Complaints Procedure

We hope that you will be satisfied with the service we provide, however, if you are dissatisfied with any aspect of the work or your bill you should discuss this initially with the person dealing with your case. If you are still unhappy with how the complaint is handled you should contact our Complaints Officer, Mr Jeffrey D Sharp (Partner) at jdsharp1@hethomas.co.uk or Mr Andrew McArthur (Partner) at amcarthur@hethomas.co.uk if the complaint relates to a matter handled by Mr Sharp. Your complaint will be considered seriously and you will receive a prompt response.

We hope that we can always resolve the matters internally, however, if you are still dissatisfied then you can complain to the Legal Ombudsman at www.legalombudsman.org.uk.

If you are concerned about our behaviour you can complain to the Solicitors Regulation Authority if you think we have told lies, stolen from you, shut down without telling you or broken the rules.

Our Complaints Policy

We are committed to providing a high quality legal service to all our clients and 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, contact us in writing with the details.

What Will Happen Next?

1.   We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint within 2 working days of receiving it and we may ask you for further information. We will tell you the name of the person dealing with your complaint.

2.   We will record your complaint in our separate Register and open a separate file for it and will do this within a day of receiving your complaint.

3.   We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps:

4.   We will pass your complaint to Mr J D Sharp, our client care Partner, within 3 days, although if your complaint is against Mr Sharp it will be dealt with by Mr A McArthur.

5.   Mr Sharp or Mr McArthur will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 5 working days.

6.   Mr Sharp or Mr McArthur will then examine their reply and the information in your complaint file and if necessary he will speak to the member of staff face to face. This will take up to 3 days from receiving their reply and file.

7.   We will let you know the result of the review within 5 days of completing it when we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.

8.   If you are dissatisfied with the final decision you can complain to Legal Ombudsman, P O Box 6806 Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ Tel 0300 555 0333 website legalombudsman.org.uk. You must complain to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of being notified of the result of your complaint by ourselves and if you do not contact them within this period you will lose your right to complain further. You should also note that the Legal Ombudsman will not accept complaints before you have exhausted the Firm’s internal complaints procedure.

9.   If we need to change any of the timescales set out in our Policy, such as for example due to the absence of members of staff on leave, then we will let you know.

10. The email contacts for the Partners are Mr J D Sharp – jdsharp1@hethomas.co.uk and Mr A McArthur – amcarthur@hethomas.co.uk

You should note that the Legal Ombudsman has full limitation periods for dealing with complaints and these are either no more than 6 years from the date of the act/omission about which you are complaining or alternatively no more than 3 years from when you should have reasonably known that there was cause for complaint.

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