A. Williams & Co. (Solicitors) A. Williams & Co. (Solicitors)

Complaints Procedure

In the unlikely event you have complaints about our service please note that we are committed to providing a high quality service and therefore have devised a simple and quick procedure to resolve any problems using an informal and a more formal process to resolve the problem.

Please note that our complaints procedure is as follows:

INFORMAL PROCESS

1. We will deal with all your complaints in the first instance by discussing same with you with a view to resolving the complaint informally.

2. If we are unable to resolve the complaint informally, we will record the full details of your complaint and request for clarifications to your complaint if required.

3. If we are unable to informally resolve your complaint with you following your clarifications, we will proceed under a formal process.

FORMAL PROCESS

4. We will ask you to provide details regarding the complaint in writing.

5. You can expect to receive a reply from us by letter within five working days of the receipt of your complaint.

6. We will then ask you to reply to our letter detailing how we can resolve your complaint.

7. When we acknowledge your reply we will confirm what will happen next as follows;

a) We will start to investigate your complaint. We will investigate your complaint within 10 working days, send you our detailed reply and invite you to a meeting to hopefully resolve your complaint.

b) Within 5 working days of the meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions we have agreed with you. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestion for resolving the matter. We will do this within 5 working days of completing our investigation.

c) At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you can write to us again to request for an independent expert to review our decision. We will then arrange for a solicitor or other expert to review your complaint and our decision and respond to us within 10 working days. We will let you know how long this process will take.

REVIEW

d) We will let you know the result of our review within 5 working days of the end of our review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. However, if you do not respond to our request in 7(c )above, we will assume that your do not wish that an expert review the matter further.

e) At the end of our firm’s complaints procedure, if you are still unhappy with the outcome, within 6 months from the end of our firm's complaints procedure you may contact the Legal Services Ombudsman about your complaint at the following address:

Legal Ombudsman
P.O. Box 6806
Wolverhampton
WV1 9WJ

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. You can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

f) Complaints to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within six years of the act or omission about which the client is complaining occurring, or
Complaints to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within three years from when the client should have known about or become aware that there were grounds for complaint.

Services Provided

Work Done

Please contact us for more details on any of the foregoing :

EMPLOYMENT LAW

We represented clients on a wide range of employment matters, including;

redundancy, unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal
race discrimination claims
sexual harassment claims
disability discrimination
drafting compromise and conciliation agreements

Example of recent work;

Filing a claim on behalf of a probationary employee against her employer for ‘automatically unfair dismissal,’ and representing the employee at the Tribunal.
Acting on behalf of an employer in the private sector in relation to a claim for sex discrimination, breach of contract and personal injury and working with ACAS towards reaching a conciliated agreement.
Providing advice to an employee in public office in respect of discrimination claims against the employer.

FAMILY LAW

We provided advice and representation in the following areas;

separation and judicial separation .
divorce petition grounds.
financial matters arising out of separation or divorce.
Review of tax and pensions matters.
International and jurisdictional issues.
Injunctions and restraining orders.
Cohabitation and premarital contracts.

Where children were involved, our areas of advice and assistance included:

Custody issues and maintenance payments towards the children.
Residency issues.
Contact order issues.
International Adoption advice.
International Wardship and guardianship issues.

Example of recent work;

Advice and opinion on cross cultural marital laws and the validity or otherwise of a subsequent 18 year ‘marriage’ when the spouse was still married at the time of the alleged marriage.
Advice and opinion on marriage by cohabitation and repute.
Advice and opinion on implication of a bigamous relationship.
Providing instructions to experts for handwriting analysis reports to the court.
Advice on Calderbank offers for settlement.
Advice andinstructions to the handwriting expert division of the police in a foreign jurisdiction.
Advice on appeal of the maintenance pending suit order and on stay of execution of the freezing order. The issue of Maintenance pending suit by the court was considered especially where the jurisdiction of the court was being constested.
Acting on behalf of a client to enforce the terms of a consent order for the upkeep and maintenance of their children following the break down of the marriage and subsequent divorce.
Filing and defending applications to court for third party debt orders, charging orders on the relevant properties and registration of the orders with the land registry to enforce the arrears of maintenance payments accrued.
Applications made to defend hardship applications.
Applications for leave to enforce arrears of maintenance orders.
Notification of Home office and subsequent litigation to prevent child abduction from a foreign jurisdiction.
Agency and representation in the family court on behalf of a disabled great aunt for defined contact with her great nieces.

WILLS & INTESTACY

We have represented and provided advice to international clients in matters involving contentious probate and intestacy disputes either directly or through our vast network of international law firms sometimes where the client could not travel overseas or where litigation had already been commenced against the client in the UK or overseas. In one instance, in the High Court at the Strand, we provided evidence of a mutual will which was not validly revoked by a testator to set aside a later will made by the testator which was not in favour of the testator's spouse. We have successfully "warned off" caveats filed against the applicants for letters of administration in overseas jurisdiction, conducted relevant searches at the Probate Registry, provided advice to clients on the resealing of grants of administration and successfully prevented a deceased's estate being being taken into receivership pending the grant of letters of administration. Clients include individuals and families from the UK, India, Nigeria & USA.

RESIDENTIAL CONVEYANCING

We provided advice and representation to both landlords and tenants in respect of their rights in applications to acquire the freehold of leasehold houses and lease extensions of both flats and houses. We also advised property owners on short-term lettings for investment purposes and prospective tenants on the terms of tenancy agreements for occupation.Additional work done included;

Property conveyancing in England and Wales.
Cross border property trust litigation.
Remortgaging.
Advice on Cross border property finance.
Preparation of lease extensions.
Preparation of Licences to Assign.
Effecting Charge of property in the Land Registry.
A consideration of the effect of a freehold merger on existing underlease covenants and section 139 of the Law of Property Act 1925.

IMMIGRATION

We provided advice and representation on the following issues;

Preparation of work permit applications.
Rights of detainees in immigration matters .
Entry clearance for Highly Skilled Migrants, sole representatives of foreigncompanies, businessmen or those with self-employed status, self-employed writers, composers and artists, retired persons or independent means, investors and innovators, and students.
Advice in relation to the dependents of persons admitted under the above categories.
Advice as to rights of entry and leave to remain for spouses of British Citizens, EU Citizens and those settled in the UK.
Naturalisation.
Human rights applications.
EU issues.
Conduct of adjudicators and Tribunal appeals.
All tax, property and other issues arising out of immigration to the UK.

Other examples of recent work;

Applications for the highly skilled Migrant Programme.
Successful prosecution of Appeals of visa extension renewals by the Home Office and formulation of grounds of appeal.
Collaboration with a US specialist immigration law firm on the processing of US immigration visas for UK and African citizens and businesses that had been refused appropriate US B1/B2 visas or green card residency status by the US immigration authorities.