Terms of Business

These terms and how we can change them

Our agreement with you

These terms, together with our engagement letter to you, form our agreement with you to provide legal services. These terms apply to each matter we work on with you. If there is a conflict between these terms and our engagement letter, these terms will prevail, unless the engagement letter expressly overrides them.

Changes to these terms

We can change these terms in response to legal, regulatory and technological changes, and any other situation which may reasonably require us to change these terms, and we may increase our hourly rates. If we do so, we’ll notify you and you can contact us to terminate your instructions before the changes take effect.

Consumers’ cancellation rights

Consumers may have a right to cancel

If you are an individual who is not instructing us in connection with your business, you may have a legal right to cancel our agreement with you and receive a refund of any sums you have paid us in advance. Where this applies you may use the form found at the back of these terms. You are likely to have these rights if we take instructions from you outside of our offices or at a distance, for example online or over the telephone. Your right to cancel expires 14 days after our agreement is made and if you request us to start work during that period you will have to pay us for any work we do up until you cancel. Work which we start at your request during the cancellation period cannot be cancelled once completed, even if the cancellation period is still running.

Our services

Matters outside the scope of your instructions

We only advise on matters within the scope of your instructions, as set out in our engagement letter. Unless your engagement letter clearly says otherwise, we will not advise you on the financial or tax aspects of any matter, on your wider tax or financial interests, on the law of jurisdictions outside of England and Wales, or on accounting and commercial issues (including on the viability and prudence of this matter), even if a relevant issue arises during the course of our work together. You may wish to seek separate specialist advice on these matters.

Tax matters arising from conveyancing

We do not provide tax advice in relation to your conveyancing transaction. You remain responsible for all tax liabilities and filings, and you should obtain independent advice from a suitably qualified tax adviser or accountant. By way of example only (and not exhaustively), we do not advise on: the incidence, calculation or mitigation of Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) in England (including first-time buyer relief, multiple dwellings relief, mixed-use or subsidiary dwellings, linked transactions, or the higher rates for additional dwellings), Land Transaction Tax in Wales or Land and Buildings Transaction Tax in Scotland; Capital Gains Tax (including principal private residence relief and non-resident CGT); income tax on rental properties; inheritance-tax implications or estate planning; VAT (including the option to tax, transfers of a going concern, and new-builds/conversions); the Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings (ATED); or any corporate or partnership tax consequences. Any assistance we provide in preparing or submitting an SDLT/LTT/LBTT return is an administrative form-completion service only, based solely on information you supply, and must not be relied upon as tax advice.

Only you can rely on our advice

Our advice is intended solely for you. We do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the clients identified in our engagement letter. Unless we agree otherwise in writing, you must not share our advice with anyone else.

Third party service providers

We may instruct third parties (such as barristers, expert witnesses, enquiry agents, search providers, estate agents and any other provider) reasonably required to provide services to you. You are responsible for the sums charged by third parties and their services are provided to you on their terms. We use reasonable skill and care in selecting and appointing third parties.

We’re not responsible for delays outside our control

If our services to you are delayed by an event outside our control, we will contact you as soon as possible to let you know and do what we can to reduce the delay.

What you agree to do

You agree to:

Provide us with clear, timely and consistent instructions. You must also respond fully, frankly and quickly to our requests for information, and co-operate with us and those we instruct on your behalf. The information you give us must be full and accurate, to the best of your knowledge and belief. We don’t verify the information you give us, unless we have expressly agreed to do so.

• Tell us straight away if your contact details change.

• Take reasonable steps to properly secure your communications with us. This includes protecting the email and computer systems used for your matter. This is important to protect your rights and funds. You can learn more about staying safe and secure online, including good password practice, at cyberessentials.ncsc.gov.uk .

• Respect our regulatory restrictions. If we tell you that we can’t do something for you because doing it would breach our legal, professional or regulatory duties then you must respect this.

• Pay money on account and our invoices. You must provide us with any required sums on account of costs, and pay our invoices in accordance with these terms.

• Verify any change of our payment details received by email. If you are told about any change of our bank details by email, then even if it appears to come from our firm, you must call us on a number you have used with us previously immediately to check the email is genuine.

Our communications with you

Risks of email correspondence

For convenience and speed, we will correspond with you by email and rely on communications coming from your email account. However, email is inherently insecure. We are not responsible for loss or damage caused by email use, provided we have taken reasonable security measures, including against viruses or similar harmful items. In any event, we will not accept any emailed instructions from you to alter your banking details or instructions on where money should be sent.

Blocked emails

Our filtering software may prevent us receiving emails from you or in relation to your matter and we are not responsible to you for losses resulting from this.

