Firm information

Complaints procedure

We wish to provide you with high quality legal advice and client care in all respects.

"Man in suit talking to woman in floral dress.

If you have any questions or concerns, please speak initially to your client partner or to the particular partner who is in charge of the work.

Our complaints policy

We are committed to providing a high-quality service to our clients and we pride ourselves on our thorough and professional approach to our work.

Whilst we rarely receive complaints, we believe that it is important to have procedures in place to help you in the unlikely event of your wishing to make a complaint.

The following procedure is intended to inform you of the way in which we handle complaints and help you to decide the best approach to take. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it.

Our complaints procedure

We ask that you communicate your complaint to us in writing setting out your particular concerns. This helps us to understand your complaint and respond to it.

If you want to raise a complaint under this procedure please email Complaints@howardkennedy.com.

Alternatively, you can write to the lawyer with conduct of your matter or the supervising Partner and request your complaint be forwarded to Hinesh Mistry.

What will happen next?

  1. We will send to you an acknowledgement of your complaint within 3 working days of receipt and enclose a copy of this procedure. We will at that stage decide who is best placed to respond to your complaint. This may be the Head of Department. We will also record your complaint in our central register.
  2. We will then investigate your complaint. This may involve inviting you to a meeting to discuss your concerns.
  3. We will send you a reply to your complaint within 15 working days of receipt. If we are unable to respond to you within that time, we will inform you. The majority of matters are resolved at this stage. However, if you remain unhappy you are free to write to us again to set out your concerns.

If your complaint is not resolved to your satisfaction within 8 weeks or you remain dissatisfied after receiving our final complaint response, you have the right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman. 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.

We hope that this will not be necessary, but the Legal Ombudsman's contact details are as follows:

Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH

Telephone: 0300 555 0333

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

www.legalombudsman.org.uk

We will remind you of this right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman at the conclusion of our complaints process.

Where we are unable to resolve your complaint, you also have the option of contacting an alternative complaints body competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme.

We will inform you at the end of the complaints procedure whether we agree to the use of an alternative complaints body.

We are, of course, always glad to receive your comments on our service and to hear how we can help to improve it. Any complaint is always taken very seriously and if you do find cause for complaint you can be assured that it will be investigated thoroughly.

What to do if you are unhappy with our behaviour

If you have concerns about our conduct such as dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic you have the right to raise your concerns with our regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority. You can visit their website to see how to raise your concerns: visit SRA website here.