Complaints Procedure

We aim to provide you with excellent service during your experience with Frettens but if we have failed to provide you with the service you expected, we want to know so that we can continue to improve. If you do contact us with a complaint, we will investigate your concerns quickly so that we can offer an early resolution of the problem. You will not be charged for any work involved in investigating a complaint nor will your complaint prejudice the work we are doing for you in any way.

Please contact Catharine Snow, our Operations Manager, in the first instance. You can write to her at the address below, email her on csnow@frettens.co.uk or call her on 01202 499255. If Catharine is not available please contact Oonagh McKinney on omckinney@frettens.co.uk or call 01202 499255 for assistance.

What will happen next?

On receiving your complaint, we will record it in a central register and open a separate file for you. You can expect an acknowledgement of your complaint within 2 working days.

We will investigate your complaint which will involve a discussion between our Complaints Handling Partner, Oonagh McKinney and the person responsible for your matter.

Oonagh will send you a full response as soon as he has all the information necessary, or at least within 10 working days.
If you consider it necessary, you can request a meeting to discuss your complaint further and you will receive our final response from the outcome of that meeting within 5 working days.

If the complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction within 8 weeks of receipt of your written complaint you can refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman at the address below. The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with lawyers.

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 contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are:

Tel: 0300 555 0333

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.co.uk

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

You also have the right to make a report to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic.

To make a report see http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page or contact the SRA at Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN. Tel: 0370 606 2555