Complaints Policy

We are committed to providing a high quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong and our service does not meet your expectations, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to make changes to improve our standards and to learn from the comments you make. It also gives us the opportunity to put things right for you.

If you have a complaint about the service we have provided please follow the procedure below:

Step One:

Please raise your complaint with the legal advisor assigned to work for you. They will review your complaint and will contact you within 3 working days of receiving your complaint and will try to resolve it with you.

Step Two:

If you are not satisfied with the way your legal advisor deals with your complaint, then please contact the supervisor named in the client care form that we sent to you when we started acting for you. This is usually the head of department.

You will receive an acknowledgement of your complaint within 7 days.

The supervisor will then undertake a thorough review of your complaint and will try to resolve the issues you have raised within 28 days from acknowledging the complaint.

Step Three:

If you still feel that we have not resolved your complaint then please contact the client care partner. The client care partner is Jo Robinson who can be contacted at: St Michael’s, Queen St, Derby DE1 3SU or by email: j.robinson@timms-law.com or complaints@timms-law.com.

The client care partner will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 7 days of receiving it.

The client care partner will fully investigate your complaint within 28 days from acknowledging the complaint. This will include reviewing your file, the response from the person who acted for you and the response from their supervisor. The client care partner may also want to discuss the complaint with you either on the telephone or at a meeting.

A detailed response will then be sent to you.

If we do not hear from you within 28 days from sending the response, then we will assume that you are happy with the outcome of our investigations.

We will make every effort to comply with these timescales. If however there are circumstances which mean it will be difficult for us to comply with them, eg illness or holiday of key individuals then we will let you know.

Legal Ombudsman

If you are not satisfied with the way we have handled your complaint then you may be able to ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider your complaint. This applies if you are an individual, a business with fewer than 10 employees, a charity or trust with a net income of less that £1m, or if you fall within certain other categories (you can find out more from the Legal Ombudsman).

Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first. If you have, you must take your complaint to them within 6 months of receiving a final response to your complaint from us and no later than:

• 1 year from the date of the act or omission being complained about.
• 1 year from when you should have realised that there was a cause for complaint.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, please contact them using the details below:

Visit: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.co.uk
Write: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ

Solicitors Regulation Authority

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) can also help if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or another characteristic.

Other

If we are not able to settle your complaint, and it relates to a contract we entered into with you online or by other electronic means, you may be able to send your complaint to a certified alternative dispute resolution (ADR) provider in the UK via the ‘ODR platform’.

The ODR platform, which is available for disputes in the UK and abroad, is an interactive website for consumers and traders who want to sort out disputes relating to online contracts for goods and services.

However, we believe the Legal Ombudsman’s scheme is the most suitable and so would not agree to use another complaints body.

Updated July 2023