Terms and Conditions

Privacy

This website collects statistics about how many visits we receive, which browsers are used and which operating system is running on your computer—and so on and so forth. This is done through Google Analytics™. These generic statistics will be used to improve our site, but they cannot be used to identify you personally.

View our full Privacy Notice here

Linking to us

We encourage any website owners to link to any information on our site. You do not need to seek permission to do this, but please note that we cannot guarantee that the information you are linking to will always remain in the same place—so please check back from time to time.

Copyright

You are welcome to copy excerpts of our information for purposes of review, discussion, academic study and other legitimate pursuits. You do not need to seek permission for such fair use, although you should acknowledge the source where possible.

However, all information on this site, all motifs, designs and logos are copyright of Bannister Bates, unless specifically stated otherwise. We will vigorously pursue any violation of our copyright that seeks to exploit our material for commercial gain or that misrepresents our regulatory stance.

Where required and applicable, all third party copyright and trademark is acknowledged by Bannister Bates.

Web site availability

While Bannister Bates will endeavour to make this website available at all times, we will not be liable if for any reason the site is unavailable for any period of time. Additionally, access to this site may be suspended at any time without prior notice being given.

Disclaimer

Bannister Bates cannot be liable for any damages arising in contract, tort or otherwise from the use of or inability to use this site or any material contained in it, or from any action or decision taken as a result of using the site.

This site is intended to provide friendly and helpful advice and is not a definitive statement of law. The materials on this site do not constitute legal or other professional advice: you should consult your professional adviser for legal or other advice.

This site may from time to time offer links to other sites thereby enabling you to leave this site and go directly to the linked-to site. Bannister Bates is not responsible for the content of any linked-to site nor any link in a linked-to site; nor is it responsible for any transmission you may receive from any linked-to sites.

The links are provided to assist visitors to our site and the inclusion of a link on our site to another site does not imply that Bannister Bates endorses or approves the sites linked to.

Complaints Procedure

Policy

  1. The purpose of this policy is to clarify how you may make a complaint and define the standard of service you can expect when you make a complaint.
  2. For the purposes of this policy a complaint is:“an expression of dissatisfaction with the standard of service provided by Bannister Bates Property Lawyers or with something a member of its workforce may or may not have done”
  3. If you are unable to sort out your complaint informally with the person who has been dealing with your matter then you may make a complaint in person, by phone, by email or by letter to our Managing Director, Peter Bates at our office providing the following information:–Name

    -Address

    -Contact details

    -The nature of the complaint

    -What you want Bannister Bates Property Lawyers to do about your complaint

  4. Bannister Bates aim to deal with any complaint constructively and impartially, basing our decisions upon a reasonable investigation of the circumstances On receipt of a complaint Peter Bates will respond within 7 days. Where a full response to your complaint cannot be given in this time frame he will provide you with in 7 days notification of the reason for the delay and commit to responding fully within 28 days of the initial complaint to him.At this stage we will set out in full in our response our understanding of the nature of your complaint, our decision, the reasons for our decision and any offer of remedial action and/or redress where a complaint is upheld.
  5. If you are dissatisfied with any aspect of our handling of your complaint and wish to proceed with a Review, Peter Bates will either deal with the Review personally or in the event that he was directly involved in the original decision , he will appoint a senior member of the management team to review the decision. You will be notified of the outcome of the Review within 28 days of receipt of your written request for a Review. The Review decision is the final stage in our complaints procedure.
  6. You can  refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman if you are not happy with our response or if we failed to respond to you within 8 weeks. Unless it agrees there are good reasons not to do so, the Legal Ombudsman will expect you to allow us to consider and respond to your complaint in accordance with the procedure set out above in the first instance.You can ask the Legal Ombudsman to look at your complaint if it meets all the criteria below:
    • The problem or when you found out about it occurred after 5th October 2010
    • You are submitting your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within either of the following: 6 years of the problem happening or 3 years from when you found out about it
    • You refer the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of our final response to you

    If your complaint does not meet the above mentioned time limits then the Legal Ombudsman may not be able to investigate it.

    Their details are as follows:-

    Legal Ombudsman
    PO Box 6806
    Wolverhampton
    WV1 9WJ
    Telephone: 0300 555 0333
    Email: [email protected]
    Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

  7. Alternative complaints bodies (such as Ombudsman Services, ProMediate and ADR Group) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme. Please note that we do not agree to use such services.
  8. Unless it agrees there are good reasons not to do so the Council of Licensed Conveyancers will expect you to allow us to consider and respond to your complaint in accordance with the procedure set out above.
  9. “If you make a valid claim against us for a loss arising out of work for which we are legally responsible and we are unable to meet our liability in full, you may be entitled to claim from the Compensation Fund administered by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (from whom details can be obtained)”