We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). We are committed to high quality legal advice and client care and aim to offer all our clients an efficient and effective service. However, if you would like to discuss how our service could be improved, the level of your bill, or should there be any aspect of our service with which you are not satisfied, please contact Carly Horwell on 0116 262 8596, enquiries@dodds-solicitors.co.uk or by post to 32 Friar Lane, Leicester, LE1 5RA.

Carly Horwell is the partner in our firm responsible for responding to complaints.

After you have contacted Carly Horwell, our procedure for responding to complaints follows five steps.

Step One:
If you have not already done so, we will ask you to let us know the full nature of the problem.

Step Two:
Carly Horwell will write to you and acknowledge your complaint within five working days. In that letter, she will also confirm what will happen next in the complaints process.

Step Three:
Carly Horwell will then investigate your complaint by reviewing the matter file and speaking to the member of staff concerned. She will do this within five working days of acknowledging receipt of your complaint.

If, for some reason, the matter cannot be investigated in this timeframe, then Carly Horwell will write to you notifying you of a revised timescale and let you know the reason.

Once the investigation has been completed, Carly Horwell will invite you to a meeting to discuss your complaint; we hope that your complaint can be fully resolved at that meeting. The meeting will take place within fourteen days of the acknowledgement letter. After the meeting, Carly Horwell will write to you within five working days to confirm the discussion and the solution agreed upon.

If you do not want to, or are unable to, attend such a meeting (or the meeting is not necessary), we will be happy to send you a detailed, written response, including the proposed solution, within fourteen working days of sending the letter acknowledging receipt of the complaint.

Step Four:
If you are satisfied with our response following the above steps, that will be the end of the matter. However, if you are not satisfied, you will be invited to contact Carly Horwell again and she will arrange for Ashwin Topiwala, Senior Partner, to review the decision. He will write to you within fourteen days of receiving the request and his letter will set out  the firm’s final position in relation to the complaint, outlining the reasons and any final redress that is offered.

Step Five: Other avenues
Please complain to us, before you pursue other avenues. In most cases you will not be able to take your complaint further until you have allowed us the opportunity to put things right. However if, after hearing our response to your complaint, you are still not satisfied, you have two other options open to you.

Legal Ombudsman
https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/

If for any reason we are unable to resolve your complaint within eight weeks, then you may ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint.
You may refer any complaint about our work, fees or level of service but there are some conditions and time limits. Please be aware that any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint.

Complaints to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made either within one year of the act or omission about which you are complaining or within one year from when you should have known or become aware that there were grounds for complaint.

You can contact the Legal Ombudsman by telephone, post or email:
0300 555 0333
Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough SL1 0EH
enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Solicitors Regulation Authority
If someone thinks a solicitor might be dishonest or you have concerns about their ethics or integrity, you have the right to notify our regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). There are no time limits for making a report but there are limits on what the SRA will consider. Please note that the SRA is not able to deal with issues of poor service (complaints of this nature should instead be referred to the Legal Ombudsman). For further information about the SRA’s role, please contact the SRA or visit:
https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page#report

Further Information
For further information about our complaints handling procedures, please do not hesitate to contact Carly Horwell on 0116 262 8596, enquiries@dodds-solicitors.co.uk or by post to 32 Friar Lane, Leicester, LE1 5RA.