Opening hours

We are normally open between 9.00am and 5.00pm Monday to Friday, except for bank holidays. Our staff may sometimes respond to communications and work outside of our normal office hours, but this is at our discretion, and we ask you to respect that there will be times when we are not available.

Who we can give advice to and whose instructions we can act on

We may give advice and information to, and act on instructions from, any of the individuals to whom our engagement letter is addressed without the need to copy such advice to, or to confirm such instructions with, the other(s). You can let us know in writing that we are authorised to deal with someone else on your behalf in this way. For organisations, rather than individuals, we can ask for a formal resolution confirming who can instruct us.

We can adjust to your communications needs

As a firm, we wish to support and promote equality and diversity. If it would assist you for our services to be delivered in a different way, please let us know and we will investigate how we can help.

Our fees, disbursements and expenses

How we calculate our fees is set out in our engagement letter

Our fees for our services in your legal matter are calculated either on the basis of time spent or on a fixed, capped basis and may be staged, as set out in the matter engagement letter we have sent you.

Fees on a time spent basis

If our fees are calculated on a time spent basis:

Six-minute units. We calculate the time spent by us in six-minute units (an hour is broken down into ten units, each of six minutes) and charge it at the hourly rate for the person doing the work. Where a task (such as writing a short or standard letter or email or making a phone call) takes less than six minutes of a person’s time, the time spent is rounded up to six minutes.

• Increases in hourly rates. We may increase our hourly rates, for example at the start of a new year. We may also increase our rates if your instructions change, for example if the matter we are working on for you becomes more urgent. We give you advance notice of any increases.

• Estimates are not binding. Any estimate of our charges (fees, disbursements and expenses) for dealing with your matter or reaching a certain stage in it, as well as estimates or automated quotes provided on our website, are not binding. We may update estimates as a matter progresses, and you must pay all our charges even if they exceed any estimate.

• Hourly rates. | Fee Earner Level | Hourly Rate | | --- | --- | | Solicitors and legal executives with over 8 years’ experience | £355.00 | | Solicitors and legal executives with over 4 years’ experience | £318.00 | | Other solicitors or legal executives and fee earners of equivalent experience | £277.00 | | Trainee solicitors, paralegals and other fee earners | £226.00 |

Fixed and capped fees

If we have agreed a fixed or capped fee with you:

Changes in assumptions. If the assumptions on which the fixed or capped fee are based (as set out in our engagement letter) change or prove incorrect we may increase our fixed or capped fee, or switch to charging you on a time-spent basis. If we switch to charging on a time-spent basis, we will provide you with an estimate of our fees to complete the matter.

• What we can charge if you terminate your instructions (or we stop acting for you). If you terminate your instructions (other than because we are at fault) we can charge you the full fixed fee. The same rules apply if we stop acting for you for a reason set out in paragraph 10.

Disbursements, expenses and VAT

All hourly rates, estimates, fixed, capped or staged fees we quote to you are exclusive of the following, which you must pay in addition:

Disbursements. We may instruct third parties (such as barristers, expert witnesses, enquiry agents, searches etc) to provide services to you or we may pay official fees or carry out searches for you. You will be responsible for associated charges and costs (disbursements). Your engagement letter will include an estimate of disbursements.

• Expenses. In addition to our fees, we charge you our expenses which may include the costs of travel, document production (scanning, photocopying, binding), payment transfers, support staff overtime etc.

• VAT. VAT on our fees and, where applicable, on disbursements and expenses, unless expressly stated otherwise. VAT is currently chargeable at 20%.

Payments on account

We normally hold some money from you as security against non-payment of our charges (fees, disbursements and expenses) until a matter is concluded. We can require you to pay an appropriate amount on account before we start work and to top it up from time to time. We are not obliged to use such money to pay our bills, but we can do so.

Our invoices

When we invoice you

We invoice you regularly and on completion of your matter or at the intervals indicated in your engagement letter. We may raise an interim statute invoice. Statute invoices are final for the period they cover and your rights to challenge them are time limited. All statute invoices (whether interim or final) will be marked accordingly.

We can invoice disbursements and expenses at any time

We can invoice you for disbursements and expenses for any period at any time, even after we have invoiced our fees for that period.

Payment is due on receipt and we charge interest on late payments

Our bills are payable when you receive them. We charge interest on unpaid bills at a rate of 6% above the Bank of England’s base rate. Interest will begin to run before securing judgment.

You are responsible for our charges, even if you have third party funding

Even if someone else has agreed or been ordered to pay our charges (fees, disbursements and expenses), or you expect this to happen, you are still responsible for paying us. This includes where you are claiming back part or all of our charges from an opponent in litigation.

