Treating Clients Fairly: Service Standards, Concerns and Complaints

Policy Statement

At Crown & Mehria Solicitors we are fully committed to providing the highest standards of advice and service to our clients by working in partnership with them.

Our clients are our most valuable asset and our aim is to ensure that we deliver a client-friendly, robust, reliable and cost-effective legal service to them.

Crown & Mehria Solicitors is well known in the immigration, asylum, human rights and UK Nationality Law sectors, where we are recognised as a small, but very client focused Firm offering a quality service at a sensible price. We strive to build trusted relationships with all of our clients.    We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and our Treating Clients Fairly Policy is designed to ensure that we consistently deliver fair outcomes to our clients in line with the SRA’s Code of Conduct.

We are committed to promoting equality and diversity in all our dealings with clients, third parties and employees. We are signatories to the Law Society’s Diversity and Inclusion Charter and we are committed to the Charter and all of its Principles.

Our Services

In delivering our commitment to Treat Clients Fairly, Crown & Mehria Solicitors makes every effort to ensure that our clients are totally satisfied with the legal service they receive and we endeavour to:

  • work with all clients in an equitable and non-discriminatory manner
  • offer a fixed fee on work without an hourly rate and make the client aware of all fees and potentialities for increases
  • offer flexible and reasonable payment terms
  • ensure accessibility to the client, working around their needs
  • communicate file updates regularly and clearly, always returning any phone calls on the same day
  • handle all cases with a high degree of technical competency and expert legal knowledge
  • give all clients the opportunity to provide feedback on the service they have received
  • respect the client’s wishes and beliefs
  • operate our complaints handling procedure in an open and fair way, ensuring that clients are aware of their rights to complain to the Legal Ombudsman

Our Approach

Our priority is to provide our clients with an excellent service underpinned by the quality of our advice. We are committed to ensuring that our clients want to use our services, stay with us and recommend us to their business colleagues and acquaintances, families and friends.

Our service is shaped by listening to our clients’ needs and understanding what is important to them. We take responsibility for meeting the needs of our clients and always look for ways to improve the quality of our service. We operate a rigorous file review system as part of our internal audit procedures as well as regularly conducting client surveys to ensure that we consistently enhance the service levels for the client.

We recognise that our employees are critical to delivering a positive client experience and ensuring our clients are treated fairly. All of our employees are fully trained in dealing with our clients and in treating them fairly.

 

CONCERNS AND COMPLAINTS

We seek to provide you with the highest standard of service, however if at any point you become unhappy or concerned about the service we have provided, then you should inform us immediately, so that we can do our best to resolve the problem.

In the first instance, it may be helpful to contact Ashfaq Altaf to discuss your concerns and he will do his best to resolve any issues at this stage. If, however, you would like to make a formal complaint, then you can read our full complaints procedure . Making a complaint will not affect how we handle your case.

 

What to do if we cannot resolve your complaint

The Legal Ombudsman can help you if we are unable to resolve your complaint ourselves through our own complaint process. They will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case.

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 a cause for complaint

The contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are:

Visit: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Call: 0300 555 0333 between 9am and 5pm

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about any aspect of our professional behaviours, which could include discriminating against you because of your age, disability or other characteristic or not accounting to you for monies provided to us for the conduct of your matter.