Our Complaints Policy

Altion Law are committed to providing a high quality legal service to all our clients. If you feel that something has gone wrong or you are not satisfied with either a matter or your bill, then please do tell us about it, as it will help us to improve our standards.

Our Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint about our service, our charges, or a bill that we have rendered, please contact us with full details so that we may act upon it as quickly as possible.

In the first instance you should raise any concerns that you have with the person handling your matter. You should clearly set out details of any issues that you have so that we have a full understanding of what your concerns are.

If your concerns have not been satisfactorily resolved, a complaint can also be raised with the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice – Rebecca Hudson, who can be contacted by the following methods:

Address:          Altion Law, 9 Shirwell Crescent, Furzton, Milton Keynes, MK4 1GA

Tel:                   01908 414 988

Email:              Rebecca.hudson@altion-law.co.uk

Please note that your complaint may be considered by an alternative Director where appropriate.

 

What will happen once a complaint has been lodged?

 

  1. We will confirm receipt of your complaint in writing as soon as possible, and within no more than 3 working days of the date of complaint. We will also confirm the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint if this has not been clarified previously.
  2. We will then record your complaint on our central register, and we will open a file for your complaint.
  3. We ask that you clearly set out full details of your complaint, so that we may investigate the issues raised by you. Where appropriate you may be invited to discuss the matter in more detail at this stage. A discussion may include a face to face meeting at our offices, a virtual meeting (such as by Zoom/ Teams etc) or a telephone discussion, depending upon the circumstances.
  4. We will then investigate your complaint in full, by considering the relevant file(s) in detail and by discussing the matter with the member(s) of staff who acted for you.
  5. Following the investigation of your complaint, we will send you the outcome of our investigation  in writing.  We aim to provide this to you within 10 working days of completing our investigation. Where the complaint and the written outcome are complex and technical, the person that carried out the investigation may give you the opportunity to ask for a short call so that you can clarify any complex or technical areas of the written outcome.
  6. If having fully considered  the outcome of the complaint you are still not happy, please let us know and we will arrange for a review of the complaint. The review will either be carried out by the same person, or we will arrange for the review to be carried out by someone else in Altion Law who has not been previously involved in your complaint.
  7. Following completion of the review we will write to you and advise you of the result of the review. We will confirm our final position on your complaint and explain our reasons. We aim to do this within ten working days of the end of the review.
  8. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Legal Ombudsman. Any complaint should usually be made within 6 months of our final decision on your complaint, although you can contact the Legal Ombudsman for further details.
  9. You may also be able to refer a complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

Legal Ombudsman

If we are unable to resolve your complaint then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with lawyers. 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.

The Legal Ombudsman asks that you allow 8 weeks for us to resolve your complaint internally before involving them. You must refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you. You can contact the Legal Ombudsman in one of the following ways:

 

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)

You can contact the SRA at:

Postal address:

Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN

Email at:                                                report@sra.org.uk

Website at:                                            www.sra.org.uk/

 

The SRA deals with complaints including:

  • bodies they regulate who have breached an SRA principle;
  • bodies they regulate for non-payment of professional fees (such as an agent or experts fee);
  • allegations of dishonesty or discrimination.

 

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