Our complaints policy tells you how we will deal with your complaint and how long it is likely to take. It also provides important information about what you can do if you are not happy with the way in which we are dealing with your complaint, or about our final decision.
In the first instance it may be helpful to contact the person who is working on your case to discuss your concerns and we will do our best to resolve any issues at this stage. If you would like to make a formal complaint, then you can read our full complaints procedure below. Making a complaint will not affect how we handle your case.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority 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 raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
We are committed to providing you with an unrivalled quality of service. If something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards. This complaint policy tells you how we will deal with your complaint and how long it is likely to take. It also provides important information about what you can do if you are not happy with the way in which we are dealing with your complaint, or about our final decision.
1. Designated Complaints Handler
1.1 If you have a complaint about our service, our work or our charges, please contact Ryan Millmore our client care partner. You can write to him at:
Clarion Solicitors Limited
Elizabeth House
13-19 Queen Street
Leeds
LS1 2TW
1.2 Our Professional Standards Lead assists the client care partner with day to day handling of complaints received.
2. What will happen next
2.1 You will receive a letter acknowledging your complaint. You can expect to receive our letter within five working days of receiving your complaint. If we need any further clarification about the issues you have raised in your letter, we will ask for further details at this stage.
2.2 We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint. We will do this within three working days of receiving your complaint.
2.3 We will then start to investigate your complaint. We may not be able to fully investigate your complaint until you have provided us with any information or documents requested. Investigating your complaint may involve one or more of the following steps:
2.3.1 we may speak to fee earners who acted for you to discuss your complaint;
2.3.2 we may examine your file of papers. We then may ask you for more information.
2.4 We anticipate that these two steps will take up to twenty one days from our acknowledgement of your complaint.
2.4.1 If appropriate, we will invite you to speak to or meet with the person dealing with your complaint. We will do this within seven days of receiving all the details we need from you or the fee earner who acted for you.
2.5 Within three working days of the meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and any suggestions that we have agreed with you. If you didn’t want a meeting or it is not necessary or possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include confirmation of our position on your complaint, an explanation of our reasons and our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within five days of us completing the investigation.
2.6 Our aim is to complete our investigations and respond to your formal complaint as soon as possible. We endeavour to provide you with our response to your complaint within 20 working days from when we acknowledge your complaint. If it is not possible for us to investigate and provide a response to your complaint within this period, we will advise you of this and it may take up to 8 weeks to investigate and respond to your complaint. Our response to your complaint will include confirmation of our position on your complaint, an explanation of our reasons and our suggestions for resolving the matter.
2.7 If you are not satisfied with the outcome of our investigations you can contact the Legal Ombudsman about your complaint, provided you do so within 6 months of the end of our complaints procedure and no later than one year from the date of the act/omission being complained about and within 1 year from the date you should have realised there was cause for complaint. Ordinarily, you cannot use the Legal Ombudsman unless you have first attempted to resolve your complaint using our internal procedure, but you will be able to contact the Legal Ombudsman if:
2.7.1 The complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction within eight weeks of first making the complaint to us; or
2.7.2 The Legal Ombudsman decides that there are exceptional reasons why the Legal Ombudsman should consider your complaint sooner, or without you having to use our internal complaints handling procedure first; or
2.7.3 The Legal Ombudsman considers that your complaint cannot be resolved using our internal complaints handling procedure because the relationship between you and us has broken down irretrievably.
2.8 If you wish to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman you must be one of the following:
2.8.1 An individual;
2.8.2 A business or enterprise that was a micro-enterprise (European Union definition when it referred the complaint to us;
2.8.3 A charity that had an annual income net of tax less with an annual income less than £1 million when it referred the complaint to us;
2.8.4 A club/association/organisation, the affairs of which are managed by its members/a committee/a committee of its members, that had an annual income net of tax of less than £1 million when it referred the complaint to us;
2.8.5 A trustee of a trust that had an asset value of less than £1 million when it referred the complaint to us; or
2.8.6 A personnel representative or beneficiary of the estate of a person who, before they died, had not referred the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman.
If you do not fall into one of these categories, you should be aware that you can only obtain redress by using our complaints handling procedure or by mediation or arbitration, or by taking action through the courts.
3. The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted at PO Box 6167, Slough SL1 0EH or by telephone on 0300 555 0333 or by email at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk. For further information about the role of the Legal Ombudsman, please see their website at www.legalombudsman.org.uk.
4. If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.
5. If your complaint relates to charges or expenses contained in an invoice we have asked you to pay, you may also be entitled to apply to a court under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974 to ask the court to assess the reasonableness of any charges and expenses contained in such invoice. If all or part of an invoice remains unpaid we may be entitled to charge interest.
6. Non-client issues
6.1 If you are not our client but have a complaint to make where we are acting for another party involved in a matter or transaction, the most appropriate action is to raise your concerns with your own legal advisor. Our professional rules do not allow us to deal with you directly for matters where you have a legal advisor already acting on your behalf.
6.2 If you are not our client and do not have a legal advisor, we will only be able to consider a complaint from you if you are alleging that we have breached any of the principles or outcomes provided for in the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s Standards and Regulations. Please see paragraph 7 below for more information.
7. Concerns about professional misconduct
7.1 The Legal Ombudsman considers complaints about the quality of legal services received by a client. In the unlikely event that you have more serious concerns that a lawyer or this firm have been involved in professional misconduct, such as dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly, then it may be appropriate for you to refer this to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We do not anticipate any such problems and would ask that you notify your matter partner (whose name can be found in your engagement letter) or Ryan Millmore straight away if you have any such concerns. You can find out how to raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority on their website, https://www.sra.org.uk, or by calling them on 0370 606 2555. You can also write to them at The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN.
8. Data protection complaints
8.1 Clarion is a data controller in its own right under the UK GDPR and takes any complaints in relation to how we, as a regulated law firm, have processed personal data seriously.
8.2 Data subjects have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commission’s Office (ICO), where they consider their personal data has been processed in a way that breaches the UK GDPR. The ICO’s contact details are as follows:
ICO’s website: https://ico.org.uk/
Telephone: +44 (0) 303 123 1113
Email: icocasework@ico.org.uk
Address: 4th Floor, No.3 Circle Square, 5 Hawkshaw Street, Manchester, M1 7BL
8.3 You can raise your data protection related complaint to Clarion in advance of contacting the ICO in writing to: dataprotection@clarionsolicitors.com. We will acknowledge receipt of all data protection related complaints within 30 days and will take steps to respond to the complaint and inform you of the outcome without undue delay.
8.4 We may need to take appropriate steps including making enquiries of you to help us confirm aspects such as your identity and to ask further information about your complaint so that we may speed up our response.
8.5 If you are seeking to exercise any of your rights as a data subject (under UK GDPR) in respect of how we process your personal data (such as the right of access), please see our Privacy Policies for more information on those rights and how to exercise them: Privacy Policies | Clarion. We may need to ask for further information from you to allow us to determine what kind of rights request or data related complaint (or both/a combination of) you are seeking to exercise/make. We will consider the circumstances of and the substantive nature of your communication(s) with us in order to make an appropriate determination.