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.

If you have a complaint, please contact Mr Bhupendra Sankhla (Managing Director). You can contact him by post at Trinity House, 15a Trinity Place, SL4 3AS Windsor, or by email at bsankhla@applebyshaw.com

We will explain to you how long this process might take, including our target times for each stage of the process. If, for any reason, it is not possible to observe one or more of these limits, we will let you know and explain why.

What will happen next?

1. On receipt of your complaint, Mr Sankhla will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint. We aim to acknowledge your complaint within seven days of receiving it, and will complete our initial examination within a further 14 days.

2. We may 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 aim to write to you informing you of our views and any suggestions within seven days of completing our investigations.

3. 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 following 14 days, but there is no obligation on you to do so. We will then arrange to review our decision; we generally aim to do this within seven days of hearing from you. This is usually done by asking another Director in this firm to review the file that we have on your complaint, to see if they agree with our response.

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

5. You may, if you wish, approach the Legal Ombudsman, which provides a service examining complaints against lawyers, including firms of solicitors. The Ombudsman will usually expect us to have concluded our examination of your complaint within eight weeks, and that complaints are referred to them within six months of the end of our complaints-handling process as set out above. The services provided by the Legal Ombudsman are limited to individuals and smaller organisations – for more details, see their website. The contact details are as follows:

Telephone: 0300 555 0333
Minicom: 0300 555 1777
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk