Your relationship with us

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH US

Choose Roseblade & Co in Burntwood for professional legal support and law advice. Our solicitors can take care of all your requirements in Burntwood, Cannock and Lichfield.

CONVEYANCING COSTS

Our conveyancing fees include all administration work necessary with regard to your sale and/or purchase and include requesting searches, dealing with registration at the Land Registry and filing the necessary Stamp Duty Land Tax forms etc. as outlined in the conveyancing section of our website.

There are “disbursements” or fees for services provided by third parties such as the fee to the search company and any documentation needed which has to be sought.

Our costs and some disbursements are dependant upon the value of the property you are buying and/or selling:-

COSTS INFORMATION

The basis of our charges for all matters is an hourly rate (currently £200.00 per hour) plus VAT at 20% (total £240.00 per hour) which may be varied up or down depending upon the level of difficulty or responsibility of the work we do. We may be able to give you an estimate or a fixed quote in straight forward matters. We give below indications of what your costs might be in a particular matter.

Sale:

Our costs for the sale of a property of a value up to £400,000.00 would range from £500.00 to £1,000.00 plus VAT at 20% (£600.00 to £1,200.00 including VAT).

Obtaining an up to date copy of your title and plan from the Land Registry at a cost of £6.00 (no VAT payable)
Bank fee of £20.00 plus 20% VAT (total £24.00 including VAT) for any same day transfer of funds.
If your sale property is leasehold we will have to contact the freeholders to answer enquiries from the buyer’s solicitor. The fee charged by the freeholders for this service will not be known until we contact them. Additional work is invariably required on a leasehold matter for which we will charge an additional fee of £100.00 plus VAT at 20% (total £120.00 including VAT).

Purchase:

Our costs for the purchase of a property of a value up to £400,000.00 would range from £500.00 to £1,000.00 plus VAT at 20% (£600.00 to £1,200.00 including VAT).

The disbursements would include:

A search pack fee - currently £192.50 including VAT which includes, local authority search, mining report, environmental report, drainage report and Chancel indemnity policy.
Land Registry fees - these are dependant upon the purchase price. We have the facility to carry out registrations on line for transactions where the property is already registered which reduces the Land Registry fee.
Bank fee of £20.00 plus 20% VAT (total £24.00 including VAT) for any same day transfer of funds.
The payment of stamp duty is dependant upon the value of the property purchased and your circumstances regarding other property owned or if this is your first property.

If your purchase property is leasehold there will be notice fees payable to the freeholder which are not known to us until we contact them. Additional work is invariably required on a leasehold purchase for which we will charge an additional fee of £100.00 plus VAT at 20% (total £120.00 including VAT).

Re-Mortgage:

Our costs for dealing with your re-mortgage would be between £250.00 and £800.00 plus VAT at 20% (between £300.00 and £960.00 including VAT) for a re-mortgage up to a value up to £400,000.00.

The disbursements for a re-mortgage would include:

A search pack fee - currently £192.50 including VAT which includes, local authority search, mining report, environmental report, drainage report and Chancel indemnity policy. Searches may not be required if your re-mortgage is with the same lender.
Land Registry fees - these are dependant upon the property value or the mortgage amount.
Bank fee of £20.00 plus 20% VAT (total £24.00 including VAT) for any same day transfer of funds.

Give us a call

PROBATE/ ESTATE ADMINISTRATION COSTS

We charge only for work carried out on each estate, we do not charge a percentage of the estate value.

We offer an initial free appointment to enable us to give you some advice with regard to obtaining a Grant of Probate and what would be required.

Our costs for dealing with the application of the Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration in a straight forward matter would be around £400.00 plus VAT at 20% (£480.00 including VAT).

Disbursements payable to third parties would include:

Probate Registry fee - £155.00 (plus 50p each for further sealed copies of the grant) (VAT not payable).

If there is property included in the estate Land Registry fees would be payable to obtain copies of documents from the Land Registry. These will not exceed £20.00. VAT is not chargeable. Our costs for dealing with the sale of a property included in an estate would be the same as an ordinary sale

The exact costs for dealing with an estate (as opposed to just getting probate) would depend upon the circumstances. If the estate is simple such as simply one beneficiary and no property involved the costs would be lower than if there were, for example, multiple bank accounts, shares to be sold and property to be dealt with with the estate to be distributed between a number of beneficiaries. A complicated estate would involve the drawing up of a detailed estate account. We cannot given an estimate of the costs of dealing with the administration of an estate because all cases are different. Where we cannot give you an estimate of the costs our standard charge of £200.00 per hour plus VAT (£240.00 including VAT) would apply but this would be subject to negotiation between us.

If the estate is taxable we can advise you about inheritance tax that would be payable by the estate and the allowances available. If a full inheritance tax return is required our costs would be between £1,000.00 and £3,000.00 plus VAT of 20% (between £1,200.00 and £3,600.00 including VAT) this would be in addition to the administration costs described.

POWERS OF ATTORNEY COSTS

Our usual charge for dealing with a power of attorney is £300.00 plus 20% VAT (total (£360.00) in addition there is a fee payable of £82.00 (no VAT) to the Office of the Public Guardian for registration.

This is for each power that we prepare. If we prepare multiple powers of attorney of both kinds, for example for husband and wife, we may be able to give a discount on the additional powers.

WILLS

Our normal charge for straight forward Wills is £150.00 plus VAT at 20% (total £180.00) for a single Will and £200.00 plus VAT at 20% (total £240.00) for two joint (mirror) Wills.

COMPLAINTS

We want to give you the best possible service, however, if at any point you become unhappy or concerned about the service we have provided then you should inform us immediately, so that we can do our best to resolve the problem. In the first instance it may be helpful to contact the person who is working on your case to discuss your concerns and we will do our best to resolve any issues at this stage but if you would like to make a formal complaint then you should read our full Complaints Procedure below.

OUR COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

If you have a complaint, please write to Edwin Roseblade with the details.

What will happen next?

He will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to clarify or explain the details if necessary. You may expect to receive this letter within 7 days of our receiving your complaint.
He will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint.
He will then investigate your complaint and either write to you in detail in reply to your complaint (including his suggestions for resolving the matter)or invite you to meet him to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. This will be done within 28 days of the receipt of your complaint. If a meeting takes place, he will write you afterwards to confirm what took place and any solutions he agreed with you.
At this stage if you are still not satisfied you can write to Edwin Roseblade again. He will then review his decision and let you know the result of the review within 7 days of the end of the review. At this time he will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. If you are still not satisfied and a period of 8 weeks has elapsed since you first made your complaint, you can complain to The Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ, (Tel 0300 555 0333).

If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.

COMPLAINTS TO SOLICITORS REGULATION AUTHORITY

If you wish to complain about dishonesty or breach of the SRA principles, rather that poor service, you can make a report to the SRA setting out your concerns clearly, identifying individuals you consider responsible and attaching any evidence you have in support.

There is a report form available from the SRA to complete. You can make reports or seek guidance from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN, (report@sra.org.uk), 0370 606255

DATA PROTECTION AND PRIVACY

Any information you give us is for the provision of legal services to you and for related purposes including keeping our client's record up to date, helping us manage our practice, statutory returns and legal and regulatory compliance.

Our use of the information is subject to your instructions, the General Data Protection Regulations and the Data Protection Act and our duty of confidentiality to you. In working for you we may need to give your information to third parties such as expert witnesses or other professional advisers.

You have rights under the data protection legislation to request access to your personal data and information and about how we process it, to have your personal data corrected if it is inaccurate, to have you personal data completed, to object or to restrict processing of your data, to have your personal data erased, to move copy or transfer you personal data and the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. Please note that these rights do not apply in all circumstances.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS

Note that these terms and conditions of business should be read in conjunction with our client care letter and Schedule which you will receive upon receipt of your initial instructions.

1. People responsible for your work

The name of the person who will be mainly responsible for this matter and their position in the firm is given in the Schedule. He or she may be assisted by other persons as the matter progresses. We will tell you their names and position as necessary. The person in this firm with ultimate responsibility for our work with you is Edwin Roseblade. If for any reason that person dealing with your matter is unavailable, please ask for their secretary who will be happy to take a message for you. We try hard to avoid changing the people who are handling your work but if this cannot be avoided we will notify you promptly who will be handling the matter and why the change was necessary.

2. Charges and expenses

Our charges are based on the time we spend dealing with a case. Time spent on your affairs will include meetings with you and perhaps others, any time spent in travelling, considering, preparing and working on papers, correspondence and making and receiving telephone calls. In matters where there is no dispute such as a property or commercial transaction, will, probate or trust matter we are often able to foresee the amount of work that will be involved at the outset and will give you a quotation of our charges together with an estimate or pre-calculation of expenses such as search fees, survey fees and Land Registry fees and stamp duty land tax. If you accept the quotation our charges will be fixed in the amount quoted plus vat but expenses may be more or less than estimated because for example a statutory fee may change or an unforeseen expense may arise. Also, our charges may be increased in the event that an unforeseen difficulty or change in the work we have been asked to do occurs. In the absence of a fixed fee being agreed our current charging rates are shown in the Schedule. Our charging rates are reviewed periodically and in the event of a review you will be advised of our new charging rate. Routine letters that we write and routine telephone calls that we make and receive will be charged at units of one tenth of an hour. Other letters and calls will be charged on a time basis. If your instructions mean that we have to work outside normal office hours we reserve the right to increase the level of the hourly rate. You will be notified in writing of any increased rate. In addition to the time spent we may take into account a number of factors which include the complexity of the issues, the speed at which action must be taken, the expertise or specialist knowledge which the case requires and, the value of the property or subject matter involved. You will be notified if this situation arises. If you have a query about the level of any revised rate notified to you please contact us straight away.

We will add VAT to our charges at the rate that applies when the work is done. There may be certain other expenses, including payments that we have to make on your behalf, such as court fees, fees for medical reports and Barristers fees which you will have to pay. VAT is payable on certain expenses.

We will inform you if any unforeseen additional work becomes necessary (for example due to unexpected difficulties or if your requirements or the circumstances significantly change during the course of the matter). You may set a limit on the charges and expenses to be incurred. This means that you must pay those incurred up to the agreed limit without our needing to refer back to you. We will inform you as soon as it appears that the limit may be exceeded and we will not exceed the limit without first obtaining your consent.

If for any reason the matter does not proceed to completion we will charge you for work done and expenses incurred.

It is normal to ask the 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 delays in the progress of the case. We may request further payments for charges and expenses to be incurred towards your bills and will send you a receipted bill. We will offset any such payments against your final bill, but it is important that you understand that your total charges and expenses may be greater than any advance payments.

3. Billing arrangements

In a conveyancing matter or non contentious matter we shall send you a bill for our charges and expenses. In a conveyancing matter the payment of the bill is due at least seven days in advance of the completion date. If sufficient funds are available on completion and we have sent you a bill we will usually deduct our charges from the funds. Please note that we shall not be able to complete a transaction if you do not put us in possession of cleared funds by the due date and that this could result in your having to pay financial penalties to another party.

In matters where a fixed fee has not been agreed we will send you interim bills of our charges etc. We will charge you interest on the bill at the rate applicable to High Court judgment debts, if the bill is not paid in full within one month. Such interest will be charged on a daily basis. Arrangements can be made for you to make payments on account of costs by instalments or standing order. If you have any query about your bill you should contact the person dealing with your matter straight away.

Our bill may or may not contain detailed items. A bill not containing detailed items is called a gross bill and will usually be less than a detailed bill. If we send you a gross sum bill you may ask us to deliver a detailed bill in which case the gross sum will be replaced by the detailed bill.

If you have a complaint about our bills you can make a complaint to us under our complaints procedure which is set out below or you may also have the right to object to it by applying to the court for an assessment of a bill under Part 3 at 111 of the Solicitors' Act 1974.