Multiple clients are jointly and severally liable for our bills

If we are instructed by more than one person, then we can require any of those persons to pay our bills in full (joint and several liability).

How to complain about our bills

To complain about an invoice, please follow our complaints procedure (see paragraph 13). You can also ask the court to assess our bill of costs under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974, subject to certain time limits and conditions.

How we hold your money and pay you interest on it

Where we hold your money and associated risks

We may hold money on your behalf in our client account at Barclays. We are not responsible for any loss resulting from the failure of any bank. Our client account is in England and Wales and is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). The FSCS only covers a maximum of £85,000 held by you in BARCLAYS PLC, whether within our client account or otherwise and eligibility conditions apply. For more information visit the FSCS website at fscs.org.uk .

Interest on money we hold for you

We pay you interest on your money held in our client account as follows:

The rate of interest at any time is specified on our website and accrues on cleared funds only.

• We pay interest at the end of a matter, unless an interim payment is appropriate because we have held your money for an unusually long period of time.

• We do not pay interest in certain situations, including those set out below (for more information on when we pay interest contact the partner responsible for your matter): where the interest accrued is less than £50;

• where we are acting for you on a fixed fee basis as we have already accounted for this when calculating your fixed fee;

• on money held to pay disbursements; and

• on money held for the Legal Aid Agency.

How we limit our liability to you

Liabilities not excluded

Nothing in these terms limits any liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any liability that cannot legally be limited. Where you are an individual who is not instructing us in connection with your business (a consumer) and the matter is contentious (it involves a dispute with a third party), we do not exclude our liability to you for our negligence.

Exclusion of indirect and consequential loss (business customers only)

Subject to paragraph 9.1, if you are a business, we will not be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), for breach of statutory duty or otherwise, arising under or in connection with this agreement for any indirect or consequential loss.

Losses we are not liable for

Subject to paragraph 9.1, we will not be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), for breach of statutory duty or otherwise, arising under or in connection with this agreement for any loss arising as a result of:

our complying with our legal and regulatory duties, such as delays or disclosures arising in the context of compliance with anti-money laundering or crime prevention legislation;

• errors or defects in third party services instructed by us on your behalf or used by us in the provision of services to you, provided we use reasonable skill and care in selecting and appointing those third parties (see paragraph 3.4);

• circumstances beyond our reasonable control (see paragraph 3.5);

• loss or damage caused by email use, provided we have taken reasonable security measures (see paragraph 5.1); or

• failure of any bank (see paragraph 8.1).

Limits on our liability where other advisers are also responsible (business customers only)

Subject to paragraph 9.1, our liability to you shall be reduced to the extent we can prove that you would have been able to recover a contribution pursuant to the Civil Liability (Contribution) Act 1978 from another adviser on the same matter. That contribution shall be assessed on the basis that the advisers contracted with you on broadly the same terms as we have, did not exclude or limit their liability to you, and were able to pay the sums due to you in full.

Caps on our liability

We may agree with you a liability cap for any given matter. This will ordinarily be agreed in our engagement letter before beginning work on the relevant matter. We will not cap our liability below the minimum amount of the professional indemnity insurance cover solicitors must have in place to insure against mistakes, currently £3 million. Where a liability cap is agreed, it will apply to our aggregate liability to both you and to any other client for whom we are instructed in that matter. Subject to paragraph 9.1, the cap will apply whether the liability arose in contract, tort (including negligence), for breach of statutory duty or otherwise and whether it arises under or in connection with this agreement.

No claims against our staff

Services are provided by our staff for and on behalf of our law firm. Our staff do not assume any personal responsibility to our clients in relation to work carried out under these terms and any personal liability of any member of staff is therefore excluded. Any claims against our firm should be brought against the firm as a Limited company. You agree not to bring any claim (including in negligence) against any employee or member of our staff including principals (that is partners, members or directors) as individuals in their personal capacity in connection with any loss or damage suffered in connection with our services. If you do bring a claim against any of our staff, they can rely on our agreement, including its limitations of liability.

How you and we can terminate our agreement

You and we can terminate this agreement

You may terminate your instructions to us at any time by telling us in writing. We can also stop acting for you, if we have reasonable grounds to do so, for example because you have broken our agreement by not giving us timely instructions or paying our invoices on time. We can also stop acting for you if the solicitor-client relationship of trust and confidence has broken down, if we discover a conflict of interest, if to proceed would otherwise be contrary to legal or regulatory duties, if the risk profile for your case has significantly changed or if you experience an insolvency event. We will write to you explaining our decision, giving you as much notice as possible.

