COMPLAINTS

Our Complaints Policy

We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients and aim to offer exceptional client care, along with an efficient and effective service. When something goes wrong, or a client wishes to discuss any aspect of our service with which they are not completely satisfied or feel needs improvement, we would like to hear about it. This will help us to improve our standards.

Our Complaints Handler

In the first instance, we suggest that you raise any concerns with the person dealing with your case, who will try to help. If you are still unhappy with the service(s) you have received, or wish to raise a formal complaint, please contact Mr. Sajid Sheikh, the managing director of the firm;

Sajid Sheikh
204 Seven Sisters Road
London
N4 3NX
sajid@sentinelsolicitors.co.uk

Our Complaints Procedure

1. We will confirm how you wish to be contacted and formally acknowledge your complaint. We will ask you at this time to confirm or explain the details set out. We will also let you know the name and contact details of the person dealing with your complaint should they differ for any reason from our complaint’s handler. You can expect to receive our acknowledgement within two working days of us receiving your complaint.

2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint. We will do this within a day of acknowledging your complaint.

3. We will start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps:

    • We may ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within five days.
    • We may examine their reply and the information in your complaint file. We may then ask them for more information. This will take up to three days from receiving their reply and the file.

4. We will invite you to meet / discuss with our Managing Director Mr Sajid Sheikh to hopefully resolve your complaint. We will do this within three days of receiving all the details we need from the member of staff who acted for you.

5. Within two days of the meeting / initial discussion, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions we may have agreed with you.

If you do not want a meeting / discussion or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint at this stage. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within five days of us completing our investigation.

6. If you are still not satisfied you can contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:

    • Our Managing Director, Mr. Sajid Sheikh and/or the named complaints handler will review their own decision within five days.
    • We will arrange for another Senior Solicitor who has not been involved in your complaint to review it. They will do this within 10 days.
    • We will ask an independent, local firm of solicitors to review your complaint within five days should you give us permission to release your data to them. We will let you know how long this process will take.

7. We will let you know the result of the review within five days of the end of the review. At this time, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons; and any final redress that is offered.

Other Avenues

Clients must always try complaining to us first. In most cases they will not be able to take their complaint further without allowing us the opportunity to put things right.

Legal Ombudsman

We are permitted a minimum of eight weeks to consider the complaint. If for any reason we are unable to resolve the problem between us within that timeframe, then our clients are advised that they may ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint.

Clients are free to 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 the client having received a final written response from us about their complaint. Complaints to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within six years of the act or omission about which the client is complaining occurring; or within three years from when the client should have known about or become aware that there were grounds for complaint. The Legal Ombudsman will not accept complaints where the act or date of awareness was before 6 October 2010.

For further information, please contact the Legal Ombudsman on 0300 555 0333 or visit www.legalombudsman.org.uk. The Legal Ombudsman may be contacted at PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ.

Solicitors Regulation Authority

If someone thinks a solicitor might be dishonest or you have concerns about their ethics or integrity, they 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

Timescales / Further Information

If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.

For further information about our complaints handling procedure, please do not hesitate to contact Mr. Sajid Sheikh on 0207 100 3100 and sajid@sentinelsolicitors.co.uk or by post to 204 Seven Sisters Road, London, N4 3NX.