Henriques Griffiths

All references to “we” “us” “our” ”the firm” “Henriques Griffiths” “HG” and the like should be read as referring to Henriques Griffiths LLP. The terms “partner” is used to refer to a member of Henriques Griffiths Solicitors LLP or an employee or consultant with equivalent standing or qualifications.

Our aim

We aim to offer our clients quality legal advice with a personal service at a fair cost. As a start, we hope it is helpful to you to set out in this statement the basis on which we will provide our professional services.

Our commitment to you

We will: • Represent your interests and keep your business confidential; • Explain to you the legal work which may be required and the prospects of a successful outcome; • Make sure that you understand the likely degree of financial risk which you will be taking on; • Advise you if legal aid or any other financial assistance might be available to you; • Keep you regularly informed of progress or, if there is none, when you are next likely to hear from us; • Try to avoid using technical legal language when writing to you – tell us when we fail in this aim! • Deal with your queries promptly, for example, we will always try to return your telephone calls on the same day;

People responsible for your work

Your matter will be dealt with by the Commercial Property department of this firm.

Jonathan Beck who is a Partner will be mainly responsible for your matter and may be assisted by a legal assistant, trainee or an assistant solicitor as the matter progresses.

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 your matter and where appropriate, why the change was necessary.

Our Liability

Your relationship is solely with the LLP and the LLP has sole legal liability for the work done for you. No partner or member of staff at the LLP will have any personal legal liability for that work whether in contract, tort or negligence. Even if that individual signs in his or her own name any letter or other document in the course of carrying out that work it does not mean he or she is assuming any personal legal liability for that letter or document.

Our Professional Indemnity Insurance is provided by insurers approved by the Law Society. Our liability to you for breach of instructions is limited to a maximum of £7 million.

We can only limit our liability to the extent that the law allows. In particular we cannot limit our liability for death or personal injury cause by our negligence.

Charges and expenses

Our charges are based on the time we spend in dealing with a case. Time spent on your affairs will include meetings with you and perhaps others; any time spent travelling; considering, preparing and working on papers; correspondence with you and/or others; making and receiving telephone calls; reviewing your matter, and any time spent by a partner, supervisor or assistant in reviewing and considering the progress of your file.

We will charge £230/hr for each hour engaged on your matter by Jonathan from now until the review date on or after 1st April each year. Should he be assisted by others as the matter progresses please note that the current hourly rates of our solicitors and executives are as follows:

• Solicitors with 8 years post-qualification - £200 • Solicitors and legal executives with over 4 years post-qualification experience including at least 4 years litigation experience – £175 • Other solicitors and legal executives and other staff of equivalent experience - £150 • Trainee solicitors, paralegals and other staff of equivalent experience - £115

Routine letters, texts or e mails that we write and routine telephone calls that we make and receive will be charged at units of 1/10th of an hour (being 6 minutes). Other letters etc and calls lasting over 6 minutes will be charged on a time unit basis – for example an 8 minute phone call will be charged as 2 units. We will also charge for letters received.

If your instructions mean we have to work outside the normal office hours, we reserve the right to increase the level of the hourly rate(s). You will be notified in writing of any increased rate.

On or after the 1st April each year we will review the hourly rate(s) to take account of changes in our overhead costs and notify you 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 knowledge which the case requires and, if appropriate, the value of the property or subject matter involved. On the basis of the information currently available, we expect these factors to be adequately covered by the hourly rate set out above. The rates may be higher, if for example, the matter becomes more complex than expected; we will notify you of this.

If you have any query about the level of any revised rate notified to you, please contact Phillip straight away.

We will add VAT to our charge at the rate that applies when the work is done. At present, VAT is 20%.

There may be certain other expenses, including payments we make on your behalf such as court fees, search fees, stamp duty 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). We will also inform you of this estimated cost in writing before any extra charges and expenses are incurred.

