We are committed to providing a high-quality service to our clients and we pride ourselves on our thorough and professional approach to our work.
While we rarely receive complaints, we believe that it is important to have procedures in place to help you in the unlikely event of your wishing to make a complaint. The following procedure is intended to inform you of the way in which we handle complaints, and help you to decide the best approach to take. When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it.
The person with overall responsibility for managing complaints is Kumer Ali, a Director at Catteralls, 15 King Street, Wakefield, WF1 2SL.
We ask that you communicate your complaint to us in writing setting out your particular concerns. This helps us to understand your complaint and respond to it.
If you want to raise a complaint under this procedure please email Kumer at Kumer.ali@catteralls.co.uk.
Alternatively you can write to the lawyer with conduct of your matter or the supervising partner and request your complaint be forwarded to Kumer Ali.
The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within six years of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within three years 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.
However, please note that from 1 April 2023 these time limits are changing. From 1st April the Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within a year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within a year of you realising there was a concern. The requirement to refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you remains the same.
We hope that this will not be necessary but LeO can be contacted by telephone on 0300 555 0333, by email at: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk or by post at Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ. We will remind you of this right to complain to the LeO at the conclusion of our complaints process.
Where we are unable to resolve your complaint you also have the option of contacting an alternative complaints body competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme. We will inform you at the end of the complaints procedure whether we agree to the use of an alternative complaints body.
We are of course always glad to receive your comments on our service and to hear how we can help to improve it. Any complaint is always taken very seriously and if you do find cause for complaint you can be assured that it will be investigated thoroughly.
If you are concerned about your solicitor’s behaviour the SRA can help you, or take action when solicitors:
When reporting you must set out your concerns clearly, identify individuals you consider responsible and submit any evidence to support your complaint.
Complaints can be sent to the SRA at:
The Cube
199 Wharfside Street
Birmingham
B1 1RN
DX 720293 BIRMINGHAM 47
or by email to report@sra.org.uk
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.
Updated November 2023
