Complaints Policy

We are committed to providing a high quality legal service to all our clients. However, if you are not satisfied with our service we would like to hear about it. This will enable us to improve our standards.

Please see below in respect of our procedure for dealing with complaints:

Please write to Andrew Graves, Managing Director, with details of the complaint. This letter should be addressed to Rowlinsons, 9 Church Street, Frodsham WA6 7DN. He is responsible for ensuring that complaints are handled effectively and in accordance with this procedure. This procedure also applies to prospective clients who we have unreasonably refused to provide a service to or persistently or unreasonably offered an unwanted service to.

Within 7 days of receiving this letter we will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint. We will record your complaint in a central register and open a file for the complaint.

We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve:

A review of your file;
Liaising with the person handling your matter and their Head of Department to understand the issue that gave rise to the complaint.

Please note this investigation may take up to 28 days to complete.

Either Andrew Graves or the Head of Department will then provide you with a detailed written reply to your complaint within 7 days of this meeting taking place. This letter will include options and suggestions to resolve this matter.

At this stage, if you are not satisfied with the outcome you are invited to write to us, whereupon the decision will be reviewed by another Director within 7 days.

After the review has been completed we will write to you within 7 days to confirm our final position regarding the complaint and to explain our reasons for reaching this decision. If you are still not satisfied, you can then contact the Legal Ombudsman, whose address is PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH about your complaint. 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. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you. For further information, you should contact the Legal Ombudsman on 0300 555 0333 or visit www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Should it be necessary for us to change any of the timescales highlighted above we will let you know as soon as possible and explain the reasons why. If the complaint is made against Andrew Graves himself or if he feels that another Director of the firm is better placed to deal with a particular complaint then the matter will be passed to the appropriate Director. You will be informed as to the identity of this Director.

OTHER OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO YOU

THE SOLICITORS REGULATION AUTHORITY

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you 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.

You can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION SCHEMES

Alternative complaints bodies (such as Ombudsman Services www.ombudsman-services.org/) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme.

However, we don’t currently agree to use this Alternative Dispute Resolution service in view of the availability of the independent Legal Ombudsman Service established under the Legal Services Act 2007 which we are bound by our Regulatory Code to comply with.

FOR CONTRACTS ENTERED INTO ONLINE

If we are unable to resolve your complaint which relates to a contract entered into online, you may contact the Online Dispute Resolution providers by accessing the following link http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr