Terms of business

1. Who we are and how we are regulated

Your solicitor is Development placeholder, not a trading firm, which operates this website at iwanttobuymyfreehold.com.

Registered office

Development placeholder address

SRA number

123456

Registered in England & Wales

Company number 00000000

Email

hello@iwanttobuymyfreehold.com

Telephone

0000 000 0000

We are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority under the SRA number above. We are bound by the SRA Standards and Regulations, which you can read at sra.org.uk. You can check our authorisation on the SRA's public register.

The term "partner" or "director", where we use it, refers to a member or senior employee of the firm. A list of those people is available at our registered office.

2. The service we provide

We act for leaseholders buying the freehold of their property - whether by agreement with the freeholder or through the statutory routes, including collective enfranchisement and lease extension under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 and the Leasehold Reform Act 1967.

Unless your engagement letter says otherwise, our work includes:

• advising on your eligibility and the statutory route open to you;
• obtaining title information and reviewing your lease;
• preparing and serving notices, and handling counter-notices;
• negotiating terms with the freeholder or their solicitor;
• completing the transfer and registering it at HM Land Registry.

Our work does not include, unless separately agreed in writing:

• valuation advice - that is the surveyor's role, and we will tell you when one is needed;
• tax advice of any kind, including SDLT planning and capital gains tax;
• advice on the physical condition of the building, or on planning or building regulations;
• advice on the law of any country other than England and Wales;
• mortgage, financial or investment advice.

We will give you our advice in writing. We can only advise on the information we are given, so please tell us promptly about anything that might affect the matter, and check that what we record is accurate.

We do not guarantee any particular outcome, price or timescale. Statutory enfranchisement involves a freeholder, and often a tribunal, whose decisions are outside our control.

3. Who will do your work

Your engagement letter names the person handling your matter and the person supervising them. Work may be delegated to a colleague where that is appropriate and more cost-effective; the named supervisor remains responsible for it. We will tell you if the person handling your matter changes.

4. Our fees, VAT and disbursements

We charge a fixed fee for each case. The fee is shown before you commit and is confirmed in your engagement letter. It is fixed for the scope of work described there: if the matter changes materially - for example, the freeholder disputes your entitlement, or the case goes to the First-tier Tribunal - we will tell you before doing further work and agree a revised fee with you in writing.

One case covers one property. If you are buying the freehold on more than one property, each is a separate case with its own fee and its own case number.

VAT

Where VAT applies, it is charged at the prevailing rate and shown separately.

Disbursements

Disbursements are payments we make to third parties on your behalf. They are not included in our fixed fee unless your engagement letter says so. On a matter of this kind they typically include HM Land Registry fees, office copy entries, a surveyor's valuation fee, Land Registry registration fees, and - where the case goes that far - First-tier Tribunal application and hearing fees. We will give you an estimate at the outset and tell you before incurring anything significant.

In statutory enfranchisement you may also be liable for the freeholder's reasonable costs as well as your own. We will explain what this means for your case before you commit.

5. Paying us

The fixed fee is payable when you instruct us, through this website. Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card details - you are taken to Stripe's own secure payment page and returned here afterwards. Your case becomes active once payment is confirmed.

Any money we hold for you is held in accordance with the SRA Accounts Rules. We do not pay interest on client money held for short periods where the amount involved would be de minimis; our full interest policy is available on request.

If an invoice is not paid when due we may charge interest at 4% above the Bank of England base rate, and we may decline to do further work until it is settled.

6. Your right to cancel

Because you instruct us online, without meeting us, you are entering a distance contract. Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 you have the right to cancel within 14 calendar days of instructing us, without giving a reason and without penalty.

To cancel, tell us in writing before the 14 days expire - an email to hello@iwanttobuymyfreehold.com is enough. You may use the model cancellation form in the Regulations, but you do not have to.

If you ask us to start work within the cancellation period and then cancel, you must pay for the work we have already done, in proportion to the whole service. We will always ask for that request expressly, and we will tell you what it means, before we begin. If the service is fully performed within the 14 days with your express consent and acknowledgement that you will lose the right to cancel, the right to cancel is lost.

These rights apply to consumers. They do not apply where you instruct us in the course of a business.

7. Identity checks and anti-money-laundering

We are required by the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 to verify the identity of our clients before we can act, and to understand the source of the funds being used.

We carry out those checks electronically through a specialist provider. This involves checking your details against databases including credit reference data, the electoral roll, and politically exposed person and sanctions lists. This is an identity check, not a credit check: it does not affect your credit rating, though a record of the search will appear on your credit file.

We may also ask you for documents - a passport or driving licence, proof of address, and evidence of where your money has come from. We cannot proceed until we are satisfied.

