Complaint Procedure

 

Introduction

A complaint is any oral or written expression of displeasure with our people, business or the services we provide which has caused the complainant to suffer financial loss, distress, inconvenience or other detriment. Internal grievances are dealt with in individual contracts.

We are required to operate a complaint handling procedure. All clients are informed in their client care letter of the firm’s complaints procedure, and they are informed who to approach in the event of any problem with the service provided. All members of the staff must be aware of the procedure.

Complaints Handling Procedure

At the outset of any matter the client is informed in writing of their right to complain and how complaints can be made. Clients are also informed in writing, both at the time of engagement and at the conclusion of your complaints procedure, of their right to complain to the LeO, the time frame for doing so and full details of how to contact the LeO.

A client shall be provided with a Client Complaint Form if they request one or if they suggest that they have a grievance. All complaints must be referred to the Complaints Manager who is in overall charge of the complaints process.

 

Our Complaints Policy

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we want our clients to tell us about it. Every complaint will improve our standards and our aim is to reduce the risk of potential complaints in the future.

Our Complaints Procedure

If a client has a grievance, the first step is to offer a sincere apology. Whether or not you feel that you are to blame for the issue, our clients’ opinions are important and if they feel they have cause for a complaint then it is certain that we could have handled the situation better.

Secondly, see if we can solve their grievance quickly and efficiently. An example of this would be if a client feels we have not kept them up to date on a matter well enough. After offering an apology, we will give them a full update and explain when we will next contact you. We will ensure that this next contact happens as planned, and endeavour to ensure this continues throughout the retainer.

If a client suggests they have a complaint, or states that they would like to make a complaint, you will be provided with our Client Complaint Form which is easy for clients to use and understand.

What Will Happen Next

All Client Complaint Forms are forwarded to the Complaints Manager.

The Complaints Manager will open a separate file for the complaint and record the details in the Firm’s Complaint Management Form. This form will be kept at the front of the file. This must be done by the end of the day following receipt of the Client Complaint Form.

The Complaints Manager will then investigate the complaint, by asking the relevant members of staff to reply to the complaint or provide further details.

If necessary, the Complaints Manager will meet with the relevant members of staff to discuss the situation. The Complaints Manager will acknowledge the complaint within five working days from the date of receipt of the Client Complaint Form and will invite the complainant to a meeting to discuss the complaint and attempt to resolve it.

In any case the Firm will send a response to the complainant within eight weeks from the date of the complaint.

If the complainant is not able or does not want to attend a meeting, the Complaints Manager will explain in writing, and if possible, also by telephone, the outcome of their investigations and a suggestion for resolving the complaint.

If a meeting is held, the Complaints Manager will write to the complainant within two working days of the meeting, confirming the discussions that took place and any solutions that have been agreed.

A letter sent to the complainant at this stage will contain details of what to do if the complainant is still unhappy. The complainant will be asked to write a ‘secondary complaint letter’ to the firm explaining why they are unhappy with the conclusion.

The firm will then arrange for a review of the Complaints Manager’s decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:

Another Principal or senior member of staff will review the complaint, and if necessary, re- investigate the details of the complaint.

The local Law Society or another firm of solicitors will be asked to review the complaint. The Complaints Manager will ask the complainant to agree to independent mediation.

The Complaints Manager will write to the complainant within five working days of the conclusion of the review, detailing the outcome of the review, and what the firm’s final position is with regards to the complaint. This letter will contain details of the Legal Ombudsman, who should be contacted if the complainant is still not satisfied.

These details are:

Phone : 0300 555 0333 (Calls to the Legal Ombudsman cost the same as a normal 01 or 02 landline number, even from a mobile phone, and are recorded for training and monitoring purposes).

If you are calling from overseas, please telephone +44 121 245 3050.

Email at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Address is PO BOX 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH.

Complaints to the LeO

The Legal Ombudsman now 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 1 year of our final response to you.

Complaints to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)

The SRA deal with cases where firms or those they regulate have breached the SRA Principles.

Most of the time, complaints about solicitors are about poor service, and therefore should be sent to the Legal Ombudsman. If the Legal Ombudsman thinks your case involves a breach of our principles, they will refer your case to the SRA. Likewise, if you report a solicitor for poor service, the SRA will refer you to the Legal Ombudsman; read SRA’s Memorandum of understanding (PDF 5 pages, 143K) for more information on this arrangement.

