Complaints Policy

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be 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 STA at www.sra.org.uk in the ‘For the public’ section.

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need our clients to tell us about it. This will help improve our standards. Whenever possible, please raise any initial client care problems with the person acting on your case to give them the opportunity of resolving matters with you. Often, matters can be quickly resolved in this way.

If you are unhappy about any aspect of the service you have received, or about the bill, please contact Clare Usher, our Client Care Director. Alternatively, if your complaint is in respect of Miss Usher, please direct your complaint to Amir Assadi.

Contact

Hindle Campbell Law
8 Northumberland Square
North Shields
NE30 1QQ

0191 296 1777

clare.usher@hindle-campbell.co.uk
amir.assadi@hindle-campbell.co.uk

We have a procedure in place which details how we handle complaints as follows:

Our Procedures

1. We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint within five working days enclosing a copy of this procedure and ask you to confirm or explain any details.
2. We will then record your complaint in our central register and investigate your complaint by examining the relevant file. This may then be reviewed with the member of staff who acted for you.
3. If appropriate we will then invite you to meet us to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. We would hope to be in a position to meet with you in this way no longer than 14 days after first receiving your complaint
4. Within three days of any meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and any suggestions that we have agreed with you.
5. If you do not wish to meet or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed written reply to your complaint, including suggestions for resolving the matter, within 21 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
6. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for another Director within the firm to review the decision. We would generally aim to do this within 14 days.

7. We will let you know the result of the review within five days of the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
8. If you are still not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint. Contact details are as follows:

Legal Ombudsman

PO Box 6167

Slough

SL1 0EH

0300 555 0333

enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Normally you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within the following timescales:

1. Six years from the date of the act or omission about which you are complaining occurring, or
2. Three years from the date you should reasonably have known there were grounds for complaint (if the act/omission took place before 6th October 2010 or was more than six years ago), and
3. Within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint.

In relation to a) and b) the act/omission, or when the complainant should reasonably known there was cause for complaint must have been after 5th October 2010.

We would hope that this does not become necessary and that we can resolve matters between ourselves. If this is not the case however, we would be happy to provide you with the necessary information to make such a complaint.

If we have to change any of the above timescales we will let you know and explain why.

The complaints procedure also includes complaints arising concerning our bill. There may also be a right to object to the bill by applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974; and that if all, or part, of a bill remains unpaid, the firm may be entitled to charge interest.