Our Commitment
We hope that you will not have cause for complaint but if you do have any questions or complaints about our work or charges, please refer to our complaints procedure below:
Our Procedures
You should write to Mrs Sonia Bhalla, in writing by email to sonia@sblaw.org.uk or by post to 44 Montague Road Hounslow TW3 1LD. Please outline the cause of your dissatisfaction and if possible, the action you would like us to take in order to remedy that dissatisfaction.
We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within five working days and inform you of the name of the person who is dealing with your complaint. In order to obtain an independent and objective view, we may outsource this to an independent complaints’ handler. Your complaint will be acknowledged by them within 5 working days and a thorough investigation undertaken. We will record your complaint in our central register which is reviewed regularly by the firm.
Investigating your complaint
The person investigating the complaint will have full access to all the information and personnel that they require to investigate your complaint properly. They may contact you directly to discuss and confirm your heads of complaints and request any further information from you to assist the investigation.
We will ask the person investigating the complaint to recommend the action which they believe would be recommended by the Legal Ombudsman if the complaint was referred to their office.
The person investigating your complaint will provide you with a detailed assessment report together with their recommendations to resolve the complaint, if any, a copy of which will be first forwarded to Mrs Bhalla for review. If the complaint is outsourced, we will generally follow their recommendations made but if we think they are not appropriate we will explain our reasons to you.
We have 8 weeks from the date we receive your complaint to fully investigate and provide our final response to you.
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will contact you to explain why.
You will not be charged for our time spent dealing with a complaint internally.
A copy of our firm’s complaint procedure is available on request.
The Legal Ombudsman
At the conclusion of the firm’s complaints process if you are still not satisfied then there is a right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman.
The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted by one of the following methods:
Telephone : 0300 555 0333
Overseas: +44 12 245 3050
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
In writing : PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ
www.legalombudsman.org.uk
The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned, or within one year of you realising there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you.
Raising concerns with our regulator
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) 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. Information about raising concerns with the SRA is available at:
