Complaints Policy

Our complaints policy

We are committed to providing a high-quality service to our clients. This includes a commitment to putting things right when they go wrong. This policy explains how we will deal with any complaint that is referred to us. Your complaint might concern the way in which you have been dealt with, the quality of advice you have received or any invoice that you have received.

Our complaints procedure

If you have a complaint, please contact our Client Care Manager, Michael Ward. You can contact them by post at this office, or via e-mail at mew@burdward.co.uk. It is preferable that you do put your concerns into writing, but if you would prefer not to, or if you would find it difficult to do so, he can be contacted through our main office number 0151 639 8273.

To explain to you how long this process might take we have included our target times for each stage of the process. Where, for any reason, it is not possible to observe any of these limits we will let you know and explain why.

What will happen next?

On receipt of your complaint our Client Care Manager will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and might invite you to a meeting to discuss your concerns. We will open a file for your complaint in our system and the Client Care Manager will examine the file that we have on the work that we have been doing for you. We would look to acknowledge your complaint within two days of receiving it and will complete our initial examination within fourteen days.

We might then invite you to a meeting or we will write to you to ask for further information. Alternatively we might write to you setting out our views on the situation and suggesting any redress that we would feel to be appropriate. We will aim to write to you with our views and any suggestions within seven days of completing our investigations.

Where we feel that we have failed in our standards we could offer an apology, a reduction of any bill or a repayment in relation to any payment received.

If, by this stage, you are still not satisfied, please let us know. It would be helpful to us if you could do so within the next 21 days but there is no obligation on you to do so. We will then arrange to review our decision. We would generally aim to do this within ten days of hearing from you. We will usually do this by asking another director in this firm to review the file that we have on your complaint and see if they agree with our response.

We will let you know the result of the review within seven days of the end of the review and will do so by writing to you to confirm our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.

You may, if you wish, approach the Legal Ombudsman who provides a service examining complaints against lawyers, including solicitors’ firms. They will usually expect us to have concluded our examination of your complaint within eight weeks and will usually expect to have complaints referred to him within six months of the end of our complaints handling process as set out above. Please note that from 1 April 2023 these time limits are changing. From the 1 April 2023 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.The services provided by the Legal Ombudsman are limited to individuals and smaller organisations for more details see their website. The full details of how to contact this office are as follows:

Telephone: 0300 555 0333
E-mail: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
Address: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ

Breach of Solicitors’ Code of Conduct

If you believe we have acted in breach of the Solicitors Code of Conduct you may ask the Solicitors Regulation Authority to investigate our conduct.

Solicitors Regulation Authority
The Cube
199 Wharfside Street
Birmingham
B1 1RN
DX 720293 BIRMINGHAM 47

Telelphone: 0370 606 2555
Website: www.sra.org.uk