4. Legal Aid

We do not deal with public funded cases (legal aid). Whilst we are able to give general advice as to the availability of legal aid we are not able to advise you whether or not you would be financially eligible for the same.

5. Legal Expenses Insurance

We would remind you of the possible availability of legal expenses insurance and after the event insurance. It is important for you to ascertain as quickly as possible whether or not you already have the benefit of such insurance since any costs incurred before obtaining the authority of the insurers are most unlikely to be paid by them. You may find, for example, that you have legal expenses cover as part of your buildings insurance, motor insurance, general commercial insurance and credit card accounts. These are only examples, others may be relevant. If you do have this insurance cover, please let us have the details immediately and we will contact the insurers for you.

6. Your costs and another party

It is important that you understand that you will be responsible for paying our bills, whatever the outcome of the case. We will discuss with you whether your charges and expenses might be paid by another person. Even if you are successful the other party may not be ordered to pay all of your charges and expenses or these may not be recoverable from them in full; if this happens you will have to pay the balance of our charges and expenses. If the other party has legal aid or public funding, you may not get back any of your charges and expenses even if you win the case. If you are successful and the court orders the other party to pay some or all of your charges and expenses interest can be claimed on them from the other party from the date of the court order. We will account to you for such interest to the extent that you have paid our charges and expenses on account but that we are entitled to the rest of that interest. You will also be responsible for paying the charges and expenses of seeking to recover any charges and expenses that the court orders the other party to pay. In some circumstances the court may order you to pay the other party's legal costs and expenses, for example if you lose the case. The money would be payable in addition to our charges and expenses. We will discuss with you whether our charges and expenses and your liability for another party's charges and expenses may be covered by insurance and if not whether it would be advisable for you to have insurance to meet the other party's charges and expenses.

7. Deposit interest

Unless we specifically agree with you otherwise we shall pay you interest on any money held by us on your behalf in accordance with the Solicitors Accounts Rules provided such interest exceeds the sum of £20.00.

8. Storage of papers and documents

After completing the work we are entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses. We will keep our file of papers except for any of your papers which you have asked to return for you no more than six years. We keep the file on the understanding that we have authority to destroy it six years after the date of the final bill we send you in this matter. We will not destroy documents you ask us to deposit in safe custody. If we retrieve papers and documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act in connection with your matters we will not normally charge you for such retrieval. However we may make a charge based on time spent producing stored papers or documents to you or another at your request. We may also charge for reading correspondence or other work necessary to comply with the instructions given by you on your behalf. Following completion of your purchase we may ask you to collect and to keep certain deeds and documents relating to the property which have not been retained by the Land Registry. There will be a bundle containing pre-registration deeds and documents, search results etc. We advise that you keep this bundle in case the documents in it may be of use in future transactions. These bundles can be bulky and in common with most solicitors and financial institutions we are not able to store them for clients.

9. Money Laundering

Solicitors have to act within the money laundering legislation and for the protection of all our clients we operate a money laundering reporting procedure. In certain circumstances information must be revealed by us to the appropriate authorities(without informing you that we have done so) in relation to any suspicion of money laundering or dealing with the proceeds of crime which includes tax evasion or benefit fraud We are under a legal duty to report to the authorities any circumstances concerning our clients which may raise a suspicion of money laundering. We are also required to obtain documentary evidence of the identity of our clients. We are not prepared to accept receipt of cash sums of money larger than £1,000.00.

10. Anti Discrimination

We do not discriminate on the grounds of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief, disability or age. We have adopted the Law Society's anti-discrimination policy, a copy of which is available on request.

11. Financial Services Authority

We are not authorised under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, but we are able, in certain circumstances, to offer a limited range in investment services to clients because we are members of the Law Society. We can provide these investment services if they are an incidental part of the professional services we have been engaged to provide. If you have any problem with the service we have provided for you then please let us know. We will try to resolve any problem quickly and operate an internal complaints handling system to resolve a problem between ourselves. If for any reason we are unable to resolve the problem between us then we are regulated by the Law Society which also provides complaints and redress schemes. The Financial Services Register can be accessed via the Financial Services Authority Web site at: www.fsa.gov.uk/register.

