Terms of Website Use

This page (together with the documents referred to on it) tells you the terms of use on which you may make use of our website www.austinkemp.co.uk (“our site”), whether as a guest or a registered user.

Please read these terms of use and our privacy policy carefully before you start to use the site. By using our site, you indicate that you accept these terms of use and our privacy policy and that you agree to abide by them. If you do not agree to these terms of use, please refrain from using our site.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

 

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Information about Us

www.austinkemp.co.uk is a site operated by Austin Kemp Solicitors Limited (“We”). We are registered in England and Wales under company number 06818709 and have our registered office at St Andrew House, The Headrow, Leeds, LS1 5JW.

Austin Kemp and Austin Kemp Solicitors are trading names of Austin Kemp Solicitors Limited.

We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA number: 513203).

Our VAT number is 947907671.

We do not accept service by fax or email.

Accessing Our Site

Access to our site is permitted on a temporary basis, and we reserve the right to withdraw or amend the service we provide on our site without notice (see below). We will not be liable if for any reason our site is unavailable at any time or for any period.

From time to time, we may restrict access to some parts of our site, or our entire site, to users who have registered with us.

If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential, and you must not disclose it to any third party. We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms of use.

You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to our site. You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our site through your internet connection are aware of these terms, and that they comply with them.

Intellectual Property Rights

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our site, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.

You may print off one copy, and may download extracts, of any page(s) from our site for your personal reference and you may draw the attention of others within your organisation to material posted on our site.

You must not modify the paper or digital copies of any materials you have printed off or downloaded in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text.

Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of material on our site must always be acknowledged.

You must not use any part of the materials on our site for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors.

If you print off, copy or download any part of our site in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our site will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made.

Reliance on Information Posted

Commentary and other materials posted on our site are not intended to amount to legal advice on which reliance should be placed, and is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, a lawyer-client relationship. The impact of the law for any particular situation depends on a variety of factors; therefore, visitors to this site should not act upon any website information without seeking professional legal advice. We therefore disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by any visitor to our site, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents.

Our Site Changes Regularly

We aim to update our site regularly, and may change the content at any time. If the need arises, we may suspend access to our site, or close it indefinitely. Any of the material on our site may be out of date at any given time, and we are under no obligation to update such material.

Our Liability

The material displayed on our site is provided without any guarantees, conditions or warranties as to its accuracy. To the extent permitted by law, we, other members of our group of companies and third parties connected to us hereby expressly exclude:

• All conditions, warranties and other terms which might otherwise be implied by statute, common law or the law of equity.

• Any liability for any direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage incurred by any user in connection with our site or in connection with the use, inability to use, or results of the use of our site, any websites linked to it and any materials posted on it, including:

• • loss of income or revenue;
  • loss of business;
  • loss of profits or contracts;
  • loss of anticipated savings;
  • loss of data;
  • loss of goodwill;
  • wasted management or office time; and

whether caused by tort (including negligence), breach of contract or otherwise, even if foreseeable.

This does not affect our liability for death or personal injury arising from our negligence, nor our liability for fraudulent misrepresentation or misrepresentation as to a fundamental matter, nor any other liability which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

Information about You and Your Visits to Our Site

We are committed to preserving the privacy of all users of and visitors to www.austinkemp.co.uk. Please read the following Privacy Policy to understand how we use and protect the data that you provide to us.

By registering your interest in, or contracting with us from information on, or via, this site, you consent to the collection, use and transfer of data under the terms of this policy.

Data That We Collect From You

We may collect information about you from opt-in or registration options, e-mails or letters you send to us or telephone calls to us. This will include all or some of the following: your name, telephone and/or fax numbers and address.

Use of Your Information

Your data will enable us to supply the services you have requested. It will also enable us to bill you and to contact you where necessary concerning your relationship with us. We will also use and analyse the information we collect so that we can administer, support, improve and develop our business.

Disclosure of Your Data

The data you provide to us will be held on our computers in the UK and accessed by or given to our staff working within the UK. Those parties process information, invoices and payments and provide support services on our behalf. We will only disclose this information to third parties for the purposes of validating credit status. We will not transfer your data outside the EEA (European Economic Area).