Payments on termination

If you terminate your instructions or we stop acting for you, you must pay our charges (fees, disbursements and expenses) incurred up to the point of termination, as well as any charges we incur after termination, for example in transferring your file to another adviser or removing ourselves from the court record.

We can retain your documents until you pay

If you do not pay our invoices on time, we can retain documents, deeds and other items relating to any matter we are working on for you until you have done so (subject to such information that may be available to you under data protection laws). This is called exercising a lien over the items.

How you can use our advice and how we handle your documents

Intellectual property rights

We retain all intellectual property rights in the advice which we provide and the documents which we prepare, but permit you to make use of such work for the purposes of your particular matter only.

Treatment of your documents on completion

When your matter completes or we stop acting for you, unless you request the return of any documents you have supplied to us, we will retain them for as long as we deem necessary for legal and regulatory reasons and then destroy them.

Our legal status, regulation and insurance

Our legal status and VAT details

Simply Move is a trading name of BPLS Group Limited , a private limited company registered in England and Wales with company number 16508264 . Our registered office is at 19–21 North End Road, London, England, W14 8ST. We may from time to time use the word “partner” to refer to a senior staff member but this does not mean that they are necessarily a director of the company. Our VAT number is [VAT NUMBER] .

How we are regulated

We are a firm of solicitors authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and our legal services under this agreement are regulated by the SRA. Our SRA number is 8013123 . You can find out more about the SRA and view the professional rules which apply to us on the SRA website .

Our ability to provide financial services

As solicitors regulated by the SRA, we are able to provide certain financial services incidental to our legal work. We are included on the register maintained by the Financial Conduct Authority so that we can carry on insurance distribution activity, which is broadly the advising on, selling and administration of insurance contracts. This part of our business, including arrangements for complaints or redress if something goes wrong, is regulated by the SRA. The register can be accessed via the Financial Conduct Authority website at fca.org.uk/firms/financial-services-register . Further information will be provided to you in advance of any such work on our part, including providing you with a statement of demands and needs.

How we are insured

As required by our professional rules, we maintain professional indemnity insurance to protect clients in the unlikely event of a mistake being made in a case. We are insured by [INSURER NAME] with a limit of £3,000,000 for advice given under English law. Contact details and further details of our professional indemnity insurers are available on request from the individual handling your case.

SRA Compensation Fund

The SRA Compensation Fund provides certain protection if a solicitor fails to pay money owed to a client or is dishonest. We do not anticipate any such problems arising in your matter but if you would like to learn more about the SRA Compensation Fund you can do so on the SRA website at sra.org.uk/consumers/compensation-fund .

Complaints and other concerns

Our complaints process

We hope that you are happy with the service we provide. If at any stage you have concerns or wish to make a complaint, inform the person handling your matter straight away about the nature of your concern. If you do not feel comfortable speaking with the individual handling your matter, then you can contact info@simplymove.uk and ask for the matter to be looked at by a manager. If the person handling your matter cannot promptly resolve your concerns, then it will be dealt with as a formal complaint under our complaints policy (see our website for a copy of this policy). This process involves an investigation of the concerns by a senior member of our firm. We will then write to you within eight weeks setting out our final response to the complaint and how you can pursue your concerns further if you do not agree with our proposed resolution or outcome.

Alternative dispute resolution

Alternative dispute resolution bodies such as Ombudsman Services, ProMediate and Small Claims Mediation can deal with complaints about legal services. If we agree to use such a scheme, we will inform you when notifying you of our final response to your complaint.

Complaining to the Legal Ombudsman

Consumers and smaller organisations may be entitled to complain to the Legal Ombudsman about our service if they remain dissatisfied. The Ombudsman would generally expect clients to follow a firm’s internal complaints procedure first. The Legal Ombudsman may exercise discretion to consider complaints out of time in certain circumstances. However, complaints to the Ombudsman should normally be made within six months of receiving our final response to your complaint and no more than one year from the date when the problem arose or, if you were not initially aware of the problem, within one year of the date when you should reasonably have known that there was cause for complaint.

Legal Ombudsman contact:
Website: legalombudsman.org.uk
Address: PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Phone: 0300 555 0333

Reporting professional misconduct to the SRA

The Legal Ombudsman deals with concerns about the level of service which a client has received. Clients can report suspected professional misconduct to the SRA. Examples of professional misconduct include dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. You can find out how to do this at sra.org.uk/consumers/problems .

