Client care is very important to us and we always aim to provide an effective, efficient and good value service. If you have concerns or you become unhappy at any point about the service we are providing to you, please advise us as soon as possible so that we can do our best to resolve matters.

In the first instance, it is likely to be most beneficial to raise this with your main contact within the business. If this isn’t possible or doesn’t resolve things, then please follow the steps set out in this policy in order for us to fully address matters.

You will not be charged for our time in dealing with your complaint.

If you have a complaint about our service or our bill/fees which you haven’t been able to resolve by talking to the person who has been carrying out work on your behalf, please contact our Managing Director, Michaela Hardwick.  You can do this by writing to her at Beyond Compliance Limited, Suite One, 1 Halesowen Road, Halesowen, West Midlands B62 9AA, by calling her on 0121 288 5227 or emailing michaela@beyond-compliance.co.uk.

What will happen next?

  1. We will either call you or send you a letter acknowledging your complaint within 3 days of receiving your complaint, asking you to confirm or explain the details set out. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint.  We will confirm any discussion in writing.
  2. We will pass your complaint to our Managing Director, Michaela Hardwick, who will record your complaint in our central register and open a separate section in that register for your complaint. We will do this within 2 days of receiving your complaint. If your complaint is about Michaela Hardwick and the matter cannot be resolved directly with her, please let us know and we will nominate an independent solicitor,  barrister or mediator to consider your complaint. 
  3. We will investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps:
    • We may pass your complaint to the member of staff who carried out your work (and/or their immediate supervisor, if appropriate) to obtain an explanation from them to your complaint within 7 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 3 days from receiving the reply and the file.
    • As part of this process, we may wish to discuss matters with you so that we can be sure that we have the correct understanding of your concerns or if we believe that this could speed up the resolution of your complaint.
  4. Within 4 days of completing the investigation, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include suggestions for resolving the matter.
  5. Once you’ve considered our reply, if you are still not satisfied you should contact us again. We will arrange to review our decision. We will ask another supervisor in the business or an independent solicitor,  barrister or mediator to review the complaint and the suggestions for resolution within 14 days.
  6. We will let you know the result of the review within 5 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. 

If we need to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why. In any event the entire complaints process will not take longer than 8 weeks.

The Legal Ombudsman

If your work was carried out by Michaela Hardwick and/or your complaint is about her, then as a solicitor, she falls under the Legal Ombudsman scheme.

In such situations, if we are unable to resolve the complaint with you then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman investigates problems about poor service from lawyers. Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first. If you have, then you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

  • within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint; and
  • no more than six years from the date of act/omission; or
  • no more than three years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman please contact them on the following:

Web:     www.legalombudsman.org.uk  
Call:       0300 555 0333 between 9am to 5pm.
Email:    enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Post:    Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ

More information concerning the Legal Ombudsman can be found on the Solicitors Regulation Authority website:

https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/

Regulatory matters

Whilst the Legal Ombudsman will look independently at complaints about Michaela Hardwick, if you believe she has behaved in a way which would breach the rules governing solicitors, then you can ask the Solicitors Regulation Authority to investigate. You can find out more here: https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/

Alternative dispute resolution

Alternative complaints bodies, such as Promediate http://www.promediate.co.uk/) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our company wish to use such a scheme. We agree to use Promediate in relation to complaints relating to Michaela Hardwick.