If we have concerns, we may be required to make a report to the National Crime Agency and to stop work without telling you why. The law prevents us from explaining, and we will not be liable to you for any loss caused by our compliance with these obligations.

8. Protecting you from payment fraud

Our bank details will never change during your matter. If you receive an email, text or call - even one that appears to come from us - telling you our account details have changed, treat it as fraudulent. Do not send any money. Telephone us on a number you have obtained independently, not one given in the message, and check before transferring anything.

Email is not a secure medium. We will not accept responsibility for money sent to an account other than one we have confirmed with you by telephone, and we will never ask you for your card details, passwords or one-time codes by email.

9. Confidentiality and disclosure

We keep your affairs confidential. There are limited exceptions: where the law requires disclosure (see section 7), where our regulator, auditors or insurers need access as part of an external review, and where you consent. Anyone given access in those circumstances is bound by the same duty of confidentiality.

If we act for you and another party jointly, information given to us by one of you is not confidential from the other.

10. Your personal data

We are a data controller for the personal data you give us. How we use it, how long we keep it and what rights you have are set out in our privacy policy and cookie policy.

11. Our liability to you

Our aggregate liability to you for any one matter, whether in contract, negligence or otherwise, is limited to £3,000,000, unless we agree a different limit with you in writing. This limit is not less than the minimum required by the SRA's minimum terms and conditions of professional indemnity insurance.

We do not exclude or limit our liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• anything else which cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.

Our advice is given for your use alone and for the matter it concerns. No third party may rely on it without our written agreement, and we accept no liability to anyone other than you. We are not liable for loss arising from your failure to give us full and accurate information, or from your decision not to follow our advice.

Where loss is also attributable to another party, our liability is limited to the share that is just and equitable having regard to our responsibility for it - and it is not increased by any inability of yours to recover from that other party, whatever the reason.

12. Professional indemnity insurance

We maintain professional indemnity insurance in accordance with the SRA's minimum terms. As required by the Provision of Services Regulations 2009:

Insurer

Development placeholder

Territorial coverage

England and Wales

Full details, including the policy number and the insurer's address, are available on request.

13. Storing your file

After your matter closes we keep the file for 6 years, after which it may be destroyed without further notice to you. Records we are required to keep under the money laundering regulations are kept for five years from the end of our business relationship, and then deleted.

We keep the file on the understanding that we may destroy it after that period. We do not charge for retrieving papers in storage where we are continuing to act, but we may charge for time spent producing or reading them for another purpose. Documents you ask us to hold in safe custody - deeds, for example - are not destroyed.

14. Ending the retainer

You may end our retainer at any time, in writing. You will be responsible for our charges for work done to that point, and for disbursements already incurred.

We may stop acting only where there is good reason and on reasonable notice - for example if you do not give us instructions we need, if you do not pay an invoice or a requested payment on account, if we cannot complete our identity checks, or if continuing to act would put us in breach of our professional obligations. We will confirm the reason in writing where we are permitted to.

15. If you are unhappy

We want to give you a good service. If you are not satisfied - with our work, our service or our bill - please tell us so that we can put it right.

Complain to us first

Contact the Client Care Partner at hello@iwanttobuymyfreehold.com. We will acknowledge your complaint within five working days, investigate it, and give you our final written response within eight weeks. Our full complaints procedure is available on request and is provided free of charge.

The Legal Ombudsman

If we cannot resolve it, or eight weeks pass without a final response, you may ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint. The Ombudsman deals with complaints about service. Their service is free to you.

You must normally refer your complaint to the Ombudsman:

• within six months of receiving our final written response; and
• no more than one year from the act or omission complained of, or one year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.

Post

Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH

Telephone

0300 555 0333

Email

enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Web

legalombudsman.org.uk

The Solicitors Regulation Authority

The Ombudsman deals with service. If your concern is about our behaviour - dishonesty, discrimination, or taking money improperly - you can report it to the SRA at sra.org.uk/consumers/problems.

Your bill

You also have the right to apply to the court to assess our bill under sections 70 to 72 of the Solicitors Act 1974. The Legal Ombudsman may not consider a complaint about a bill that is already before the court for assessment.

16. Equality and diversity

We are committed to treating everyone equally and to not discriminating unlawfully. A copy of our equality and diversity policy is available on request. Please tell us if you need information in a different format, or need any adjustment to how we communicate with you.

17. General

Applicable law. These terms, and any dispute arising from them, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

Changes. We may update these terms. The version that applies to your matter is the one in force when you instructed us, unless we agree a change with you in writing. The date at the top shows when this version was published.

Severability. If any provision is found to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.

Acceptance. Continuing to instruct us after receiving these terms means you accept them, whether or not you sign and return the engagement letter.