The SRA do not have the power to award compensation for poor service, or to reduce or refund your legal fees.

However, you should report the matter directly to the SRA if you think a firm or anyone regulated by the SRA has breached an SRA Principle.

When reporting, please

  • set out your concerns clearly,
  • identify individuals you consider responsible,
  • attach any evidence you have in

For guidance on the complaints process, call SRA contact centre. https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/

Privacy Policy

 

  1. Who we are and our privacy policy

We take privacy seriously and we are committed to protecting it.

Mascot Solicitors is the data controller in relation to the processing activities described below. This means that we decide why and how your personal information is processed. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the UK regulator for data protection.

Our policy explains when and why we collect personal information about you, how this information is used and the conditions under which it may be disclosed to others and how it is kept secure.

This is our main privacy policy. We may, however, provide additional, specific privacy information to you as you interact with us in different ways (e.g. that we will only use certain information for specific purposes). To the extent that any of that information differs from what we say below, those specific statements will apply in those circumstances.

 

  1. Information we collect, how we use it, and how long we keep it for

We will only collect information about you if we have a lawful reason to do so. Lawful reasons include performing our contract (where you are our client), where we have a ‘legitimate interest’ (for example, if you are referred to in a matter on which we are advising), and where you have given your permission for us to use your personal information in a particular way (for example, marketing or training updates).

We may collect personal information about you for the following reasons.

2.1 Providing legal services

We use information about you to provide legal services to our clients (this, of course, may also be you). You may have given us this information or it may have been provided by someone else as part of their involvement in the matter.

The information that we hold and process about you will depend on the type of matter we are dealing with. It might simply be your name, address and email address, or may include other personal information such as your date of birth, sensitive personal information such as medical information (for example, if we are dealing with a personal injury case) or financial details (for example, if we are dealing with a property transaction).

We may also have to ask for information about your personal and financial circumstances to assess your ability to pay amounts due which we are instructed to collect or unpaid bills owed to us. This may be necessary to meet our responsibilities under court rules, other regulations and legislation and best-practice guidance issued by industry or professional organisations or to follow our clients’ policies or processes.

We normally keep original papers for six years after we have finished work on a matter, after which we will securely destroy them.

In some circumstances, the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 say that we have to collect proof of identity of our client and certain other people related to them. If we ask you for information for this purpose, we will only use the proof of identity and other personal information you give us as part of this process to prevent money laundering or financing terrorism, unless you later agree to us using it in a different way. We will hold this information for six years after the business relationship with our client ends.

2.2 Checking your identity

In some circumstances the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 say that we have to collect proof of identity of our client and certain other people related to them. If we ask you for information for this purpose, we will only use the proof of identity and other personal information you give us as part of this process to prevent money laundering or financing terrorism, unless you later agree to us using it in a different way. We will hold this information for six years after the business relationship with our client ends.

2.3 Marketing

If you have given us permission to do so, we may send you information promoting us and our services. This includes keeping you up to date with updates/news on topics you have opted to receive.

We will not share your information for marketing purposes outside of our company.

You can decide not to receive marketing communications or change how we contact you at any time. If you want to do so, please contact info@mascotsolicitors.co.uk.

If you ask us to not send you marketing emails, we will continue to hold enough information about you to maintain a record of your preference not to receive emails.

We tell other clients and potential clients in general terms (without revealing personal information) about the services we provide. Sometimes they ask for more details on specific examples. If we would like to give these people information specifically about you or the work we carry out for you, we will ask for your permission.

If you provided information by filling in the general enquiries form on our website, we will use that information to respond to your enquiry and to record and monitor enquiries.

2.4 Automated decision-making and profiling

Automated decision-making is where a decision is made about you by a computer system without any human involvement. Profiling is the automated processing of personal information to assess certain things about you. We do not use any automated decision-making systems and we do not profile individuals.

2.5 Recruitment

We will hold any information you have provided on a recruitment application form for recruitment purposes only. We will not pass that information to anyone else without your consent. If your application is unsuccessful, we will hold the information you give us for 12 months, after which time we will delete it.

