Our complaints policy
CARPENTER & CO is committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. 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, write to us with full details. The complaint will then be recorded in our central register.
All Complaints should in the first instance be referred to the individual identified in our Client Care Letter sent to you at the inception of our instructions.
What will happen next?
- We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within seven days of our receiving the complaint, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
- We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally involve passing your complaint to our client care partner, namely Mr Paul Verlander the Firm’s senior partner. Paul will normally investigate your complaint within 14 days. He will advise you if this is not possible for any reason. The investigation may involve Paul asking the member of this firm who acted for you to reply to your complaint and then examining their reply and the information in the file or he may reply to you directly. All this will normally be done within the 14 day period mentioned above.
- Unless matters can be resolved to your satisfaction following the above step, Paul will then invite you to a meeting to discuss and, it is hoped, resolve your complaint. He will do this within 14 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter referred to above.
- Within three days of the meeting, Paul will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions he has agreed with you.
- If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, Paul will send you a detailed written reply to your complaint, including his suggestions for resolving the matter, within 28 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
- At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again to explain why you remain unhappy with our response and at this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This review will normally be carried out by another Partner of the firm within 10 days. We will then write confirming our response to your complaint and explain our reasons within 14 days
- If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint and they can be contacted on telephone number 0300 555 0333 or by email at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk. Alternatively you can write to the Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167 Slough SL1 0EH. Normally, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint.
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.
The Legal Ombudsman (an independent complaints body which investigates complaints from consumers about their legal service providers in England and Wales) is introducing updated Scheme Rules, effective from 1st April 2023. A key change relates to the timescale to refer complaints to the Legal Ombudsman – this is reducing to within 1 year from the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within 1 year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.
The requirements to refer complaints to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving a final response from the firm about a complaint will remain the same under the new Rules. The Legal Ombudsman will have discretion to extend the timescale beyond 1 year where it considers it would be fair and reasonable to do so, however, this will not be a given and will be considered on a case-by-case basis. For more information, please refer to our internal Complaints Procedure. To view the Rules in full please see www.legalombudsman.org.uk/information-centre/corporate-publications/scheme-rules
Making a complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority ( SRA)
The Solicitors Regulation Authority 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. Visit their website to see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority https://www.sra.org.uk