12. Termination

You may terminate your instructions to us in writing at any time but we will been titled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owed to us for our charges and expenses. In some circumstances you may consider we ought to stop acting for you, for example if you cannot give clear or proper instructions on how we are to proceed. We may decide to stop acting for you if for example you do not pay an interim bill, comply with our request for a payment on account or if the solicitor/client relationship has broken down. If we are acting for you in the purchase of property we may receive instructions from you lenders to act on their behalf. If so we will have to pass them information you give us that might be relevant to their decision whether to finance the purchase. If you tell us things that you do not want the lenders to know and they are relevant to the lenders we may have to stop acting for the lenders and possibly also for you. We will give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you. If you or we decide that we will no longer act for you, you will pay our charges on an hourly basis and expenses as set out earlier.

13. Communication between you and us

We are confident of providing a high quality service in all respects. If however you have any queries or concerns about our work, would you please raise them at the first instance with the person dealing with your matter. If that does not resolve the problem to your satisfaction or you prefer not to speak to that person then please contact Edwin Roseblade who is the person responsible at this firm for dealing with any complaints including complaints about bills. All solicitors must attempt to resolve problems that may arise with their services. We have a written complaints procedure which is available to you on our website or will be on request. It is important that you immediately raise any concerns which you may have with us. We value you and would not wish to think that you have any reason to be unhappy with us. If your complaint is not resolved in this way you may make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted at PO Box 6806,Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ (Tel: 0300 555 0333).

14. E-Mail Communications

If you provide us with an e-mail address we may communicate with you by e-mail. Would you please note that any e-mail we may send you will not be encrypted. The delivery and receipt of e-mail is still not guaranteed or wholly reliable and depends upon the relevant service provider. Please note that e-mail is not a replacement for other means of communication. If you need to contact us urgently we would recommend that you do so by telephone. Please do not send bank account information or other confidential information by email.

15. Limit of Liability

Our liability to you in respect of breach of contract or breach of duty or fault or negligence or otherwise whatsoever arising out of or in connection with this engagement shall be limited in total to £2 million to cover claims of any sort whatsoever (including interest and costs) arising out of or in connection with this engagement. This provision shall have no occupation to any liability for death or personal injury or other liability which cannot lawfully be excluded or limited or to liability arising as a result of fraud on our part.

Where there is more than one party to this engagement letter (other than us) the limit of liability will have to be allocated among you. If it is agreed that, save where an allocation is expressly stated by us, such allocation will be entirely a matter for you and you shall be under no obligation to inform us of the allocation. If (for whatever reason) no such allocation is agreed) you shall not dispute the validity enforcement or operation of the limit of liability on the grounds that no such allocation was agreed.

Subject to the limit imposed by this clause our liability in respect of breach of contract or breach of duty or fault or negligence or otherwise whatsoever arising out of or in connection with this engagement shall be limited to that proportion of the loss or damage (including interest and costs) suffered by you, which is ascribed to us by a court of competent jurisdiction allocating proportionate responsibility to us having regard to the contribution to the loss and damage in question of any other person responsible and/or liable to you for such loss and damage (loss and damage having the same meaning as in the Civil Liability (Contribution) Act 1978). This provision shall have no application to any liability for death or personal injury or other liability which cannot lawfully be excluded or limited or to liability arising as a result of fraud on our part.

For the purpose of assessing the contribution to the loss and damage in question of any other person pursuant to the preceding paragraph it is agreed that no account shall be taken of any limit imposed on the amount of liability of such person by any agreement made before the loss and damage in question occurred.

Any claim for breach of contract, breach of duty, fault or negligence or otherwise whatsoever arising out of or in connection with this engagement shall be brought against us within six years of the act or omission alleged to have caused the loss in question.

16. Agreement

Unless otherwise agreed these terms of business apply to any future instructions you give us. Your continuing instructions in this matter will amount to an acceptance of these terms and conditions of business. A person who is not a party to this engagement shall have no right to enforce any of its terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

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