Complaints & Policies

Registered address: 1711 London Road, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex SS9 2SW.

Giles Wilson Law Limited is a private limited company registered in England and Wales under registration number 13654811. The firm’s registered office is 1711 London Road, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, SS9 2SW. A list of Members of Giles Wilson Law Limited is available for inspection at the registered office. Giles Wilson Law Limited is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority with SRA number 833572.

For more information about the SRA and their regulatory role in England and Wales please visit www.sra.org.uk

The COLP has overall responsibility for managing the website.

The responsibilities include:

• ensuring content is up to date
• approving and monitoring content
• ensuring the website complies with legal and regulatory requirements
• overseeing linking arrangements
• ensuring posting of a privacy notice explaining how any data collected from visitors will be managed by the practice.

The COLP and the partners and senior solicitors offer regular guidance to staff at Storm Creative with regard to appropriate content creation. All content, even if it is generated by a member of Giles Wilson initially, must pass through the following approval process to ensure that all content placed on the website is permitted and appropriate. First a hard copy is signed off by a partner or senior member of the law firm, this is then proofread in-house by Storm Creative before being added to the website, finally the programmed version is signed off again by a member of Giles Wilson. Only once content has passed these three stages of approval is it put live.

All website content, apart from the blog, is hard coded and cannot be accessed or edited via a Content Management System.

The COLP will review this policy annually, or when new legislation is applicable.

Giles Wilson takes the protection of confidential data very seriously. So much so that the website does not store any user or client information whatsoever. The website is hosted on a secure server provided by a leading UK hosting company and managed by Storm Creative. Hosting comes with a 100% network uptime SLA to ensure constant access of the Giles Wilson website to the public. The server itself is protected by a Cisco ASA Firewall and can only be accessed (and therefore edited) via encrypted password.

All access to the website and its server is handled by Storm Creative who will only make changes with the approval of firm partners or senior solicitors. This includes access to the website’s blog – the only section of the website that is managed by a CMS. This means that none of Giles Wilson’s staff, past or present, have the ability to make changes to the site without going through Storm Creative and attaining partner sign-off first.

Monitoring of the firm’s online presence is also handled by Storm Creative through the firm’s digital marketing retainer. This includes daily notifications of any mention of the firm’s name anywhere online, as well as monitoring of reviews and Google listings on a monthly basis.

Giles Wilson’s website is made accessible to visually impaired clients through the ability to increase text size and use a white-on-black colour contrast display. Usability has also been considered in order to provide the most simplified user experience possible. This includes the ability to access any page of the website from the navigation bar or the footer, and the use of breadcrumbs throughout the website.

The names “Giles Wilson” and “Giles Wilson Solicitors”, when accompanied by the GW logo, are trademarks of Giles Wilson Law Limited. The contents of this website are protected by copyright under English law.

Users are permitted to read the contents of this website and make copies of such content for their own personal use. They may also give copies to colleagues for their personal use on terms that Giles Wilson Law Limited is acknowledged as the source.

This website may contain hyperlinks to websites operated by other parties. Giles Wilson Law Limited is not responsible for examining or evaluating them and their inclusion does not imply endorsement of their content.

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.

Our complaints procedure

If you have a complaint, please contact us with the details. In the event that you wish to make a complaint about how your personal data is being processed by Giles Wilson Law Limited (or third parties as described above), rather than case management, you have the right to lodge a complaint directly with Giles Wilson Law Limited’s Data Protection Manager and ultimately the Information Commissioner’s Office (and/or The Legal Ombudsman).

The details for each of these contacts are:

GW Data Protection Manager
Giles Wilson Law Limited
1711 London Road
Leigh on Sea, Essex, SS9 2SW

Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EH

Information Commissioners Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113

What will happen when I make a complaint to your team?

1. We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain the details. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint. You can expect to receive our letter within 7 days of us receiving your complaint.
2. We will open a separate file for your complaint. We will do this within 7 days of receiving your complaint.
3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps: -
   • We will pass your complaint to Philip Giles, our Client Care partner, within 7 days.
   • Once he has received full details of the complaint, he will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to him with a reply to your complaint within 14 days of receipt of the full details.
   • He will then examine their reply and the information in your complaint file. And, if necessary, he may also speak to them. This will take up to 7 days from receiving their reply and the file.
4. Philip Giles will then write to you with his findings and offering a solution (if appropriate) and hopefully this will resolve your complaint. He will do this within 14 days from receiving the member of staff’s reply.
5. If this does not resolve matters then you may request a meeting with Philip Giles to discuss the matter further. Philip Giles will then reply to you within 7 days of your request for a meeting to advise whether he agrees that a meeting would be appropriate. Within 7 days of any meeting Philip Giles will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions he has agreed with you.
   • At this stage, if you are still not satisfied please contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision.
6. We will let you know the result of the review within 14 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. We will also give you the name and address of The Legal Complaints Service. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact them about your complaint.

What to do if we cannot resolve your complaint

The Legal Ombudsman can help you if we are unable to resolve your complaint ourselves. 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 our final response to your complaint.

Furthermore, you must refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

• Within one year from the date of the problem you are complaining about occurring; or
• Within one year from the date you became aware that there was a problem.

If you fail to complete your complaint within this timeframe, it is unlikely that your complaint will be investigated.

For more information about the Legal Ombudsman, contact:

www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Call: 0300 555 0333 between 9am to 5pm.

Email: [email protected]

Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EH

Complaints regarding case management

If you have a complaint with regards to the management of a case and wish to report this, you can do so via the Legal Ombudsman and SRA websites.