Our Complaints Policy

We are committed to provide a high-quality legal service to all our clients. If you think something has gone wrong, you should tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards. We find it often helps to make the issues clearer to both of us if you make your complaint. You may make a complaint in writing.

We will not charge you for handling your complaint. Please note that if we have issued a bill for work done on the matter and some or all of the bill is unpaid, we may still be entitled to charge interest on the amount outstanding.

Our Complaints Procedure

We will aim to deal with formal complaints in the following way and according to the following timescales.

If you have a complaint, please raise it with the person responsible for your matter. If this presents a particular difficulty for you, you may raise your complaint directly with Mr. Mohammad Azam by email at azam@worldwidesolicitors.com, or by post to Aztec House, A2, 461 High Road, Ilford, Essex, IG1 1TX.

If the complaint cannot be dealt with there and then, we will, within seven working days, acknowledge it in writing (which may be by email) and let you know who will be dealing with it. We may ask you to clarify your complaint or explain it in more detail.

Also, within ten working days of receiving your complaint or your clarification or further explanation of it, we will start to investigate your complaint. We may suggest a meeting with you.

Our investigation will usually involve reviewing your complaint; reviewing your file(s) and other relevant documentation; and other relevant documentation; and speaking with the person(s) who dealt with your matter.

We will aim to complete our investigation and respond to your complaint within 15 working days of the date of our letter of acknowledgement. This may include suggestions for resolving the matter.

If we need longer to complete our investigation and respond to your complaint, we will contact you again within this timescale to advise our position. If necessary, we will do this on a recurring 15 working day cycle until you have received our substantive response. In any event, we will provide you with our substantive response within eight weeks of receiving your complaint.

If you are not satisfied with our substantive response, you may pursue your complaint further with us. We may then arrange for someone else in the firm to carry out a review of your complaint and our response. This review is likely to be carried out by the Managing Director, if the Managing Director did not carry out the initial investigation of your complaint.

We will aim to carry out this further review and write to you with our further response within 15 working days (or explain the position to you, if this timescale cannot be met).

If you remain unhappy after our complaint’s procedure

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can also help you if you are concerned about our professional behaviour. You can contact them at www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page.

If you are still not satisfied, you can then contact the Legal Ombudsman as soon as possible but within 6 months of receiving a final response from us to your complaint and

No more than 6 years from the date of act/omission: or

No more than 3 years from when you should reasonably have known there was a cause for complaint

The contact details are:

www.legalombudsman.org.uk
Legal Ombudsman, PO BOX 6806
Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ
TEL: 0300 555 0333 between 9am and 5pm
Enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Alternative complaints bodies such as Ombudsman Services exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and this firm wish to use such a scheme, if the internal complaints process has not been able to settle your complaint.

The contact details are

Tel: 0333 300 1620
complaints@consumer-ombudsman.org
www.consumer-ombudsman.org

We would agree to use the Ombudsman Services or one of the other organizations identified as being competent to address complaints within the legal services sector (such as ADR Group or Pro Mediate).