Our Terms & Conditions

Terms and Conditions: About

Fees:

Charges for legal work are based upon the time spent on a matter by either a Solicitor or a Legal Assistant. The basis for calculation of the professional fees is described below and is mainly by reference to time spent by whomsoever shall spend time working on your file. This will include attendances upon the client and others, any time spent travelling, considering preparing and working on papers and correspondence, making and receiving telephone calls. Each Solicitor or Legal Assistant’s time is charged out at the applicable hourly rate.

These hourly rates do not include VAT, but VAT will be added when an invoice is prepared. Where instructions of the client require that interviews take place, or other work is carried out, necessarily outside of our normal office hours, we reserve the right to increase the level of the hourly rate but you will be notified should the hourly rate be increased. Charging rates are reviewable and the firm reserves the right to review the charges annually at the end of each financial year which falls due in March of each year.

You may, after discussion with the Fee Earner responsible for your case, impose a cap on costs that we may incur without your further agreement. If you wish to do this you must do so in writing.

Disbursements:

Depending on the transaction, there may be other fees payable to third parties which are referred to as disbursements. Any disbursements will be confirmed to you either in the covering letter or during the transaction. Unless the amount required is trivial, we may require you to pay us for such disbursements in advance.

Examples of disbursements that may be incurred in your matter are court fees, experts fees, barristers fees and other payments to third parties. We will tell you about these disbursements and the amounts required from you as soon as we are able to do so.

Payment of Fees:

It is the firm’s practice to deliver accounts either at the completion of your case or, whenever applicable, at periods during the duration of your case. The firm’s fees are payable on production of the account. If you do not pay interim accounts we may not be able, in some circumstances, to continue to act for you.

We will also require from you throughout the case payments in advance, known as “payments on account” of our costs. It is a condition of our contract with you that these are paid when required. If you do not pay payments on account that we reasonably require from you then we will not be able to continue to act for you.

The payments on account required from you will be based on our estimate of the likely costs to be incurred in the next stage of your case and we will explain to you how they have been calculated when we request the payment. Payments on account will be set against the bill that we send to you for the relevant period. If the time actually spent is less than estimated the balance will be carried forward or refunded as appropriate.

You may find it convenient in budgeting for our costs to make regular payments on account each month. The Fee Earner responsible for your case will be able to discuss with you an appropriate amount and provide you with our bank details if you wish to set up a standing order.

Fees are payable whether or not we act for you until the case is concluded and whether or not you are successful. If your instructions do not proceed to completion for any reason during the period in which we are instructed then we shall be entitled to charge for work done on the basis set out in these terms and conditions.

Complaints Procedure:

Vincent Sykes are committed to providing quality service to our clients. If you feel that we may have fallen short of this, then please get in touch with us. We will investigate your complaint to the best of our ability and provide you with the outcome in a timely manner.

This is how you can expect us to handle your complaint:

1. Firstly, we ask that you communicate your complaint to us as soon as the issue arises. Please provide us with as much information as possible and communicate this as clearly as possible. We ask that, if you are able, you please provide your complaint in writing. You can either email your complaint to enquiries@vincentsykes.co.uk or write to us at:

Vincent Sykes
4 West Street
Oundle
Peterborough
PE8 4EF

2. Once we have received your complaint, we will write to you acknowledging receipt, usually within three working days. If you have sent your complaint by email, then we will send our acknowledgment, and all further written correspondence, by email. Alternatively, if your complaint is received in the post, then our acknowledgment letter and all further written correspondence will be posted to you.

3. We will then start our investigation into your complaint. Your complaint will be investigated by a senior staff member at Vincent Sykes. If we deem it appropriate, then we may contact you to seek further clarification or information from you.

4. We will communicate the outcome of our investigation to you in writing. We aim to send this written outcome within 20 working days of our acknowledgment of your complaint.

5. If you receive our outcome and remain dissatisfied, then we ask that you contact us again, in writing, explaining why you are not satisfied with our outcome. Please ensure that you do so within five working days of receiving our response.

6. We will then aim to provide our final outcome, in writing, within five working days of receipt of your further comments.

We reserve the right to change any of the above timescales. If we do, then we will let you know and explain our reasoning. If you are unable to communicate with us in writing or require any reasonable adjustments, then please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate this.

7. Our complaints procedure will then be exhausted. If you remain dissatisfied at this stage, then you have the right to contact the Legal Ombudsman. Any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must be made within six months of you receiving our final written outcome, or within one year of you discovering the issue.

Contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are as follows:

Website – www.legalombudsman.org.uk
Telephone – 0300 555 0333
Address – Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH

8. You also have the right to complain to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. Further details regarding this can be found on their website – www.sra.org.uk