2.6 Administration

We also use the information you give us for related purposes, such as:

  • meeting our legal and regulatory obligations;
  • keeping records;
  • analysing operational and financial systems; and
  • training and quality control.
  1. Who has access to your information

3.1 Our client

Our professional obligations mean that we have to share your information with our client if we collect it during the course of a matter we are advising them on.

If we are working with you and another person or organisation on the same matter, (for example, we are acting for your mortgage lender as well as you), or with you on behalf of a another person or organisation (for example, processing an insurance claim in your name on behalf of an insurer), we may have to share information you give us with the other person involved in the matter.

3.2 Third-party experts and suppliers

When providing our legal services we may need to share your information with:

  • other professional advisers, such as barristers or experts, who we may instruct to advise on our clients’ behalf or who are representing the other side in the case or transaction;
  • the court in matters relating to legal action; or
  • companies or people who carry out typing, photocopying, archiving or other non-legal tasks on our files, or who provide support such as finding missing people or serving court proceedings. All of our suppliers have entered into contracts with us that include terms which protect the information that they hold or process on our behalf.

3.3 Regulatory purposes and outsourcing

We may need to reveal information about you in other situations to other people, such as:

  • our auditors and the Solicitors Regulation Authority for audit, quality control and other purposes;
  • our insurers, whether or not you have made a claim against us;
  • our legal advisers; and
  • regulatory or tax authorities.

Like many businesses, we also outsource some of our computer systems to specialist providers. All of our specialist providers have entered into contracts with us that include terms which protect the information that they hold or process on our behalf.

  1. Cross-border transfers

In the normal course of doing business, we will not transfer any of your information outside of the EEA. However, if we need to use experts or lawyers in other countries, we make sure that appropriate protection is in place to transfer your information securely.

  1. Security precautions

We use a variety of physical and technical measures to keep your information available, safe from loss, accurate, and to prevent unauthorised access to it.

We store electronic data and databases on secure computer systems and control who has access to information (using both physical and electronic means). We use ‘the cloud’, which means that we store client information on servers which we do not own and which are not kept in our offices. We access these servers through secure connections. All of our cloud computing suppliers meet strict requirements for security and confidentiality.

Our staff receive data protection training and we have a set of detailed data protection policies which they must follow when handling personal information.

  1. Cookies and online analysis

Cookies are small text files that websites put on your computer so the site can remember who you are. They contain a unique, anonymous identifier, which is usually a string of letters or numbers.

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website, and also allows us to improve our site.

These cookies do not identify any person and are used only to track user experience so we can make improvements.

If you failed to choose one of the options when we gave you the cookie notice on entering this website, by continuing to use the site you agree to the way we use cookies.

  1. Your rights

You have the following legal rights.

  • The right to ask us to confirm whether we hold your personal information and, if we do, to get a copy of the information we hold. This is known as a ‘subject access request’. Exemptions, including legal privilege, could mean you may not be entitled to receive all the information we hold on you. We will tell you if there is any information we have not provided and the reason for doing this;
  • The right to have your information erased, although this may not apply if we need to continue to hold or use it for a lawful reason.
  • The right to move your information to another organisation in an electronically readable form.
  • The right to have inaccurate information corrected.
  • The right to object to your information being used for marketing.

Please keep in mind that there are exceptions to the rights above and, although we will always try to respond to your satisfaction, there may be situations where we are unable to do so.

  1. Complaints about how we handle your information

If you believe that we have broken your data protection or privacy rights, you can complain to us direct by contacting our Data Protection Officer using the details set out above.

If you are not happy with our response, or you want to contact the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which regulates and enforces data protection law in the UK, you can find details about how to do this at www.ico.org.uk. If you are unhappy about any other aspect of our service, you can find our complaints procedure here.

  1. Our information and how to contact us

We are a Private Limited Company incorporated in England and Wales. Our registered number is 11825472 and our registered office is at Suite 17, Wenta Business Centre, 1 Electric Avenue, Enfield, EN3 7XU. Our Trading name is Mascot Solicitors.

For the purposes of anything within this privacy notice, please write to us at Mascot Solicitors, Suit 17, Wenta Business Centre, 1 Electric Avenue, Enfield, EN3 7XU.

  1. Changes to this privacy notice

We may amend this privacy notice from time to time to make sure it is up to date and accurately reflects how and why we use your personal information. The current version of our privacy notice will always be posted on our website.