If our business enters into a joint venture with or is sold to or merged with another business entity, your data may be disclosed to our new business partners or owners

Unless required to do so by law, we will not otherwise share, sell or distribute any of the data you provide to us without your consent.

Security and Data Retention

We employ security measures to protect your data from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage. We will retain your data for a reasonable period or as long as the law requires. We will keep data which we hold about you up to date.

Accessing and Updating

You are entitled to see the data held about you and you may ask us to make any necessary changes to ensure that it is accurate and kept up to date.

If you wish to do this, please contact us.

We are entitled by law to charge a reasonable fee for the administrative costs of complying with a request if it is manifestly unfounded or excessive, or if an individual requests further copies of their data.

Uploading Material to Our Site

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload material to our site, or to make contact with other users of our site, you must comply our content standards. You warrant that any such contribution does comply with those standards, and you indemnify us for any breach of that warranty.

Any material you upload to our site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary, and we have the right to use, copy, distribute and disclose to third parties any such material for any purpose. We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any material posted or uploaded by you to our site constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.

We will not be responsible, or liable to any third party, for the content or accuracy of any materials posted by you or any other user of our site.

We have the right to remove any material or posting you make on our site if, in our opinion, such material does not comply with our content.

A copy of our content standards is available upon request in the form of our Acceptable Use Policy.

Viruses, Hacking and other Offences

You must not misuse our site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack.

By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our site will cease immediately.

We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack, viruses or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material due to your use of our site or to your downloading of any material posted on it, or on any website linked to it.

Linking to Our Site

You may link to our home page, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it, but you must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists.

You must not establish a link from any website that is not owned by you.

Our site must not be framed on any other site, nor may you create a link to any part of our site other than the home page. We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice. The website from which you are linking must comply in all respects with our content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy.

If you wish to make any use of material on our site other than that set out above, please address your request to mail@austinkemp.co.uk.

Links from Our Site

Where our site contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources, and accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them.

Our Divorce Calculator

Our divorce calculator is not a substitute for expert legal advice. It is only intended to be an approximate guide. Your individual circumstances will affect the amount received and in some situations may require evidence. Austin Kemp Solicitors cannot be held responsible in any way for any reliance made on our calculator’s estimates.

By completing our divorce calculator online form you agree to our terms and conditions and privacy policy. Furthermore, you agree and provide consent to be contacted by Austin Kemp Solicitors, via telephone or email or text message, to discuss the contents of your completed form.  In the event you wish to withdraw your consent to be contacted, you must email us mail@austinkemp.co.uk  and confirm the same.

AskAustin

How we may contact you

By providing your contact details to Austin Kemp Solicitors, you agree and provide consent to be contacted via postal address, email or text message in order to discuss any matter with which you initially contacted us.  In the event you wish to withdraw your consent to be contacted, you must email us mail@austinkemp.co.uk  and confirm the same.

Jurisdiction and Applicable Law

The English courts will have exclusive jurisdiction over any claim arising from, or related to, a visit to our site although we retain the right to bring proceedings against you for breach of these conditions in your country of residence or any other relevant country.

These terms of use and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or their subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of England and Wales.

Variation

We may revise these terms of use at any time by amending this page. You are expected to check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we made, as they are binding on you. Some of the provisions contained in these terms of use may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on our site.

Code of Conduct

All solicitors are subject to rules and principles of professional conduct. The following link is to the relevant Code of Conduct that regulates Austin Kemp Solicitors: www.sra.org.uk.

Our 0845 862 5001 contact number

The cost of calling our 0845 862 5001 number is made up of two parts: an access charge going to your phone company, and a service charge set by the phone company of the organisation you are calling.

The service charge for calls to our 0845 862 5001 number is between £0.00 pence and £0.07 pence per minute.

You can find out the access charge for this number – which is the rest of the call cost – from your phone company.

Please note Austin Kemp Solicitors do not charge a fee for the use of this contact number.

