Complaints and Clients Feedback

You will already have been informed in our Terms of Engagement that you have a right to complain if we fall short of our declared standards of service.  Often complaints are most quickly dealt with by speaking to the person responsible for your matter, or another member of their Team. If you would prefer to write an informal email or letter of complaint to that person, please do not be afraid to do so.

On receipt of an informal complaint:

• An acknowledgement of the telephone call (if the complaint is not resolved within the call) or of the written complaint will be sent to you within 3 working days.

• Your file will then be reviewed by the person responsible for your matter and a detailed response will be sent to you within 14 working days of the original complaint being received by us.

If you are not satisfied, please ask to speak to the Head of the Team handling your matter. 

When a complaint cannot be resolved informally you may wish to make a formal complaint.

If you have tried the informal complaints procedure set out above, or you believe that it is inappropriate to use it, please write to Andrew Banks, Partner, who has responsibility for Client Care and whose role is to ensure that your complaint is dealt with appropriately. It would be helpful if you could put your complaint in writing. You can do this by writing to our Bath office or by emailing clientcare@stoneking.co.uk 

Andrew Banks can be contacted at:

Upper Borough Court, Upper Borough Walls, Bath, BA1 1RG
Tel: 01225 337599

Email: ajb@stoneking.co.uk

If you telephone to speak to Andrew Banks and he is unavailable, in his absence, please telephone Laura Wilson, Risk and Compliance Manager on 07974 252974 or on LauraWilson@stoneking.co.uk who assists him in dealing with complaints.

On receipt of a formal complaint:

• We will send an acknowledgement of the complaint within 5 working days and inform you who will be dealing with your complaint and how long it will be before you can expect a detailed response.
• We will record your complaint in our Client Care file.
• We will then start to investigate your complaint which may involve one or more of the following steps:

1)   If the Informal Complaint procedure has already occurred or if you are not satisfied with the response you received (in which case you will need to let us know), Andrew Banks will endeavour to give you a detailed response in the hope of resolving your complaint as quickly as possible. Where appropriate he may suggest a meeting to try and resolve the issues.

2)   After this stage if you are not satisfied you may contact us again and we will then arrange to review our decision within a further 10 working days.

If we have to change any of the above timescales (for example because of sickness or holidays), we will of course let you know and explain why.

Where this process cannot resolve your complaint, you may wish to seek alternative legal advice or to contact the Legal Ombudsman (see below). We will always endeavour to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible, however, if your initial complaint has not been dealt with by our Firm, within 8 weeks you are entitled to raise your complaint further to the Legal Ombudsman, whose contact details are listed below. 

If you believe the conduct of Stone King, or one of our employees or members is in question, you have the right to raise your concerns directly to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, whose contact details are below. 

The Cube, 

199 Wharfside Street 

Birmingham 

B1 1RN 

Telephone: 0370 606 2555

Email: Contactcentre@sra.org.uk

Website: www.sra.org.uk 

If it looks as though the working relationship between us has broken down, and in certain circumstances, it may be best if you obtain a second opinion from another firm of solicitors. You would certainly be advised to do this if Andrew Banks’ review were to find that we might have been negligent in our advice to you.

If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint, you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider your complaint.  Normally you will need to take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint. The Legal Ombudsman may only consider a client’s complaint one year after the complaint was raised with our Firm. 

The details for the Legal Ombudsman are:

PO Box 6167 

Slough 

SL1 0EH 

Telephone: 0300 555 0333

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Website:  www.legalombudsman.org.uk