Have a question? Call us on 0800 1979 345
In these terms, the following words shall have the meanings below:
“Services” – acting on your behalf in relation to the legal services matter that we provide to you;
“Terms” – these Terms & Conditions of Business;
“We”, “Us”, “Our” – Thorneycroft Solicitors Limited;
“You”, “Your” – you, the client.
This document reflects Thorneycroft Solicitors Limited general Terms and Conditions of Business. This document does not constitute a contract/retainer with You. Our contract/retainer with You will be entered into upon You signing the specific Client Care Letter/Retainer (Conditional Fee Agreement) and Terms and Conditions of Business document provided to You at the outset of Your matter.
We will provide the Services on the terms set out below. We will give your work proper and professional skill, care and attention in accordance with these terms, and with the rules and regulations of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (the regulating body of Solicitors) which can be accessed at https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/ . These rules require that you be informed of certain terms of business and these are included in these Terms.
1 PLACE AND HOURS OF BUSINESS
1.1 Our offices are located as follows:-
1.2 Normal hours of opening are between 9.00am and 5.00pm Monday to Friday. Appointments can be arranged outside these hours when essential. We are open during the lunch hour, but the person you wish to speak to may not be available between 12:00pm and 2:00pm.
2 REASONABLE ADJUSTMENTS
2.1 Should you require a large print version of this document or should you have any other reasonable adjustments that we can reasonably accommodate please inform the person with conduct of your matter who will be pleased to assist.
3 FREEDOM FROM DISCRIMINATION
3.1 The practice is committed to promoting equality and diversity in all of its dealings with clients, third parties and employees. The firm has a written equality and diversity policy which we are happy to provide to you on request. We will not discriminate, without lawful cause, in all dealings with employees, partners, members, directors, barristers, other lawyers, clients or third parties.
4 STANDARDS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
4.1 All our employees should meet certain standards with regard to client care. These standards include:
4.2 Your responsibilities to us are to:
5 FEES AND CHARGES
5.1 Our Fees and Charges are detailed within the specific Client Care Letter/Retainer (Conditional Fee Agreement) and Terms and Conditions of Business document provided to You at the outset of Your matter.
5.2 In the unlikely event that you wish to change solicitors, your file will be transferred only upon payment of all our costs and disbursements that have been incurred in the course of your instruction to us
5.3 Our credit terms are 14 days from our invoice date/date of our bill.
6 INTEREST
6.1 Interest on all cleared client funds will be paid, calculated at the rate at which the firm is paid by its bankers, during the matter: this is subject to a de-minimus of £50.00, below which no interest is payable.
6.2 If you fail to pay our bill within 14 days of its date, we reserve the right to claim interest pursuant to Section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984. Interest will be charged from the 15th day after the bill was issued and all charges including our charges and disbursements incurred collecting or enforcing unpaid charges (not limited to Court fixed costs) including unpaid costs will be recoverable in full.
6.3 For commercial property transactions, if payment is not made within 14 days of its date interest will be charged pursuant to section 1 of the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest ) Act 1984 (as amended) at the rate of 8% above the base rate of the Bank of England.
7 COMMUNICATIONS
7.1 We will communicate with you by any method which you specifically request, failing which by any method we consider appropriate. We may need to check discs and e-mails for viruses. When we consider it appropriate, we will communicate with others by fax and e-mail as appropriate on your behalf unless you inform us that you do not wish us to do so.
7.2 We cannot accept responsibility for the security of correspondence sent by e-mail or fax.
8 TAXATION / TAX ADVICE
8.1 We are not tax advisors, and we shall not advise or provide guidance on tax. This includes, but not limited to:
unless we have specifically agreed in writing within our Client Care Letter that we will do so.
You must take your own tax advice from an appropriate independent tax expert.
9 MONEY LAUNDERING REGULATIONS – IDENTITY AND DISCLOSURE
9.1 We are legally obliged to comply with Anti-Money Laundering Regulations 2017 (and any subsequent amendments applicable) and as such are required to check the identity and address of all clients.
9.2 Please attend our offices and provide evidence of your identity and address as soon as possible. We are not able to accept photocopies and you should not post your identification documents to us. As a guide, we can accept the following:
Identity:
Proof of Address:
9.3 If you are unable to attend our offices to provide this documentation you are able to visit another firm of solicitors and/or financial institution with your original identification documents. They will take a photocopy of your documents and certify that the copy is a true copy of the original document, and a true likeness of you. Please note, a fee may be charged for this service.
9.4 Upon receipt of your ID documents, we will carry out an electronic verification of the same. By signing the specific Client Care Letter/Retainer (Conditional Fee Agreement) and Terms and Conditions of Business document provided to You at the outset of Your matter, you authorise us to complete this check. Under Regulations we are required to retain our Client Due Diligence records (including copies of your identity document(s) and any electronic identity checks we carry out) for five years.
9.5 Please note that we cannot proceed with your matter until your identification has been provided and verified. You MUST not attempt to make any payment to us until this has been completed and we have authorised you to make a payment.
9.6 Any information you provide to us for the purposes of preventing money laundering or terrorist financing will only be processed for that purpose unless you give us your consent to use it for other purposes or it is permitted by law. Our Data Protection Director (DPD) is Rachel Stow.
9.7 From time to time we may provide evidence of your identity or the identity of other connected parties so that we may comply with our obligations under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA). If you fail to comply with your obligation to provide evidence of identity or we suspect that you or any other party connected with you is involved in activities proscribed by POCA then we may terminate the provision of any service to you, or be instructed to do so by the relevant authorities.
9.8 For Conveyancing maters where we are also acting for your proposed Lender, we have a duty to fully reveal to your Lender all relevant facts about the purchase and mortgage. This includes:
9.9 It is the policy of the firm that we do not accept any amount of cash. If you circumvent this policy by depositing cash direct with our bank we reserve the right to charge you for any additional checks we deem necessary regarding the source of funds.
9.10 Where we have to pay money to you, it will be paid by cheque or bank transfer. It will not be paid in cash or to a third party.
9.11 We operate a money laundering reporting procedure to assist the authorities with the eradication of money laundering, tax evasion and proceeds of serious crime. In certain circumstances, information will be revealed by us to the appropriate authorities in relation to any suspicion of money laundering. We may need you to provide us with additional information in relation to the source of any monies provided by you or how a business, company or trust is funded. We are also under an obligation to report, without telling you, any activities that we suspect may involve proceeds of crime. This may result in us being unable to undertake any further work for you until consent to proceed has been issued. If we make a disclosure in relation to your matter, we will not be able to tell you that a disclosure has been made. We may have to stop working on your matter and may not be able to tell you why. By confirming our instruction to act, you will be providing us with express authority to carry out a notification and compile a report for the relevant authority should we feel it necessary to do so. This will not be deemed to be a breach of our duty of confidentiality to you.
9.12 For a Conveyancing purchase matter, you are in agreement that under the Code of Completion the responsibility is on the vendor’s solicitor to ensure that their client is the genuine owner of the property.
10 CONFIDENTIALITY, DATA PROTECTION, OUTSOURCING & AUDITING
10.1 We owe you a duty of confidentiality and anything you tell us is confidential. This applies to most client information. However, we trust that you are aware that our duty of confidentiality may need to be overridden in exceptional circumstances. Specifically, where we have reason to believe a crime is about to be committed, if the Proceeds of Crime Act or Money Laundering Regulations apply, where required by other Order, Statute or Law or ordered by the Court.
10.2 In order to progress your matter, we will be required to collect and process your personal data and some more sensitive personal data. We kindly refer you to the privacy notice we have sent to you separately, which covers this and your rights. Should you require a further copy, please ask your file handler.
10.3 As part of our risk management strategy, we also reserve the right to carry out a financial status check on prospective Clients.
10.4 Sometimes we ask other companies or people to do typing/photocopying or other work on our files to ensure this is done promptly. We will always seek an outsourcing agreement, which covers confidentiality, with these outsourced providers. If you do not want your file to be outsourced, please tell us as soon as possible.
10.5 Your file may be examined by external auditors, who are required to maintain confidentiality. If you do not consent to these inspections, you must clearly tell us in writing. Nothing will preclude inspection of your file by any government or regulatory authority entitled by law to inspection of the same, or which is required by law to be disclosed by us, provided that, where permissible, we will subject to our ability to so, notify you when such requirement to disclose has arisen.
10.6 We record our calls for training and monitoring purposes.
11 FILE AND DEED RETENTION
11.1 We are entitled to keep all your papers and documents whilst there is money owed to us for fees and expenses. At the end of your matter we will archive your file either in paper or electronic format, and dependent upon your Matter, for not less:
Details of the retention period for your matter will be confirmed within the specific Client Care Letter/Retainer (Conditional Fee Agreement) and Terms and Conditions of Business document provided to You at the outset of Your matter. Please note, the retention of your file will include our Client Due Diligence records (such as your identity document(s) and any electronic identity checks we have carried out).
11.2 We will retain all original Deeds indefinitely. This will include but is not limited to: Conveyancing Deeds, Leases and Mortgage documents; and Wills, Powers of Attorney, Trust documents, Grant of Probate and Letters of Administration.
11.3 Any original documents provided throughout your matter will be returned to you once they have been scanned onto our electronic system or upon conclusion of the matter.