Our Initial Consultation

Scope of Consultation

Our initial consultation is intended to discuss the current circumstances surrounding your case based on the information provided during the session.  Our expert solicitor will provide an indication of the steps likely required to achieve the desired outcome.  You may send up to 5 pages of documents in advance for the solicitor’s review, which should arrive before the appointment.

Consultation Fee

The fixed fee for a one-hour consultation is inclusive of VAT. This fee covers the telephone or video consultation only.

Subsequent Instruction

Should you formally instruct Austin Kemp following this consultation, the Consultation Fee will be deducted from your first invoice or applied to your account as a standing credit.

Limitations of Advice Provided

Advice given during the consultation is based solely on the information and documents available at that time and serves as an indication of potential steps required. Upon formal engagement and a comprehensive review of all documents and correspondence, the approach or advice may be subject to change.  Consequently, the consultation provides an indication of the likely route of action but does not guarantee any specific outcome.

Client Care Agreement

If formally instructed, the advice provided during the consultation will be confirmed in writing.  All work undertaken thereafter by Austin Kemp will be conducted in line with our client care retainer, which will outline the services, fees, and terms of our engagement.  For the avoidance of doubt, no work will be undertaken beyond the consultation unless a formal client care retainer agreement is signed.

By proceeding with the consultation, you confirm your understanding of and agreement with these terms.

 

Privacy Policy

When we collect and use information provided to us, or information about visitors to our website, we will do so in accordance with applicable data privacy laws.

This Privacy Policy explains how we use information that we obtain about you.

This Privacy Policy applies to your use of any of our services, including when you request information from us or engage our legal and other services, or as a result of your relationship with one or more of our clients, or where you apply for a job or work placement, or to any information collected from third parties.

This Privacy Policy also applies to our website www.austinkemp.co.uk

We may need to collect certain details from you through our online services if, for example, you want to sign up to our newsletter, enquire about our services, or apply for a job. Our online services may make use of cookies and similar technologies, as described in more detail below.

Our client confidentiality obligations are not addressed in this Privacy Policy but are instead described in our terms of business.

Use of Cookies

Our website uses cookies to better the users experience while visiting the website. Where applicable our website uses a cookie control system allowing the user on their first visit to the website to allow or disallow the use of cookies on their computer / device. This complies with recent legislation requirements for websites to obtain explicit consent from users before leaving behind or reading files such as cookies on a user’s computer / device.

Cookies are small files saved to the user’s computer’s hard drive that track, save and store information about the user’s interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server to provide the users with a tailored experience within our website.

Users are advised that if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from our website on to their computers hard drive they should take necessary steps within their web browsers security settings to block all cookies from our website and its external serving vendors.

Our website uses tracking software to monitor its visitors to better understand how they use it. This software is provided by Google Analytics which uses cookies to track visitor usage. The software will save a cookie to your computer’s hard drive in order to track and monitor your engagement and usage of the website, but will not store, save or collect personal information. You can read Google’s privacy policy here for further information:

www.google.com/privacy.html

Other cookies may be stored to your computer’s hard drive by external vendors when our website uses referral programs, sponsored links or adverts. Such cookies are used for conversion and referral tracking and typically expire after 30 days, though some may take longer. No personal information is stored, saved or collected.

Information Collection

We will collect personal information directly from you, from clients or from authorised representatives.  We may also collect personal information from third parties such as regulatory authorities, your employer, other organisations with whom you have dealings, government agencies, credit reporting agencies, recruitment agencies, information or service providers, publicly available records and the third parties described in the ‘Disclosure of your information’ section below.  We will handle any unsolicited information in accordance with law, including destroying or de-identifying such information where we are required to do so by law.

We may collect current and historical personal information including for example your name, contact details, identification, organisation, employment, positions held and enquiry/complaint details. We may also collect personal information about your other dealings with us and our clients, including any contact we have with you in person, by telephone, email or online.

Online Services

When you use our online services, we may collect the following:

a.       Information you provide by completing forms (this includes information you give us when registering for any of our online services, subscribing to our services, submitting material or requesting further services);

b.       Information you provide to us if you contact us, for example to report a problem with our online services or raise a query or comment; and

c.      Details of visits made to our online services including, but not limited to, the volume of traffic received, logs (including, where available, the IP address and location of the device connecting to the online services and other technical information and identifiers about the device and the nature of the visit) and the resources accessed.

