Janine Atkins, the principal and a member of Resolution, will carry out most of the work in this matter.

If Janine Atkins is unavailable, please leave a message with her secretary, Alison Towey or assistant Caterina De Carolis.

We will try to avoid changing the people who handle your work but if this cannot be avoided, we will inform you promptly who will be handling the matter and why the change was necessary.

The legal services we provide are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Our charges are generally based on the time spent dealing with a case.

Time spent on your affairs will include meetings with you; considering, preparing and working on papers; correspondence; and making and receiving telephone calls.

We will charge you £250 per hour for each hour of work by Janine Atkins or any of our other solicitor associates from now until the review date on 2nd January 2020.  

Routine letters and routine telephone calls made and received will be charged as units of 1/10th of an hour. Our charges for considering routine letters received will be charged as units of 1/20th of an hour. Other letters and calls will be charged on a time basis.

If your instructions require us to work outside normal office hours, we reserve the right to increase the level of the hourly rate/s. 

On 2nd January 2020 and annually thereafter we will review the hourly rate/s and notify you in writing of any increased rate. If you have any query about the revised rates, please contact Janine Atkins straight away.

In property transactions, in the administration of estates and in transactions involving a large amount of money or benefit to the client, we may base our charges on the time spent and by referring to a value element, such as the price of the property, the size of the estate or the value of the final benefit.

The value element reflects the importance of the transaction and responsibility placed on the firm. Janine Atkins will write to you separately if the value element will apply to your case.

We may be able to agree with you an alternative charging arrangement, such as a fixed fee. Janine Atkins will discuss this with you. If our fees are not to be based on time spent Janine Atkins will write to you about this separately.

We will add VAT to our charge at the rate that applies when the work is done. At present, VAT is 20.0%.

There may be certain other expenses, including payments we make on your behalf, such as valuation and counsel’s fees, which you will have to pay. VAT is also payable on certain expenses.

We will inform you if any unforeseen extra work becomes necessary, for example, due to unexpected complexities or difficulties or if your requirements or the circumstances change significantly during the matter. We will also inform you in writing of the estimate cost of the extra work before incurring extra costs.

If this firm does not complete the work, we will charge you for the work done and expenses incurred.

It is normal practice to ask clients to pay sums of money from time to time on account of the charges and expenses which are expected in the following weeks or months. This helps to avoid delay in the progress of their case. We require payment on account of disbursements as expenses become payable and may request further payments on account of expenses as the matter progresses. If you are in agreement, you may also make payments on account of costs. These amounts will be shown as paid on your final bill.

We will update you by telephone or in writing by letter or email with progress on your matter regularly.

We will communicate with you in plain language.

We will explain to you by telephone or in writing by letter or email the legal work required as your matter progresses.

In relation to property transactions, we will send you a bill for our charges and expenses, payment of which is due after completion. If sufficient funds are available on completion and we have sent you a bill, we will usually deduct our charges from the funds.

In relation to the administration of estates, we will usually send you an interim bill on account for our charges and expenses after the Grant of Probate has been obtained and every month thereafter during the administration of the estate. We will also send you a final bill for our charges and expenses when the administration of the estate is completed. If we hold sufficient funds on your behalf and we have sent you a final bill, we will usually deduct our charges from these funds.

In relation to other matters, we will usually send you a bill for our charges and expenses when the work is completed. However, in some cases we will send interim bills at appropriate points, particularly if your matter becomes prolonged.

Payment is due to us within 28 days of our sending the bill to you. If payment is not made within this time we will charge you interest on the bill at 2% above the base rate from time to time of our bank, Bank of Scotland, from the date on which payment of our bill is due. Interest will be charged on a daily basis.

If you have any query about your bill, you should contact Janine Atkins straight away.

You can challenge the bill by applying for an assessment of the bill under Part 3 of the Solicitors Act 1974. However, if you have a complaint about the bill the Legal Ombudsman may not consider the complaint if you have applied to the Court for assessment of the bill.

If we are holding money for you this will usually be held in an instant access account to facilitate a transaction. We will account for interest when it is fair and reasonable to do so in all the circumstances. Clients are unlikely to receive as much interest as might have been obtained had they held and invested the money themselves.

Our professional indemnity insurance is provided by International General Insurance Co. Ltd. through Pen Underwriting Ltd. registered office The Walbrook Building, 25 Walbrook, London EC4N 8AW and only covers work undertaken in England and Wales.