Confidentiality

When we may use and disclose your confidential information

We will keep confidential information we obtain through our services confidential, but we reserve the right to use and disclose it to:

deliver those services, which may include storing confidential information on our computers, in our email and in the cloud;

• comply with the law, including by performing conflicts of interest checks for new cases against a list of current and former clients, reporting suspicious activity to the National Crime Agency if we suspect money laundering and responding to freedom of information requests; and

• comply with requests by regulators and other competent authorities, such as audits by the SRA.

Data protection

Our privacy policy

For information about how we deal with your personal information, see our Privacy Policy as published on our website.

Sensitive information

In some cases, we may hold more sensitive information about an individual such as about health. This may be necessary to pursue your legal matter. We are permitted to use such information to provide legal advice to you or in connection with equality legislation.

Withdrawing consent

You can withdraw consent to your information being used in a particular way, but this may limit what more we can do for you (if anything).

Newsletters and marketing

As a client we may in the future send you a newsletter or similar. We find that most clients find this helpful. We rely on the legitimate interest we have in maintaining contact with former clients to do this in compliance with data protection law and your agreement for the purposes of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (which can be implied under these regulations). However, we will never share your information with third parties to market to you and will not contact you about non-legal services. We will make it quick and easy for you to opt out of future communications in every communication we send. If you already know that you do not want to receive these messages you can opt out now by emailing us at info@simplymove.uk .

Where your information is stored

Your information may be kept on computer servers within the UK or the European Union. If at any point information is stored on computer servers outside of the UK or the EU, we will have selected countries which are either approved for this purpose under relevant data protection legislation or are located where we are happy that the safeguards in place in that country to protect your information are appropriate under such legislation.

Sharing your information

Generally speaking we will not share your information with third parties unless this is part of the work on your legal matter. For example, lawyers frequently may need to send certain information about clients to other lawyers working on the matter, to court or to government bodies. In rare circumstances we sometimes need to make reports of suspicious activity to the National Crime Agency. We also work with some trusted contractors or consultants who may have access to your information, such as service providers or copiers. All contractors have a contract with us which requires that your information be accessed appropriately and kept confidential (among other data protection requirements). Similarly, we may occasionally need to share client matter information with our professional indemnity insurers and their advisers. If you instruct us jointly with another client it will be necessary to share certain information relevant to you with the corresponding joint client in order to fulfil your instructions to us.

File retention

While we reserve the right to destroy non-original material at any time after the conclusion of your matter, we generally retain files for a period of six years after payment of the final bill and destroy them thereafter. At the end of a case, original documents will be returned to you. We will also always keep a small amount of information after file closure to do conflicts of interest searches in the future to comply with our professional duties.

Information officer

Our general contact details are set out in our covering letter and the contact details for our information officer can be found on our website. Contact this individual if you want to exercise one of your data protection rights and in particular if you:

wish to complain about how your personal data is being used; or

• wish to request that our records about your personal information be corrected or deleted.

Complaints to the ICO

While we are regulated as a firm of solicitors by the SRA, if you have a complaint about how your personal information is being used which we have not been able to address you may also be able to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) directly. You can learn more about the ICO and personal data rights from the ICO’s website .

Anti-money laundering & financial crime procedures

How we verify your identity and check your credit rating

As a firm of solicitors, we must comply with different legal and regulatory requirements aimed at preventing crime. You agree to co-operate with us in order to verify your identity, your business structure, organisation history and sources of income, wealth and funds, and other matters relevant to discharging our legal and professional duties in this respect. This may include attending our offices with identification and other documentation for verification, but could also involve disclosure of more personal information such as bank statements and evidence of income. If it is not possible to attend our offices, lawful alternatives will be considered with you. We may check your credit rating.

Reports to the National Crime Agency

If we have to report information about you or your matter to the National Crime Agency we may be prevented by law from informing you of this fact. If this happens we can stop work on your matter and withhold your money without notice or explanation to you, until the issue is resolved.

We do not accept cash

Strict limits apply to how we operate our client account (used to hold money on a client’s behalf in connection with a legal transaction). We do not accept cash. We cannot offer a banking facility and there are limits on how funds can be paid into and out of our client account.

Other important terms

Nobody else has any rights under this contract, except our staff

This contract is between you and us. Other than our staff (see paragraph 9.6), nobody else has rights under it or can enforce it. Neither of us will need to ask anybody else to sign-off on ending or changing it.

If a court invalidates some of this contract, the rest of it will still apply

If a court or other authority decides that some of these terms are unlawful, the rest will continue to apply.

These terms are governed by English law and you can bring claims against us in the English courts

These terms are governed by English law and you can bring claims against us in the English courts. If you live in Scotland, you can bring claims in either the Scottish or the English courts. If you live in Northern Ireland, you can bring claims in either the Northern Irish or the English courts.