Careers and Recruitment

If you apply for a job or work placement you may need to provide information about your education, employment, background and state of health.  Your application will constitute your express permission to our use of this information to assess your application and to allow us to carry out both recruitment analytics and any monitoring activities which may be required of us under applicable law as an employer.

We may also carry out screening checks (including reference, background, directorship, financial probity, identity, eligibility to work, vocational suitability and criminal and regulatory record checks) and consider you for other positions. We may exchange your personal information with academic institutions, recruiters, screening check providers, health service providers, professional and trade associations, law enforcement agencies, recruitment providers, referees and your current and previous employers. Without your personal information, we may not be able to progress considering you for positions with us.

Use of Information

We will use your information where it is necessary to fulfil our contractual obligations to you, or because you have asked us to do something before entering into a contract with you (such as provide you with a quotation), or, where it is necessary for us to do so to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, or where it is necessary to do so because we have, or a third party has, a legitimate interest in doing so (subject to any overriding interests, rights or freedoms of yours).

We will only use special categories of personal data (as defined by Article 9 of the General Data Protection Regulation) about you where it is necessary for the purpose of, or in connection with, any legal proceedings (including prospective legal proceedings), or for the purpose of obtaining legal advice, or for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending your legal rights, or where it is necessary for the purposes of employment and social security law. Special category data includes, but is not limited to, information about your health, ethnicity and your political or religious belief.

We will only process data concerning your criminal convictions, offences, related security measures, the alleged commission of offences by you, or proceedings for an offence committed or alleged to have been committed by you or the disposal of such proceedings, including sentencing, where it is necessary for the purpose of, or in connection with, any legal proceedings (including prospective legal proceedings), or for the purpose of obtaining legal advice, or for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending your legal rights.

By way of example, we will use information about you to do the following things:

a.       To carry out legal work for you in accordance with our agreement with you;

b.       To facilitate our internal business operations, including to manage risk and to fulfil our legal and regulatory obligations;

c.       To maintain and develop our relationship with you;

d.       To provide you, on an ongoing basis, that you request from us or that we believe may be of interest to you and to measure the popularity and effectiveness of services such as newsletters and seminars, in order to improve what we offer to you and other recipients;

e.       To ensure that content from our online services is presented in the most effective and secure manner for you and for your device and settings;

f.        For research, planning, service development, security or corporate governance or financial management;

g.       To maintain and update our records;

Under applicable data protection legislation, we have a duty of care to ensure that your personal information is accurate and up to date.  Therefore, please advise us of any changes to your information.

We will only retain your personal information for as long as is reasonably necessary in the circumstances. Personal information provided in connection with the provision of our legal services will be retained for no longer than fifteen years unless we agree otherwise with you.

Disclosure of your Information

We may, in providing our services and operating our business, allow certain service providers and other third parties to access your information.

In addition, we may exchange your personal information with third parties where:

a.       You have permitted us to share your personal information in this way;

b.       We are under a legal, regulatory or professional obligation to do so (for example, in order to comply with anti-money laundering requirements, a rule of law or an order of a court or tribunal) or in order to enforce or apply our terms of business or to protect the rights and interests, property, or safety of our firm, our clients or others;

c.       Where disclosure of your information is necessary for the purpose of legal proceedings, including prospective legal proceedings, or so that we can obtain legal or compliance advice, or so that we can otherwise establish, exercise or defend our legal rights, or where a claim to legal professional privilege could be maintained in legal proceedings in respect of any of your information we disclose to our lawyers;

d.       All, or substantially all our assets, or the assets of an associated firm, are merged with or acquired by a third party, or we expand or re-organise our business, in which case your personal information may form part of the transferred or merged assets or we may need to transfer your information to new entities or third parties through which our business will be carried out;

e.       It is relevant in the circumstances to disclose the information to our clients, your employer or place of business, your professional advisers and parties with whom we have co-promotional arrangements (such as jointly sponsored events);

f.        We provide anonymous statistical information about users of our websites and related usage information to reputable third parties, including analytics and search engine providers; or

g.       We use a third-party service provider to provide services that involve data processing, for example archival, auditing, reference checking, professional advisory (including legal, accounting, compliance, financial and business consulting), mailing house, delivery, technology, website, research, banking, payment, client contact, data processing, insurance, forensic, litigation support, marketing and security services.