11.4 For the retrieval of your file from archive, we may charge you for time spent producing stored papers that are requested. Further, we may also charge for reading, correspondence or other work necessary to comply with your instructions in relation to the retrieved papers. We will exercise the right to retain some documents in line with the proprietary rights of documents. We can provide further detail regarding the class of documents if you require the same.
11.5 If we take papers or documents out of storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act for you, we will not normally charge for such retrieval.
12 INVESTMENT ADVICE AND INSURANCE MEDIATION SERVICES
12.1 If during this transaction you require advice on investments, we may have to advise you to seek the same from someone who is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, as we are not. However, as we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, we may be able to provide certain limited investment services where these are closely linked to the legal work we are doing for you. We are permitted to advise upon and arrange non-investment insurance policies. We do not conduct an analysis of the insurance market.
13 LIMITING LIABILITY
13.1 Our liability to you for a breach of your instructions shall be limited to £3 million, unless we expressly state a higher amount in the letter accompanying these terms. We will not be liable for any consequential, special, indirect or exemplary damages, costs or losses, or any damages, costs or losses attributable to lost profits or opportunities. We will not be liable for services or advice given by third parties whom we instruct on your behalf including, without limitation, legal or other professional advisers. We shall not be liable for any failure to fulfil our obligations caused by circumstances beyond our reasonable control. We can only limit our liability to the extent the law allows. In particular, we cannot limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or fraud.
13.2 Any monies that we hold for you or on your behalf, whether in your name or our name or joint with any other person, firm or company and whether or not mixed with other client monies, shall be held by us as agent for you and otherwise in accordance with your instructions, and you accept that provided we comply in all material respects with the requirements of the Solicitors’ Accounts rules in relation to such monies, we shall have no liability to you in respect of any loss of any such monies in the event of the insolvency or other failure of any bank at which such monies may be held.
14 PROFESSIONAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE
14.1 Our professional indemnity insurance has worldwide coverage excluding USA and Canada and is with AIG, The AIG Building, 58 Fenchurch Street, London, EC3M 4AB.
15 COMPLAINTS
15.1 We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all of our clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards. In the first instance, we ask that you contact the person who is handling your matter, or their manager, to discuss your concerns. They will do their best to resolve any issues at this stage.
15.2 If this informal chat does not resolve your concerns, you can formalise it by contacting the Compliance Department. You can use our dedicated email address [email protected] . Our complaints procedure can be downloaded from our website. Alternatively, a copy can be provided upon request.
15.3 We have 8 weeks to consider your complaint. If we have not resolved it within this time or you are not satisfied with the outcome you may complain to the Legal Ombudsman who can be contacted in writing to PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH; by phone on 0300 555 0333; or by E-mail [email protected] . Full details can be found on the LeO website www.legalombudsman.org.uk . Any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must be referred to them within 6 months of the date of our final written response to you. The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within 1 year of the date of the act or omission being complained about or within 1 year from the date when you should reasonably have known that there was cause for complaint. It should be noted 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 on their website.
15.4 If your complaint is in respect of our fees, you also have the right to challenge the fees by applying to the Court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.
15.5 If you have any concerns regarding our behaviour, such as dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic the Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you. You can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority at http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page .
16 TERMINATION
16.1 You may end your instructions to us in writing at any time, but we can keep all your papers and documents while there is money owed to us for fees and expenses.
16.2 We may decide to stop acting for you and terminate our retainer only on reasonable notice and with good reason. Examples may include, but not limited to:
There may be instances where termination may be without notice.
16.3 If you or we decide that we should stop acting for you, you will pay our charges up until that point. These are calculated on (an hourly basis plus expenses/by proportion of the agreed fee) as set out in within the specific Client Care Letter/Retainer (Conditional Fee Agreement) and Terms and Conditions of Business document provided to You at the outset of Your matter.
17 GENERAL
17.1 The parties to these terms do not intend that any of part of them will be enforceable by virtue of the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 by any person not a party to them.
17.2 If any clause or part of these terms is found by any Court, tribunal, administrative body or authority of competent jurisdiction to be wholly or partly illegal, invalid or unenforceable, that clause or part of these terms will, to the extent required, be severed from these terms and will be ineffective without, so far as is possible, modifying any other clause or part of these terms and this will not affect any other provisions of these terms which will remain in full force and effect.
17.3 No failure, delay, forbearance or indulgence by us in exercising any right, power or remedy under these terms will be deemed a waiver of any subsequent breach or default and nor will any such failure, delay, forbearance or indulgence by us affect the other provisions of these terms.
17.4 This Agreement and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it will be governed by, and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
18 CONSUMER COOLING OFF RIGHTS
18.1 Where you are seen at your own home or place of work or the contract is made between us at a distance the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 will apply.
18.2 The services we intend to provide are legal services;
18.3 Your Right to Cancel:
18.4 The Effect of Cancellation:
