COMPLAINTS POLICY

Our aim is always to give all our clients good service. However, when something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it as soon as possible. This Policy sets out the process for making a complaint about a Member of Chambers or Chambers employee relating to a matter on which a Member of Chambers has acted or is acting for you or in relation to any dealings you have had directly with Chambers. It applies to all third parties, including clients, solicitors, mini-pupils and service providers. Please be assured that your complaint will be dealt with promptly, fairly and free of charge.

It is not necessary to involve solicitors to make your complaint, but you are free to do so should you wish.

Initial concerns relating to a Barrister

In most cases, if your concerns relate to the services of a Barrister working on a matter for you, we hope that an informal chat with the Barrister will resolve your concerns.

If it does not or you do not wish to speak to the Barrister about your concern, you can speak informally to someone other than the Barrister or proceed directly to make a formal complaint. Please see below for how to escalate your complaint.

Concerns relating to an Arbitrator

Arbitrators’ roles are different to that of a Barrister and some of them are not regulated by the Bar Standards Board. If you have a professional complaint about an Arbitrator, then you may seek to resolve this with the tribunal or relevant institution responsible for the arbitration. If you have outstanding concerns about an Arbitrator you may contact our CEO and where appropriate we can deal with formal complaints.

Initial concerns relating to Chambers employees

Please see below for the process to follow for informal and formal complaints that relate to all other individuals who are not Barristers or Arbitrators.

Whom to contact

If you wish to speak informally to someone other than the Barrister responsible for your matter, please call the appropriate person below via the main switch board (0207 842 1200):

• Concern about a Barrister, Arbitrator, Pupil, Practice Management Team or Employee: Jemma Tagg, CEO
• Concern about CEO or Head of Chambers: Charles Kimmins KC (Co-Head of Chambers) or, if the concern relates to Charles Kimmins KC, Philip Edey KC (Co-Head of Chambers)

If you wish to make a formal complaint (including where an informal discussion has not resolved matters), please do so in writing by email to the relevant person indicated above using the email address below:

• Jemma Tagg, CEO: jtagg@twentyessex.com
• Charles Kimmins KC (Co-Head of Chambers): ckimmins@twentyessex.com
• Philip Edey KC (Co-Head of Chambers): pedey@twentyessex.com

Timing

You should speak to someone to express any concerns you have or make a formal written complaint as soon as possible after the relevant events. If you raise your concerns informally and they are not resolved to your satisfaction, you will be invited to make any formal complaint within 14 days. Any formal complaint made more than 6 months after the relevant events may well be much more difficult to investigate fairly due to the passage of time.

What we need to know

To deal with your formal complaint correctly, it would be helpful when writing to us if you could provide the following information:

• Your name, contact details and preferred contact method
• Date of the complaint
• The name of the Barrister or employee about whom you are complaining
• Case reference number (if known and relevant)
• Details of your complaint
• How you would like us to put things right

What will happen next?

If you telephone us, we will endeavour to resolve the issue in that call or within an agreed timeframe. If your concerns are addressed to your satisfaction, we will make a record of that and keep a copy of this on our complaints file.

If you make a formal written complaint, we will acknowledge receipt of your complaint in writing within two working days of receiving it.

A panel will then be convened by Charles Kimmins KC (or Philip Edey KC if the complaint relates to Charles Kimmins KC), which will be made up of one or more members of Chambers and, where appropriate, a senior employee, none of whom will be the subject of the complaint. The panel will inform you in writing of their appointment within 7 days and the timeframe within which they aim to respond to your complaint, which will normally be within 5 weeks of their appointment. They will then conduct an investigation into the issues raised. This may involve asking you for further information and speaking to the Barrister or employee who is the subject of the complaint. The panel will then send you a detailed reply which sets out its findings and any action plans or proposed resolutions within the timeframe indicated.

If this reply does not resolve your concerns to your satisfaction, you can, within 14 days of receipt of the reply, ask in writing for the initial decision to be reviewed. A review panel will then be convened by Charles Kimmins KC (or Philip Edey KC if the complaint relates to Charles Kimmins KC) comprised of one or more senior members of chambers who are not the subject of your complaint and who have not had any dealings with your matter thus far. The review panel will not reinvestigate the facts but will confine itself to considering the original panel’s proposed resolution of the complaint in light of the facts set out by it. The review panel will then write to you within 2 weeks of receiving your written request for a review of the original decision, confirming Chambers’ final position on your complaint and explaining its reasoning.

If we have to change any of these timescales, we will let you know, explain why and seek your agreement before proceeding.

Complaints to the Bar Standards Board

We hope that you will use our internal complaints process set out in this document. However, if your complaint is not about a Barrister who is working for you or has worked for you and either you prefer not to use our internal complaints process or your complaint is not resolved using our internal complaints process, you may be able to raise your complaint with the Bar Standards Board, depending on the nature of the complaint. (Please note that chambers may not be the best placed to deal with your complaint if it relates to misconduct. If we feel this is applicable to your complaint, then we will refer you to the BSB or make the referral ourselves. We will keep you informed when this is recommended.) The BSB can only investigate where a Barrister may have broken the rules of their professional duties set out in the BSB Handbook.

Contact details for the Bar Standards Board are as follows:

Bar Standards Board
289-293 High Holborn
London, WC1V 7HZ
Tel: 0207 6111 444
Web: www.barstandardsboard.org.uk

You can visit the ‘Reporting Concerns’ page of their website for more details of the sort of complaints the Bar Standards Board will consider and how you can raise your concerns.

Complaints to the Legal Ombudsman

If you have exhausted our internal escalation process yet remain dissatisfied, or a period of 8 weeks has expired since we acknowledged your complaint without our final response being received, you are entitled to refer a complaint relating to a Barrister who is working or has worked for you to the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman will look at the complaint independently and any investigation by them will not affect how we manage your case if our review is ongoing.

The Legal Ombudsman can only look at complaints about the service our Barrister has given you. If the Legal Ombudsman reviews your complaint and thinks that it includes concerns about their conduct and professional obligations they may refer your complaint to the BSB.

Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check:

• you have tried to resolve the complaint with us in the first instance and
• you have suffered significant financial loss, distress, inconvenience or detriment, which deems it proportionate for them to investigate.

We will always be happy to discuss your issues further, prior to you going down this route, if you wish to do so.

For complaints about our service, including billing issues, you may contact the Legal Ombudsman via one of the methods below:

Phone: 0300 5550333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Post: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV19 9WJ

Any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within 6 months of the date of our final written response to your complaint. You should also be aware that the Ombudsman will consider your complaint if you refer it on to them within either of the following:

• one year from the date of the act or omission being complained about OR
• one year from the date when you should reasonably have known that there was cause for complaint.

The Ombudsman has discretion to extend the one-year time limit for specific customers if, on the evidence, it is fair and reasonable to do so.

Note that the Legal Ombudsman service cannot be used by businesses or most other organisations unless they are below certain size limits. Further details are available from the Legal Ombudsman’s website.

It is worth considering that whilst it is open to you to submit a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, they apply strict criteria to determine whether they will accept a complaint for a full investigation. They have the discretion to dismiss or discontinue all or part of a complaint if they believe:

• it does not have any reasonable prospects of success.
• you have not suffered (and are unlikely to suffer) significant financial loss, distress, inconvenience, or detriment.
• it is frivolous, vexatious, lacks merit or where there is a compelling reason not to accept it.
• the impact, size, complexity, scope, volume of evidence or your conduct render it disproportionate/unreasonable/impossible for the complaint to be investigated.
• you have previously complained about the same issue to them, unless you provide material evidence that is likely to affect the outcome which only became available to you after you submitted the original complaint.
• there has been undue delay in the complaint being raised.

Also note:

• If, during the course of an ongoing investigation by the Ombudsman, a revised/increased offer is made by us which is deemed to be fair and reasonable redress and you decide to reject that offer, the Ombudsman has the discretion to dismiss or discontinue all or part of your complaint.
• If you have already accepted an offer to settle your complaint made by us during our internal complaint handling process, which is deemed to be fair and reasonable redress, unless there has been some significant intervening act, you will not be able to have that agreement overturned in the hope of securing a preferential outcome by pursuing your complaint via the Ombudsman.

For more information on the Legal Ombudsman’s rules and requirements, please see their Scheme Rules dated April 2023. Please visit here to access decision data from the Legal Ombudsman.

Complaints by non-Clients

Please note that where a complaint relates to the conduct of a Barrister in relation to litigation where they are not acting or did not act for you, it will generally not be appropriate for us to consider that complaint This is because the ability of Chambers to satisfactorily investigate and resolve such matters is limited. In addition, we may disclose information provided by you as part of any such complaint to the Barrister or their instructing solicitor. Complaints raised by someone who is not a client are therefore often better suited to the disciplinary processes maintained by the Bar Standards Board.

In the circumstances, Chambers will make an initial assessment of all complaints made by non-clients, including opponents, and if it is considered that the issues raised cannot be satisfactorily resolved through Chambers’ complaints process, you will be notified, and you may seek to refer the matter to the Bar Standards Board.

Contact details for the Bar Standards Board are set out above, under ‘Complaints to the Bar Standards Board’.

What to do if your complaint remains unresolved

If a complaint cannot be resolved, you may also be able to ask for it to be referred to a process of alternative dispute resolution using a certified provider. (The Chartered Trading Standards Institute provides a list of approved alternative resolution entities.) We are not required to agree to such a request. In any case this is not available to businesses, only consumers. We will give you more information about that right if it becomes relevant.

Confidentiality

All conversations and documents relating to the complaint will be treated as confidential and will be disclosed only to the extent that we consider it to be necessary. Disclosure will generally be to the Head(s) of Chambers, CEO, members of our management committee, our Equality and Diversity Officers and to anyone involved in the complaint and its investigation. Such people will include the Barrister member or employee who you have complained about. We may also share information relating to a complaint about a Barrister member with their instructing solicitor and we may be required to report certain matters to the Bar Standards Board. Further, the Bar Standards Board is entitled to inspect the documents and seek information about the complaint when discharging its auditing and monitoring functions.

Document retention

As part of our commitment to client care we make a written record of any informal or formal complaint and retain all documents and correspondence generated by the complaint for a period of six years. Our management committee will review anonymised reports of our complaints with a view to improving services.

 

Last updated September 2024