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We are committed to providing a high quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong you need to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.

The handling of your complaint will be supervised by the firm’s Compliance Partner, Joanne Clarke. Her contact details are:

Address:

Lester Aldridge LLP
Russell House
Oxford Road
Bournemouth
BH8 8EX

Telephone number:    01202 786161

E-mail: joanne.clarke@la-law.com

What will happen next?

  1. We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint enclosing a copy of this policy. You can expect to receive our letter within 2 working days of our receiving your complaint
  2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint.
  3. We will then investigate your complaint. If necessary we will ask you for additional information. In some cases we may not be able to start our investigation until you have provided additional information.
  4. In the majority of cases the outcome of our investigation will be provided to you in writing. Where possible we aim to provide a substantive response within one calendar month of acknowledging your complaint but whether this is achievable depends on the complexity of your complaint and the level of investigation required. There may also be unforeseen circumstances which prevent a response within one calendar month. Our initial acknowledgement letter will confirm our anticipated response date.
  5. Occasionally, after the investigation we may invite you to a meeting to discuss your complaint. We will always seek to arrange this meeting to be held at times convenient to both you and LA. If there is a meeting, we will write to you within 5 days confirming what was discussed and/or agreed.
  6. If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.
  7. If after receiving our substantive response or after any meeting, you are still not satisfied, you can write to us again explaining your dissatisfaction. We will then reconsider your complaint. We will send you our final response within 8 weeks of your original complaint.
  8. The Legal Ombudsman can help you if we are unable to resolve your complaint ourselves. They will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case.

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, then you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

• Within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint; and
• No more than one year from the date of act/omission; or
• No more than one year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.

The above timescales came into force on 1 April 2023. The Legal Ombudsman does have some discretion when it comes to applying the above timescales.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, please contact them as follows:

• Visit: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
• Call: 0300 555 0333 between 9.00 to 17.00
• Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
• Write: Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH

9. You also have the right to make a report to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

The SRA can help 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.

To make a report see http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page or contact the SRA at Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN, Tel : 0370 606 2555

10. Alternative bodies (such as Pro Mediate UK) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our firm agree to use such a scheme. However, we do not agree to use such a scheme due to the existence of the Legal Ombudsman.

Lester Aldridge LLP

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