A complaint is an oral or written expressions of dissatisfaction which alleges that the complainant has suffered (or may suffer) financial loss, distress, inconvenience, or detriment. A complaint can be initially raised in person or by telephone, although it does need to be followed by in writing. An e-mail is sufficient.

All complaints should be initially directed to your case handler who will write to you within 7 days to explain how your complaint will be investigated, if a complete response to your complaint has not been made by that time. You will be told the latest date by which a complete answer will be given to your complaint (this will not be more than four weeks after we received your complaint).

We aim to resolve any complaint you have about the service we have given you as quickly as possible. If you are unable to sort things out with the person who has been dealing with your file please contact the office and address matters for the attention of a Director.

The assessment of the complaint will be based upon a sufficient and fair investigation. We will explain in writing our findings and where the complaint is upheld will offer remedial action or redress. This will be actioned promptly.

If you are dissatisfied with any aspect of our handling of your complaint, please feel free to contact the Office Manager on complaints@chartahouse.co.uk who will conduct a separate review of your complaint. You will be told about the conclusion of this review within 28 days.

If after following the review process you remain dissatisfied with any aspect of our handling of your complaint, you may contact directly the Legal Ombudsman to ask them to consider the complaint further.

Tel no: 0300 5550333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6806 Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ

Unless it agrees there are good reasons not to do so, the Legal Ombudsman will expect you in the first instance to allow us to consider and respond to your complaint in accordance with the procedure set out above. You can also refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman if we have not resolved your complaint within 8 weeks after we received it. Normally you will have to bring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving a final response from us about your complaint and from 1 April 2023 you also need to refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within one year of the problem you are complaining about happening, or if the problem occurred more than one year ago, you need to bring your complaint to us within one year of you becoming aware of the problem. The Legal Ombudsman have strict time limits and if you fail to do so, it is unlikely that they will be able to investigate your complaint as they are only able to investigate complaints which fall outside their time limits where it is considered fair and reasonable to do so.

The date a complaint is referred cannot be before either we have issued our final response, or eight weeks have passed since the complaint was raised with us. After that, the date will be determined as either the date the Legal Ombudsman received a fully completed complaint form, or the complaint correspondence.

The Legal Ombudsman deals with service related complaints only; it will refer any conduct-related complaints it receives to the Council for Licensed Conveyancers.

If you make a valid claim against us for a loss arising out of work for which we are legally responsible, and we are unable to meet our liability in full, you may be entitled to claim from the Compensation Fund administered by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers of WeWork, 131 Finsbury Pavement, London EC2A 1NT telephone number 020 3859 0904 from whom details can be obtained.