Complaints Procedure

Our firm prides itself on giving our clients the very best level of service. If at any point you become unhappy with the service, we provide to you then please inform us immediately so that we can do our best to resolve the problem for you. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman.

The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with solicitors’ firms. 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.

The formal procedure is as follows:

Please address any problems or concerns firstly to the person handling your case and they will endeavour to resolve this.
If you remain dissatisfied, please contact the supervisor of the person handling your matter, details of which can be found in your client care letter.
If you are not happy with the response, please contact our Office Management at Birstall Myers Solicitors, 1148 Rochdale Road, Blackley, Manchester, M9 6FQ or call 0161 637 0520 and we will do our utmost to resolve your concern.
At this stage, we will provide a substantive response to you as soon as we have had the opportunity to review the nature of the complaint and in any case within 8 weeks.
If you are not satisfied with the final response and we have been unable to settle you complaint, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman 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 or within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint.
Alternative complaints bodies such as Ombudsman Services https://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.
Please note the Legal Ombudsman rules below on time limitations.

The Legal Ombudsman will usually look into complaints if the following apply:

You may find the contact details for the Legal Ombudsman below:

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Legal Ombudsman,
PO Box 6167
Slough,
SL1 0EH
Phone contact: 0300 555 0333

Finally, you can take your complaint to our governing and regulatory body, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), who provide a complaints system in the event that we are unable to resolve your concerns, which includes Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
The SRA will deal with complaints in relation to a breach of the SRA principles and Code of Conduct for Solicitors and Firms and complaints can be made at any point during the transaction.

More information can be found here on how to make a report:

Click for more information of SRA