Some of the third parties with whom we share personal information may be located outside of the United Kingdom and / or the European Economic Area. While such third parties will often be subject to privacy and confidentiality obligations, you accept that such obligations may differ from and be less stringent than the requirements of the UK’s privacy laws. In those cases, we are not responsible for imposing the laws of the UK and you may not be able to seek redress under the laws in that jurisdiction.

Security

The transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. We cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our online services; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will take reasonable steps to use procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. For example, if you communicate with us using email, you assume the risks that such communications between us are intercepted, not received, delayed, corrupted or are received by persons other than the intended recipient.

We take reasonable steps to hold information securely in electronic or physical form.  Our information security policy is supported by a number of security standards, processes and procedures and we store information in access-controlled premises or in electronic databases requiring logins and passwords. We require our third-party data storage providers to comply with appropriate information security industry standards. All partners and staff and third-party providers with access to confidential information are subject to confidentiality obligations.

Third Party Sites

In addition to our online services, which we control directly, we also use and provide links to websites which are controlled by third parties, which may include Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, where we have certain accounts and profiles.

If you use or follow a link to any of these third-party websites, please be aware that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we cannot accept any responsibility for their use of information about you.

Your Rights

You have a right to access personal data that we hold about you. This is referred to as a “subject access request”. We shall respond to subject access requests in accordance with the law, which usually means without delay but at the latest within one month.

Right to rectification – You have a right to have inaccurate personal data rectified or completed.

Right to erasure – You have a right to request that your personal data is removed from our records.

Right to restrict processing – You have a right to request the restriction or suppression of your personal data, subject to certain exceptions.

Right to data portability – You have a right to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes and to move, copy or transfer your data from our IT environment to another in a safe and secure way.

Right to object – You have a right to object to us using your data based on the legitimate interests of our business, or for direct marketing (including profiling) purposes.

Invoking your rights – If you would like to invoke any of the above data subject rights with us, please write to Austin Kemp, St Andrew House, The Headrow, Leeds, LS1 5JW.

All of the rights above do not apply to information about you that we are obliged by law or by an order of a court or tribunal to disclose, to the extent that any exercise of those rights by you would prevent any such disclosure. This means, for example, that we may refuse to erase information about you if we may need to disclose that information to a court, a regulatory body, a statutory complaints body, or to law enforcement authorities.

All of the rights above do not apply to information about you where disclosure of that information is necessary for the purpose of, or in connection with, legal proceedings (including prospective legal proceedings) or for the purpose of obtaining legal advice, or otherwise for the purposes of establishing, exercising or defending legal rights. This means, for example, that we may refuse to stop using information about you if we need to use it to defend our own legal rights.

We may send you marketing materials relating to our services by email or post.  If, at any time, you would prefer to stop receiving newsletters and updates from us, please use the “unsubscribe” option included in the email or other material or alternatively send an email to mail@austinkemp.co.uk.

Accuracy of information – In order to provide the highest level of customer service possible, we need to keep accurate personal data about you. We take reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of any personal data or sensitive information we obtain. We ensure the source of any personal data or sensitive information is clear and we carefully consider any challenges to the accuracy of this information. We also consider when it is necessary to update this information, such as name or address changes and you can help us by informing us of these changes when they occur.

Status of this Policy

Your provision of personal information to us constitutes your acceptance of the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Technologies and information governance practices are constantly developing.  We may therefore need to revise this Privacy Policy in future.  You should therefore review this page, as a copy will be placed on our website, regularly to ensure that you are aware of any changes to its terms.

Further Information

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or want to submit a written complaint about how we handle your personal information, please contact us or you may submit a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), you can contact them on 01625 545745 or 0303 123 1113.

If you make a privacy complaint, we will respond to let you know how your complaint will be handled. We may ask you for further details, consult with other parties and keep records regarding your complaint.