Your or this Firm may set a limit on the charges and expenses to be incurred time to time during the matter. This means that you must pay those charges and expenses 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 will not exceed the limit without first obtaining your consent.

It is normal practice to ask clients to pay sums of money from time to time on account for charges and expenses, which are expected in the following weeks or months. This helps to avoid delay in the progress of their case. We may therefore request payments on account for charges and expenses to be incurred as the matter progresses. While we put these payments towards your bill/s, we 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.

In some cases we may be prepared to agree a fixed price for the work we do. However, if for unforeseen reasons, the matter becomes more complicated, a higher amount may be charged. This amount will be based on the hourly rates charged by the person who has conduct of your file. We will warn you if we think this is likely to happen. If we have not agreed a fixed price for the work, then we are happy to give you an estimate for our costs and our final bill will be or about that figure unless there were particular circumstances which we did not take into account at the offset. We will advise you of this beforehand and in our covering letter we will set out our estimate of costs and provide you with an update as the case progresses.

If for any reason your matter does not proceed to completion while we are dealing with it, we will charge you for the work done and expenses incurred up until the time we are told by you to do no further work.

Payment of bills

Payment of your bill may be made by credit card. If you chose to pay by Visa or MasterCard, please note that we will charge a handling fee amounting to 1.729% of the amount of the bill.

If you have any query about your bill you should contact Phillip straight away. We will endeavour to resolve immediately any concerns you may have.

Your Legal rights in relation to our bills are explained at the bottom of each bill.

Payment is due to us within 28 days of our sending you the bill. We will charge you interest on the bill at 12.5% per year from the date of the bill. If you do not pay our bill within this time, interest will be charged on a daily basis.

Storage of papers and documents

After completing the work (or if our agreement with you has ended before completion of the matter), we are entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses. We will, otherwise, keep our file of papers (except for any of your papers, which you ask to be returned to you) for a minimum of 7 years.

If we have to identify papers or documents to retrieve from storage, and correspond with you in relation to continuing or new instructions to act in connection with your affairs, we may make a charge for such retrieval. Our current charge is £50 plus VAT. If we propose to make a charge, we shall tell you what this is. We may also make a charge, based on time spent, for 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, or another on your behalf.

Termination

You may terminate your instructions to us in writing at any time but we will be entitled to keep all your papers and documents, while there is money owing 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, or if it is clear that you have lost confidence in how we are carrying out your work.

We may decide to stop acting for you only with good reason, for example, if you do not pay an outstanding bill or comply with our request for a payment on account or where we do not receive clear, proper or any instructions from you. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.

If either this firm or you decide that we will no longer act for you, you will pay our charges on an hourly basis and expenses as set out earlier. We have a right to exercise a lien over your file in respect of outstanding costs. This means that we will not release your file, correspondence or documents or any other information relating to it until payment of our charges and expenses have been made or a satisfactory arrangement for payment has been agreed.

Complaints

We are confident of providing a high quality of service in all respects and are committed to 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 raise them in the first instance with the person dealing with your file on a day to day basis. If that does not resolve the problem to your satisfaction or you would prefer not to speak to them, then please contact their supervisor. All solicitors must attempt to resolve problems that may arise with their services. It is therefore important that you immediately raise any concerns you may have with us.

We value you and would not wish you to think you have any reason to be unhappy with us. We have a written complaints procedure which can be followed if the methods described above have not worked for you and you wish to make a complaint. Please therefore contact Jane Sullivan and ask for a copy of that procedure.

If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can make a formal complaint to the . The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted at www.legalombudsman.org.uk (0300 555 0333). Normally, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint

A complaint could include a complaint about the firm’s bill and there may also be a right to object to the bill by making a complaint to the Office for Legal Complaints, and/or by applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitor’s Act 1974; and that if all or part of the bill remains unpaid the firm may be entitled to charge interest.

Credit reference search and unencrypted emails and faxes

We may make searches about you at a credit reference agency who will supply us with credit information as well as information from the Electoral Register. This information may also be used for debt tracing and the prevention of money laundering as well as for the management of your account.

