UK Head Office

  • Serious Injury Helpline
  • 14th Floor, St James's Tower
  • 7 Charlotte Street
  • Manchester
  • M1 4DZ

Serious Injury Helpline is a trading name of BB Legal Limited registered in England and Wales under number 07301278.

BB Legal Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.  Use the following link www.sra.org.uk/handbook for online access to the current professional rules applicable to solicitors.

VAT registration number: 155 9317 47.

ABOUT OUR PEOPLE

We use the word ‘partner’ to refer to a shareholder or director of the company or an employee or consultant who is a lawyer with equivalent standing and qualifications.

A list of directors is available for inspection at the company’s registered office, together with a list of designated partners.

ABOUT OUR SERVICE

The information below about our service is intended for clients and prospective clients.

Your Agreement with BB Legal Ltd

If we are going to represent you, the following information will be provided to you in writing at the outset:

  • a statement about the work we will do for you;
  • information about how we will provide our service;
  • terms and conditions that apply to our contract with you;
  • the price we will charge and how our costs are to be paid.

Help and Information

If you require further information about our agreement with you or about the service you can expect from us, you should contact the person with day-to-day responsibility for your work.

We are confident that we will provide a good service, but on rare occasions things can go wrong.  If that happens, we encourage you to raise the issue with the person acting for you as soon as possible, because our priority is to put the problem right if we can.

If that is not possible, contact our Client Services Team:

We have a complaints policy, which is available on request.

Insurance

We are insured in respect of professional liability arising out of our activities in England & Wales by Axis Specialty Europe Plc.

If you need to contact our insurers, we recommend that you first contact our Client Services Team (see contact details above), who can ensure that your enquiry is directed to the appropriate person.  However, the insurer may be contacted by addressing your communication c/o Hera Indemnity Limited, 68 Lombard Street, London, EC3V 9LJ.

European Commission Online Dispute Resolution

If you have any dispute regarding any service you bought from us online, we encourage you to raise the issue with the person acting for you as soon as possible, because our priority is to put the problem right if we can.  Alternatively, contact our Client Services Team using our email address: enquiries@birchallblackburn.co.uk

If we are unable to resolve your concerns, we will explain your right to access independent dispute resolution services.

The EU ODR platform may be accessed by following this link:  https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/odr/main.

OTHER INFORMATION

Telephone calls

Calls to our offices may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes:

  • in order to assess compliance with regulatory requirements
  • to assess that quality of our service
  • to detect unauthorised use
  • to establish the existence of facts.

Trading names

The following brands are trading styles used by BB Legal Limited:  Birchall Blackburn Law, Kevill Kirkham & Grayson, Paul Watson & Co, Clarkson Penhale, EQ Legal, Serious Injury Helpline.

What to do if you are unhappy about our service

We are confident that we will provide a good service, but on rare occasions, things can go wrong.  If that happens, we encourage you to raise the issue with the person acting for you as soon as possible, because our priority is to put the problem right if we can.

If that is not possible, our Client Services Team are available to help try to resolve your concerns.

Who can complain to us?

We will investigate any issues we find out about.

However, to protect our clients’ confidentiality, we can only accept complaints about our service from clients or, in limited circumstances, beneficiaries.

Please note that we can only consider complaints about work done in the previous six years.

Who should you contact if you have a concern?

If you are unhappy with what is happening, the best way of sorting it out is to tell the person working for you.  Most issues can be quickly resolved in this way.  Alternatively, ask for their team leader.

We expect all of our staff to be helpful if you tell them you’re not happy – to deal with the issue as sympathetically, promptly and effectively as possible, and to try to understand why you are unhappy.

If you prefer, contact our Client Services Team:

·     by email to enquiries@birchallblackburn.co.uk

·     by post – 14th Floor, St James’s Tower, 7 Charlotte Street, Manchester, M1 4DZ

·     by phone – 0161 238 5634.

What will we do?

If it seems that we can promptly resolve the issue, you are entitled to expect that we will try to resolve it informally and we will try to do so.

If an informal resolution is not appropriate, we will follow our formal complaints procedure.  You may request a copy of this if you wish, either from the person working for you or from our Client Service Team.

What if we cannot resolve your complaint?

You may refer any complaints about our service to the Legal Ombudsman, if we have been unable to agree a resolution.  This is an independent service and will not affect how we handle your case.

The Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first, and you then must refer the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

·     Within six months of receiving our final response to your complaint

and:

·     no more than six years from the date of the act or omission; or

·     no more than three years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.

However, please note that from 1 April 2023 these time limits are changing. From the 1 April 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. The requirement to refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you remains the same.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, please contact them:

·     through their website – www.legalombudsman.org.uk

·     by email to enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

·     by post – PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ

·     by phone – 0300 555 0333.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority do not deal with problems about our service, as this is an issue for the Legal Ombudsman, but will consider more serious conduct issues.  In the unlikely event that your concern is of this nature, you can contact the SRA through their website – www.sra.org.uk.