If you are concerned that instructing a solicitor will be a daunting and difficult task, you will welcome our friendly and personal approach to assisting you in a variety of legal matters.

A comprehensive list of our services is below. Do you require assistance with personal employment or other contractual issues; relationship breakdown or family mediation; buying or selling your home or investment properties or assistance with ensuring your personal legal affairs are in order and planning for the future? Whatever your personal legal requirements, we would really like to understand how we can help you.

If we can assist you and your family, please get in touch today to arrange an initial conversation with one of our friendly team, who are here to offer the support you need by guiding you through your legal position and available options.

Home visits and emergency wills

In light of the current Coronavirus restrictions, we are unable to offer home visits or visits to care homes and hospitals for the purpose of wills (including emergency wills), lasting powers of attorney or for any other reason. We are, however, still able to offer our services to existing and new clients, taking instructions by telephone or video conferencing. We are also able to offer face to face meetings at our offices if there is an essential requirement to do so. Any documents that require signing and witnessing will either be sent to the client electronically (for printing off at home) or by post via Royal Mail.  Clients will then need to arrange for suitable witnesses to visit them whilst complying with the Government’s guidance on social distancing, as far as possible.  We will provide more detailed instructions to our clients to assist with the witnessing of signatures on documents.

Family mediation  

In these challenging times, the team has put provisions in place to continue to offer a full family mediation service. 

Being mindful of social distancing, we are able to offer telephone/video MIAMs and video call mediation meetings to our family mediation clients and are fully resourced to enable us to continue to provide a full range of support and services. We understand that it may be difficult for some clients to access online services and we will continue to do our best to work with you to find a workable solution. 

Residential Conveyancing

COVID – Third Party Delays

Despite the challenges of the Covid-19 crisis, our team is operating a normal fulltime service and as usual is making every effort to complete all transactions as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing delays with third parties, which mean that many transactions are taking longer to complete than would normally be the case.

Whilst we are fortunate to have the technology and size of team in place to continue to provide our usual level of service, some advisers on the other side of transactions, the Land Registry, local authority search providers, surveyors, and lenders are experiencing increased pressure as a result of the pandemic and the associated restrictions on normal working practices, in addition to dealing with backlogs and higher volumes of work as a result of the temporary changes to SDLT (see below).

We will continue to work as hard as we can to progress transactions as quickly as possible but we wish to be clear that currently, despite our best efforts, these external factors, which are beyond our control could result in delays to your transaction completing within the timescales that we would normally expect.

SDLT – temporary reduced rates

The Government has currently reduced the rates for Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) in current circumstances (detailed below). Please be aware that in order for these reduced rates to apply, the property transaction must complete before the deadline: 31 March 2021.

As a team we continue, as always, to progress transactions as quickly as we can, despite the current challenges of Covid-19 and its impact on the third parties we work with in these matters. In the interests of transparency though, we are advising all clients that we cannot currently guarantee that we will be able to complete transactions prior to the current deadline, due to external factors that are, sadly, beyond our control (please see “Covid – Third Party Delays” above).

We are therefore advising all clients currently hoping to complete before the above deadline to ensure that they have contingency plans in place in order to be able to pay the usual rates of SDLT in the event that the transaction does not complete before the current deadline.

As a reminder, here is the key eligibility criteria for the temporary reduction in SDLT:

• The temporary reduction in SDLT means that for freehold and leasehold transactions completed before 31 March 2021, the calculation of SDLT only starts on the amount you pay for the property/lease above £500,000.
• This temporary reduction applies to first time buyers and those who have purchased before.
• The temporary reduction does not apply to purchases of additional properties, unless the property being purchased replaces your main residential dwelling (which has already been sold or will be sold simultaneously). The reduced rates do apply for the first £500k of an additional property BUT you still have to pay the 3% higher rate for additional dwellings.