Collingwood
Immigration Services
Complaints
Handling Policy
Our Commitment
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.
What will
happen next?
If you are
unhappy about any aspect of the service you have received, or about the bill,
please contact us by post to our office at Aidan House, Tynegate Precinct, 401
Sunderland Road, Gateshead NE8 3HU, email admin@collingwoodimmigration.co.uk or telephone
0191 229 9538. We have a procedure in place which details how we handle
complaints as follows:
1.
We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt
of your complaint within five days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this
procedure.
2.
We will investigate your complaint. This will
normally involve passing your complaint to our Client Care Partner, Susan Liew
who will review your matter file and speak to the member of staff who acted for
you.
3.
We will then invite you to a meeting to discuss
and hopefully resolve your complaint. We will do this within 14 days of sending
you the acknowledgement letter.
4.
Within five days of that meeting we will write
to you to confirm what took place and to set out any solutions that have been
agreed with you.
5.
If you do not want a meeting, or it is not
possible, you will be sent a detailed written reply to your complaint,
including the suggestions for resolving the matter, within 21 days of sending
you the acknowledgement latter.
6.
At this stage, if you are still not satisfied,
you should contact us again and we will arrange for another senior member of
the firm to review the decision.
7.
We will write to you within 14 days of
receiving your request for a review, 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. We would hope that this does not become necessary and that we can
resolve matters between ourselves.
Contact details are as follows:
Legal
Ombudsman
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EH
0300 555 0333
enquiries@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.
If we have to
change any of the above timescales we will let you know and explain why.
Complaints in
relation to bills
The procedure above
also applies to 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; The Legal Ombudsman may not
consider a complaint about a bill if you have applied to the Court for
assessment of that bill.
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. You can find information about
raising your concerns with the SRA at: www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.
