OUR POLICIES

Regulatory

T E W Solicitors is a trading style of T.E.W. Solicitors Limited (“the Company”). The Company is registered in England & Wales with Company No. 09973939. Its registered office is Claydon Court, Old Ipswich Road, Claydon, Suffolk IP6 0AE England. The Company is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”). The Company’s SRA identification number is 642749.

Terms of use

Nothing contained within this website constitutes legal advice. The content of this website is provided solely for general information. Specific legal advice should be taken on any matter you may have. Submission of a message by you to us through the contact us page on this website is not and should not be considered to be acceptance of instructions by us to act on your behalf on any matter. Likewise, your contacting us via any other means provided within this website does not constitute acceptance by us of instructions from you.

Where this website contains links to other websites, those links are provided solely for purposes of general information. Provision of links to other websites within this website is not to be considered in any way to constitute endorsement of such other websites or their content. We accept no responsibility for the content of any third party website that we may link to or the consequences of your use of it.

It is for you to read and understand the terms and conditions of any third party website that we may provide a link to. We strongly suggest that you always use internet browsers and other software on any internet enabled devices that identify and protect you, your data and any electronic or other equipment against malware, viruses or similar.

The website its content and design are subject to copyright owned by the Company. No copying or use of its contents or design is to be made without the express prior written permission of the Company.

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. Making a complaint will not affect how we handle your case.

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. If you would like to make a formal complaint to us, we set out below the steps to be followed.

1. If you have a complaint then please contact us with the details.
2. We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within five days of us receiving the complaint (enclosing a copy of this procedure).
3. We will then investigate your complaint. This may involve passing your complaint to another solicitor within the firm, who will review your matter file and speak to the member of staff who acted for you.
4. You will then be invited to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. This invitation will be sent within 14 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
5. Within 5 days of the meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions that have been agreed with you.
6. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed written reply to you complaint, including our suggestions for resolving the matter, within 28 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
7. At this stage, if you are not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for another local solicitor to carry out a review of the file.
8. We will write to you within 21 days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
9. If we have to change any of the timescales above we will let you know and explain why.
10. The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. You can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
11. If you are still not satisfied after we have provided our final position on your complaint, then you can contact the Legal Ombudsman about your complaint. The Legal Ombudsman can help you if we are unable to resolve your complaint ourselves. They will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case.
12. Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first. If you have, then you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

• Within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint and no more than six years from the date of act/omission;or
• No more than three years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, please contact them.

Contact details
Visit: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
Call: 0300 555 0333 between 9am to 5pm.
Email: [email protected]
Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ

Cookies

We will place cookies for the purposes below on to your device only during your site visit. These cookies are used to make our website work more effectively and collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they have visited.

We explain below the cookies we use and why. By using our website you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device. You can change, control or delete cookies from your browser for any websites.

Google Analytics

Privacy and data protection policy

We take your privacy very seriously.  By providing us with your information you are consenting to us using your information as set out in this Policy. Your information will be used only to provide you with the services that you instruct is to carry out, deal with enquiries that you make and for the purpose of enabling us to comply with applicable laws and regulations or to defend ourselves in claims under such laws, for legal, administrative and management purposes.

In addition we may disclose your information to third parties where you have consented for us to do so, we are under a legal, regulatory or professional obligation to do so, or, where we merge, reorganise or transfer all or part of our business we may disclose information to successors of the business.

You have the right of access to any personal data we hold and you can request the purpose of our processing your data. You can request that we erase personal data where it is no longer required for the purpose retained or where you withdraw your consent to that purpose (except where processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation or for the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal claim)

If you would like to request a copy of your information or would like to change the information we hold about you please contact us at [email protected]. We charge a fee of £10+VAT for this to cover our costs. We will normally response within one month of receiving the request although this period may be extended for a further two months for complex or numerous requests and in that event we will inform you of the extension and reason for the delay.

Who we are

Data is collected, processed and stored by TEW Solicitors and we are what is known as the ‘data controller’ of the personal information you provide to us. TEW Solicitors is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

TEW Solicitors is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under registration reference ZA289513. 

What personal data do we process?

We hold clients personal data, employee personal data and some suppliers personal data for supply contracts that we hold. All of this personal data is only processed by us.

Sources of information

Information about you may be obtained from various sources including:

• You may volunteer this information yourself
• Completing any requests on our website
• You may provide information relating to someone else if you have authority to do so
• Information could be passed to us by a third party for example Bank of Building Societies or Medical or financial institutions who provide your personal records

Why we need it

The main reason for us asking you to provide us with your personal data is to allow us to carry out your requests to carry out work on your behalf.

We may also require your information for matters relating to the work we carry out on your behalf such as:

• Verifying your identity
• Verifying sources of funds or establishing funding of your matter
• Communicating with you
• Keeping financial records of your transactions and the transactions we make on your behalf
• Seeking advice from third parties
• Responding to any complaint or allegation of negligence against us
• Fraud prevention

• Where we have other legitimate reasons, such as for internal compliance, dealing with conflicts of interest or regulatory issues

Who has access

We have a data protection regime in place to ensure the effective and secure processing of your personal data. We will not sell your information to third parties.

There are circumstances during the course of your matter where we need to disclose some information to third parties such as:

• The Land Registry
• The Court Service
• HM Revenue & Customs e.g. for Stamp Duty Liability
• Solicitors acting on the other side of your transaction
• Asking advice of an independent Counsel for advice or to represent you
• External auditors such as the Solicitors Regulation Authority
• Banks, Building Societies or other financial institutions
• Providers of identity verification
• Any disclosure required by law or regulation

How we protect your personal data 

We will take all reasonable steps to protect your identity whilst it is in our care and we have high standards when it comes to your confidentiality.

We use computer safeguards such as firewalls and our staff are kept up to date with their training.

How long will we keep your data for

Your personal information will be retained in computer and manual files only for as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected or as required by law or as long as set out in your contract with us for example:

• For a minimum of 6 years from the conclusion or closure of your legal work in the event that you, or we, need to re-open your case for the purpose of defending complaints or claims against us
• Some information or matters may be kept for 16 years such as commercial matters
• Deeds may be kept indefinitely
• We retain an electronic database of transactions and correspondence of your transaction indefinitely

Complaints about the use of personal data

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, please contact us at our registered address.

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Marketing data

We may contact you for the purpose of direct marketing. This means we may use the personal data we have collected in accordance with this policy about our services or events etc which we feel may be of interest to you. We will never pass on or sell your details to a third party.

We will only ever use non sensitive personal information to target individuals with marketing materials; such as name, address, telephone, email and previous buying behaviours. Sensitive information or specific details will never be used to target marketing communications.

If you do not wish us to continue to contact you in this way, you can either follow the unsubscribe instructions on any of our communications to you or contact us by emailing [email protected] with your name and email address. Your details will be removed immediately. Once unsubscribed, you may still receive transactional emails and correspondence from us regarding your legal matter.