Complaints Handling Policy

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

If you have a complaint, please contact us by telephone, letter or email detailing your concerns. In the first instance it may be helpful to contact the person who is working on your case to discuss your concerns and we will do our best to resolve any issues.

What will happen next?

If the person working on your case is unable to resolve the issue, or you decide not to contact them, then Mr James Dirks will deal with your complaint. You may contact Mr Dirks on: james@ashraylaw.com. Mr Dirks will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 5 working days of receiving it. He will enclose a copy of this procedure and will ask you to confirm or explain the details of your complaint and to provide any additional information that you may feel is relevant.

Mr Dirks will then investigate your complaint. He will review your matter file and speak to any other person who acted in this matter for you. If you prefer, you can also arrange a meeting with Mr Dirks to discuss the complaint face to face. Within 10 working days of receiving the full information from you, Mr Dirks will send you a detailed written reply to your complaint, including his suggestions for resolving the matter.

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) bodies exist, such as ProMediate of Brow Farm, Top Road, Frodsham WA6 6SP, www.promediate.co.uk. These are competent to deal with complaints about legal services, should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme. The list of approved Alternative Dispute resolution providers can be found on the Chartered Trading Standards Institute website. Currently we do not agree to using an ADR scheme as we believe our own inhouse investigation supported where necessary by that provided by the Legal Ombudsman and SRA Regulation is sufficient.

We are currently unlikely to use ADR however should we agree then the timescale for contacting them is twelve months.

At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should write to us again indicating your request for ADR or asking us for a further review. We will either agree to ADR and/or carry out a further review of your complaint. Your complaint and any related information will then be passed to Ambrish Limbachia who will review the initial decision, taking into account any additional information or comments from yourselves and then respond again with his further decision, within 10 working days.

If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.

If you are still not satisfied, and all attempts to address your concerns are unsuccessful then you can ask the legal ombudsman service to consider your complaint. The Legal Ombudsman will only deal with service-related complaints.

The legal ombudsman normally expects that you have been through our own complaints procedure and remained unsatisfied after eight weeks from the date of your complaint. You should take your complaint to the legal ombudsman within six months of our written response to your initial complaint. If we do not clearly signpost you to the legal ombudsman, the complaint must be taken up no later than one year from the act/omission or one year from which the complainant should reasonable known there was cause for complaint. We encourage you to gain more detailed information from the Legal Ombudsman website.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) who can be contacted as follows: PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH. Tel: 0300 555033, Web: www.legalombudsman.org.uk.

As a company authorised by the SRA, they will investigate free of charge, any allegations of misconduct made against members of the SRA. Complaints of this type must be made within 12 months of the event that gave rise to the complaint or within 12 months of the complainant having knowledge of the events, whichever is the greater.

You can contact the SRA through their online portal: www.sra.org.uk/report

or

by telephone: 0370 606 2555.

or by post:

The Cube 199 Wharfside Street Birmingham B1 1RN DX 720293 BIRMINGHAM 47.

We take complaints very seriously and welcome feedback from our clients (good or bad) as this enables us to continuously improve our service.