Complaints handling procudure

Our ‘complaints’ policy

As a firm of Chartered Surveyors established since 1974, we provide to all our clients a range of specialist services associated with construction industry activities. If you should ever be dissatisfied with any act or omission in the performance of our duties on your behalf we need you to tell us about it as soon as possible. Your doing so will enable us to take remedial action. Your complaint will also alert us to some failure in our endeavour to provide the highest possible standard of service. You will prompt improvement in our service.

Our procedure for responding to ‘complaints’

If you ever have any queries or concerns about any aspect of the services we perform on your behalf, please raise them in the first instance with the individual having day to day responsibility for that particular service. If your initial complaint delivered by word of mouth does not resolve the issue to your satisfaction within a reasonable time, or if you are further dissatisfied by any immediate response of that responsible individual, please raise the issue again, in writing (be registered post), with the individual. If your further dissatisfaction is directed against our performance, please refer matters in writing (be registered post) to one of the Directors.

What will happen after your complaint is formally reported to us

1. You will receive from the appropriate Director a letter acknowledging our receipt of your written complaint and asking you to confirm or correct our reported understanding of it. We will endeavour to respond as quickly as possible bearing in mind any need for urgency. In normal circumstances you can expect to receive our acknowledgement letter not later than 28 days after our receipt of your written complaint.
2. We will record your complaint in a register kept for that purpose and will open a separate file exclusively dealing with its particular matter or matters.
3. They will investigate your complaint objectively. This will normally involve us in the following steps:
   1. a review of all documents relating to the subject matter of your complaint;
   2. consideration of each and every allegation made by you in your complaint;
   3. informal discussion with each and every individual whether within or outside our firm (including yourself) with the purpose of clarifying all relevant matters and eliminating any obscurity or misunderstanding either associated with the subject matter of your complaint or within your complaint itself.
4. Depending upon any urgency imposed upon us all (yourself included) by surrounding circumstances, we, as a firm, will endeavour to complete our investigation as speedily as practicably possible and, in any event, within three months of our receipt of your written complaint. The relevant Director (as the case may be) will then write to you with a detailed response to your complaint.
5. If, at any time during the investigation of your complaint, whichever Director is considering it comes to the considered opinion that your complaint is justifiably made, they may offer you our suggestions for removing the triggering cause of that complaint or for making suitable and reasonable amended to you if no remedial action is possible.
6. Alternatively, if upon completion of that investigation of your complaint the investigating Director comes to the considered opinion that your complaint is not justifiably made, they will write fully reporting his dominant reasons for forming that opinion and inviting you to a meeting with himself and the individual whose acts or omissions you have called into question. Any such meeting may be as reasonably formal or informal as you and the surrounding circumstances justify. The purpose of such a meeting will be to provide an opportunity for everyone involved in the matter to review and debate the reasons why the investigating Director has formed the opinion they have. Hopefully, your complaint will be finally and fairly resolved at such a meeting. The meeting would take place on the first, agreed, mutually convenient date.
7. If that meeting fails to achieve an accepted resolution of your complaint, you must write to the investigating Director particularising whatever points of fact or law cause you to reject their reasons for forming their own opinion that your complaint is not justified. They will then review their earlier decision in light of your further submissions. They will endeavour to send you a written response to those submissions within ten working days of his receipt of them.
8. If, despite our joint attempts as resolution described above, you remain dissatisfied with our response to your complaint, then you have the right to refer matters to the Surveyors Ombudsman Scheme or the RICS Dispute Resolution Service administered by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.