Compliance

Fenwick Elliott does not accept the service of legal proceedings by fax or email unless by prior agreement.

Fenwick Elliott is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales Partnership number OC306894. VAT registration number GB429744325.

Fenwick Elliott is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority SRA number 400116.

This firm maintains professional indemnity insurance in accordance with the rules of the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Details of the insurers and the territorial coverage of the policy are available for inspection at our offices.

Equality and diversity

We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity and respect for diversity in all our dealings with clients, colleagues and third parties. A copy of our Equal Opportunities and Diversity policy is available on request.

Data protection and using data

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, we have given the information commissioner formal notice that we handle personal information.

As part of providing our services to you, and because we have to follow the Money Laundering Regulations 2007, you acknowledge that we may need to reveal personal information about you to other people. Examples of such persons might include:

• the court;
• other people who are involved in your legal action;
• experts;
• barristers;
• legal agents or inquiry agents; or
• other service providers.

We may have a legal duty to release information about you. We will only release what is reasonable and appropriate.

We would like to contact you with regard to promoting our services. We will ask you to identify what information you would like to receive from us in the future. If you would prefer not to receive any such information please let us know.

In order to comply with court and tribunal rules, all documentation relevant to any issues in litigation, however potentially damaging to your case, have to be preserved and may be required to be made available to the other side.

We may also make your file about your case available to our current or any future professional indemnity insurers. Subject to this, we will not reveal confidential information about your case except as provided by these terms of business.

Financial services

We are not authorised by the Financial Services Authority. If, while we are acting for you, you need advice on investments, we may have to refer you to someone who is authorised to provide the necessary advice. However, we may provide certain limited investment advice services where these are closely linked to the legal work we are doing for you. This is because we are members of the Law Society of England and Wales, which is a designated professional body for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is the independent regulatory arm of the Law Society. The Legal Ombudsman provides an independent complaints handling service for clients of law firms. If you are unhappy with any investment advice you receive from us, you should raise your concerns with either of these bodies.

Insurance mediation

We are not authorised by the Financial Services Authority. However, we are included on the register maintained by the Financial Services Authority so that we may 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 website at www.fsa.gov.uk/register/home.do.

If you are unhappy with any insurance advice you receive from us, you should raise your concerns with either the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Legal Ombudsman www.legalombudsman.org.uk as detailed under "Financial services".

Interest

We believe that our policy on the payment of interest is fair and reasonable. It is kept under continual review, in the light of changing interest rates in particular. When we are in receipt of large sums of money we will place such funds on specific deposit, in which case you will receive all interest received. General payments of interest are made without deduction of tax, but tax is deducted at source on specific deposits. Please bear in mind that the rates of interest that we receive from our bankers are lower than might otherwise be achieved because of the need for us to have instant access to funds in most cases.