Your signature to this document will authorise us to make such searches From time to time, we may send information and/or documents concerning your matter to other authorised third parties. This information may be sent by fax or electronic mail (email) transmissions, and may be sent in an unencrypted format, that is to say it may be legible to unauthorised readers. Where Henriques Griffiths considers it appropriate to send letters or documents in this way, you authorise us (by your acceptance of this agreement) to do so.

Confidentiality – IMPORTANT!

Information passed to us is kept confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties.

There are exceptions to this rule, one of which is if we know or suspect that a criminal offence has been, is about to be, or will be, committed by any person (whether that be you or any other person connected directly or indirectly with your matter). In any of these cases we may become obliged by law or Court Order to report information that we obtain about your case (eg under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, or the Money Laundering Regulations 2003).

If we have to make any report as referred to in clause 8.2 above, we shall not be under any obligation to tell you that we have or intend to make such a report. Indeed, to inform you may mean that we commit an offence ourselves.

If on your authority we are working in conjunction with other professional advisers, we (unless you write and tell us otherwise) may disclose any relevant aspects of your affairs to them.

As a firm we are have achieved the Quality Standards of the Law Society. As a result of this we are or may become subject to periodic checks by outside assessors. The Legal Services Commission also undertake periodic checks of our files. This could mean that your file is selected for checking in which case we would usually need your consent for such inspection to occur. Your signature to, and confirmation of this agreement will be treated as your consent to your file being inspected. Any inspection would be in confidence.

Insurance Mediation

If during this transaction you need advice on investments, we may have to refer you to someone who is authorised by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) as this firm is not. However, as we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, we may be able to provide certain limited investment services where these are closely linked to the legal work we are doing. We are included on the register maintained by the FSA so that we can carry on insurance mediation 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 Solicitors Regulation Authority. The register can be accessed via the Financial Services Authority website at www.fsa.gov.uk/register.

The Law Society is the designated professional body for the purpose of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 but responsibility for regulation and complaints handling has been separated from the Law Society’s representative functions. The Solicitors Regulation Authority is the independent regulatory body of the Law Society and the Legal Complaints Service is the independent complaints handling body of the Law Society.

The requirements of the Financial Services Authority are that when we arrange any insurance we need to advise clients about the range of insurers we have checked before recommending a particular policy and if it is not on a fair market analysis we must explain the basis upon which the recommendation has been made. Furthermore we are obliged to ensure that we check the suitability of any such policy for clients and notify them of this in a written "demand and needs statement" before the insurance is put in place.

To minimise the additional work involved we now take this opportunity to deal with those obligations. Please note that when we select a policy we shall do so from one of the several indemnity insurers in whom we have confidence. We will not necessarily choose the policy with the lowest premium. Much is likely to depend upon the speed and convenience with which the policy can be put in place. For example some insurers issue us with policies that we can write up and issue ourselves. You may take it however that we will only use insurers with whom we have an existing working relationship or any others whom we may be satisfied are satisfactory. As regards the suitability of a policy for clients, if we identify a problem that cannot readily be overcome without putting such a policy in place we will inform you of that fact at that time. We will only recommend that you put in place a policy that we consider necessary and sufficient to overcome the legal difficulty we have encountered.

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 your acceptance of these terms and conditions of business. Even so, we ask you to please sign and date the enclosed confirmation of instructions form and return it to us immediately. We can then be confident that you understand the basis on which we will act for you.

If you are happy to be bound by these terms please sign and return the attached acceptance sheet so that we can proceed with your case.

ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS

I, have read the attached terms and conditions of business of Henriques Griffiths Solicitors and I agree them as the basis for the conduct of my case and/or any work undertaken by Henriques Griffiths on my behalf.

SIGNED:

FULL NAME:

DATE:

SIGNED:

FULL NAME:

DATE:

OUR REF: JJB