your complaint.
6. At this stage if you are not satisfied you can write to us again with any further points. We will endeavour to respond to your further correspondence within 14 days.
7. If you are still not satisfied you should contact us again and we will arrange for another Partner within the firm to review the decision. We will write to you within ten working days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
8. If you remain dissatisfied with our response to your complaint and our proposals for resolution, then you can refer the matter to the Legal Services Ombudsman. Contact details are as follows:
Address: The Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
Tel: 0300 555 0333
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 also have the right to complain to the SRA –
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 sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor
If we have to change any of the timescales above, for example by reason of sickness or holidays, we will let you know and explain why we have revised timescale.
