Our Complaints Procedure

DLG Legal Services has a procedure for dealing with complaints.  All complaints are referred by the person handling your case to their manager, who ensures that steps are taken so that the complaint will be recorded on our central register.  If the matter raised is not capable of immediate resolution by the operational team handling your claim, then the complaint will be referred to our Quality Assurance Team.  This is an independent team separate to the operational teams who have day to day responsibility for handling claims.  A member of this team will then investigate and respond to you. 

If the nature of the complaint involves points of specialist legal knowledge outside of our Quality Assurance Team’s ability to investigate, the complaint will be referred to an appropriate senior member of staff in the operational area to investigate and to provide an appropriate response.

Complaints that cannot be resolved at the initial stage can be escalated to our Complaints Manager and, ultimately, to the Legal Ombudsman if the complaint cannot be resolved within eight weeks of the initial notification to us.

What will happen next?

We will deal with your complaint as quickly as possible, but in any event in accordance with our internal standard for dealing with client communications.  Professional guidelines ensure the complaint process must be completed within eight weeks; however it is our aim to provide a response to your complaint as promptly as possible.  We will respond as follows:

1. We will acknowledge your complaint and contact you to ascertain whether we are able to address the matters raised to your satisfaction immediately and without further investigation.

2. If this is not possible we will provide you with confirmation that we are investigating your complaint and provide you with a timeframe detailing when you should expect to receive our substantive response.  In some circumstances (if the nature of the complaint is unclear or if your claim is particularly complex or has a long history) we may ask you to set out your concerns to us in writing, if you have not already done so.

3. After our investigation we will send you our substantive response to your complaint.  This will include suggestions for resolving the matter.

4. If you are still not satisfied at this stage you can write to us again.  Your complaint will then be escalated to the Complaints Manager, who will review your complaint.  Appropriate contact details are as follows:

The Complaints Manager 
DLG Legal Services Limited 
PO Box 1195, Churchill Court, 
Westmoreland Road, 
Bromley, Kent. 
BR1 9YG

5. When we have concluded our review, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.

6. If you are still not satisfied with our final response, you will then have the right to contact the Legal Ombudsman about your complaint.  The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within a year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within a year of you realising there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of our final response to you. The contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are:

Legal Ombudsman 
PO Box 6806 
Wolverhampton 
WV1 9WJ

Telephone: 0300 555 0333
Minicom: 0300 555 1777 
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk 
Email: [email protected]

Data protection regulations

Any personal data you have provided or will provide to us in the course of a complaint to enable us to effectively investigate the matter will be processed in compliance with the legal requirements of current data protection regulations and legislation including the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR requirements.

 

Complaints from third parties

Third parties are defined as ‘persons, including solicitors, who are not clients of the Firm’.  This may include your insurance company if we are acting for you on a claim funded by legal expenses insurance. Each complaint from a third party will be individually reviewed and appropriately responded to.  When dealing with third parties, our duty of confidentiality to our clients will remain of the utmost importance.