 

Complaints Procedure

If you have any concerns about our service, our work, or our charges, you should discuss these first with the individual who has day-to-day control of your matter.

If this person cannot satisfactorily address your concerns and you wish to make a complaint, please contact our Designated Complaints Handler, Mr Amandeep Kooner, Managing Director/Solicitor.

You can write to him at St Andrew House, The Headrow, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS1 5JW or send an Email to amandeep.kooner@austinkemp.co.uk.

Step One: Acknowledging your Complaint

Within two working days of receiving your complaint, your complaint will be recorded in our Complaints Register and a separate file will be opened in which we will store any correspondence and other documents relating to your complaint. Within two working days we will also send you a letter acknowledging your complaint.

Step Two: Investigating your Complaint

Within five working days of receiving your complaint, we will review your file(s) and any other relevant documentation and send you a letter telling you how we propose to deal with your complaint. Examples of what we might say in this letter are as follows:

• If your complaint is straightforward we might make suggestions as to how we can put things right or we may offer you some form of redress;
• If your complaint is more complicated we might ask you to confirm, explain or clarify any issues;
• We may ask to meet with you to discuss things face-to-face and we would hope to be in a position to meet with you no longer than fourteen working days after first receiving your complaint. If you would prefer not to meet, or if we cannot arrange this within an agreeable timescale, we will write to you fully setting out our views on the situation and making suggestions as to how we can put things right, or asking you to confirm, explain or clarify any issues. Within three working days of any meeting, we will write to you again to confirm what took place and to confirm any offer of redress that we have made.

Whichever form our investigation takes, we will aim to give you our final decision within six weeks of receiving your complaint (or sooner if possible).

Step Three: Appealing against our Final Decision

If you are not satisfied with our final decision, please let us know and we will review our decision again. We will let you know the result of any appeal within five working days of receiving your appeal.

Step Four: The Legal Ombudsman

If you are still not satisfied, you can then contact the Legal Ombudsman about your complaint provided you do so within six months of the end of our Internal Complaints Handling Procedure.

In addition, there are time limits relating to the date you first became aware or should have become aware of the problem. The relevant time limits are set out in the version of the Legal Ombudsman’s Scheme Rules in force from time to time (which can be accessed at: http://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/downloads/documents/publications/Scheme-Rules.pdf or by contacting the Legal Ombudsman using the contact details provided below) and may only be extended by the Legal Ombudsman in exceptional circumstances.
Ordinarily, you cannot use the Legal Ombudsman unless you have first attempted to resolve your complaint using our internal Complaints Handling procedure, but you will be able to contact the Legal Ombudsman if:

• The complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction within eight weeks of first making the complaint to us; or
• The Legal Ombudsman decides that there are exceptional reasons why the Legal Ombudsman should consider your complaint sooner, or without you having to use our internal Complaints Handling Procedure first; or
• The Legal Ombudsman considers that your complaint cannot be resolved using our internal Complaints Handling Procedure because the relationship between you and us has broken down irretrievably.

If you wish to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman you must be one of the following:
• An individual;
• A micro-enterprise as defined in European Recommendation 2003/361/EC of 6 May 2003 (broadly, an enterprise with fewer than 10 staff and a turnover or balance sheet value not exceeding €2 million);
• A charity with an annual income less than £1 million;
• A club, association or society with an annual income less than £1 million;
• A trustee of a trust with a net asset value less than £1 million; or
• A personal representative or the residuary beneficiaries of an estate where a person with a complaint died before referring it to the Legal Ombudsman.

If you are not, you should be aware that you can only obtain redress by using our Complaints Handling Procedure or by mediation or arbitration, or by taking action through the Courts.
Complaints (such as reporting someone’s behaviour) may also be made directly to the SRA. See www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page for more details.

Legal Ombudsman Contact Details
Address: PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Alternative Dispute Resolution

Alternative complaints bodies, such as ProMediate UK Ltd (www.promediate.co.uk) exist and are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and this firm wish to use such a scheme. We do not agree to use the scheme operated by ProMediate UK Ltd as we believe the Legal Ombudsman is better equipped to resolve complaints against legal firms.

Your Concerns

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