 The law now requires solicitors, as well as banks, building societies and others, to obtain satisfactory evidence of the identify of their clients. This is because solicitors who deal with money and property on behalf of their clients can be used by criminals wishing to launder money. In order to comply with the law on money laundering, we need to obtain evidence of your identity as soon as practicable if we have not already done so.

We may use an e-id verification system to assist us to verify your identity against various different data-sources in line with anti money laundering regulations. When we attempt to verify your identity the process involves checking the details you supply against those held on a number of specific databases. ID verification system has access to information from various agencies and organisations. A record of this process will be kept that may be used to help other companies to verify your identity. A footprint may be logged on your credit file. This is harmless information and will not affect your ability to gain credit.

 Solicitors are under a professional and legal obligation to keep the affairs of clients confidential. This obligation, however, is subject to a statutory exception; recent legislation on money laundering and terrorist financing has placed solicitors under a legal duty in certain circumstances to disclose information to the National Crime Agency. Where a solicitor knows or suspects that a transaction on behalf of a client involves money laundering, the solicitor may be required to make a money laundering disclosure.

 If, while we are acting for you, it becomes necessary to make a money laundering disclosure, we may not be able to inform you that a disclosure has been made or of the reasons for it because the law prohibits “tipping-off”.

External firms and organisations may conduct audit or quality checks on our practice. These external firms and organisations are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to your file.

We use the information you provide primarily for the provision of legal services to you and for related purposes including:

a) updating and enhancing client records

b) analysis to help us manage our practice

c) statutory returns

d) legal and regulatory compliance

Our use of that information is subject to your instructions, the Data Protection Act 1998 and our duty of confidentiality. Please note that our work for you may require us to give information to third parties such as expert witnesses and other professional advisors. You have a right of access under data protection legislation to the personal data that we hold about you.

We may from time to time send you information that we think might be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive that information, please notify our offices in writing.

After completing the work, we are entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owing to us. We will keep our file of papers (except for any of your papers which you ask to be returned to you) for no more than 6 years and on the understanding that we have the authority to destroy the file 6 years after the date of the final bill we send you for this matter. We will not destroy documents you ask us to deposit in safe custody.

We will not normally make a charge for retrieving stored papers or deeds in response to continuing or new instructions to act for you. However, we reserve the right to make a charge based on time we spend on reading papers, writing letters or other work necessary to comply with the instructions.

You may terminate your instructions to us in writing at any time. For example, you may decide you cannot give us clear or proper instructions on how to proceed, or you may lose confidence in our work.

We are entitled to keep all your papers and documents while money is owing to us.

We will decide to stop acting for you only with good reason and on giving you reasonable notice.

If you or we decide that we will stop acting for you, you will pay our charges on an hourly basis and expenses or as stated in any separate correspondence.

We are committed to providing high quality legal advice and client care. If you are unhappy about any aspect of the service you have received or about the bill please contact Janine Atkins on 01372 477188, email Janine@atkinsandco.uk.com or by post to our office address. 

We have a procedure in place which details how we handle complaints which is available by request to Janine Atkins.

We have 8 weeks to consider any complaint. If we have not resolved your complaint within this time you may complain to the Legal Ombudsman.

If you are not satisfied with the handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman at Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ to consider the complaint. Normally you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint or within the 6 years of the act or remission about which you are complaining occurring (or if outside of this period, within 3 years of when you should have reasonably been aware of it).

Our practice policy is to only accept cash up to the value of £1,000 for costs and disbursements. If you try to avoid this policy by depositing cash directly with our bank, we may charge you for any additional checks we decide are necessary to prove the source of the funds.

Where we have to pay money to you it will be paid by cheque or bank transfer. It will not be paid in cash nor will it be paid to a third party.

 It is important to note that Atkins & Co client call account is held with the Bank of Scotland. Any monies held in our client account are included within your total personal limit of £85,000. Atkins & Co cannot accept any liability for monies lost due to a Banking failure.

 Email correspondence will usually be acknowledged within 24 hours or the next working day if sent before a weekend or before a Bank Holiday. Please do not consider your email has been delivered until it has been acknowledged. This proviso is due to any possible internet problems beyond our control. We will endeavour to fully reply to emails within 3 working days although this may be a longer period if a long reply is required in the form of a postal letter.

 The internet may pose security or privacy problems and we would therefore advise that any personal or sensitive information is sent by postal letter.

Your continuing instructions in this matter will amount to your acceptance of these terms and conditions of business. Even so, we ask you please to sign and date the enclosed copy of these terms and return it to us immediately.  

We can then be confident that you understand the basis on which we will act for you.