This document sets out the terms upon which we at sub800 provide lettings services to you. All work is undertaken by sub800. Accordingly, you must consider that you have contracted with sub800 and not with the individual(s) within sub800 who provide the service. The signature by any individual of an item of correspondence or other document in the name of the individual who prepared that document is deemed to be a signature on behalf of sub800.
Our services are provided to you in the utmost good faith and, as far as the law permits, we will act in your best interests at all times. All lawful instructions given by you will be carried out diligently, promptly and with reasonable skill and care.
All information that you provide to us regarding your property and affairs will be treated as confidential. However, if we are working on a matter in conjunction with other advisers, we shall assume, unless you notify us otherwise, that we may disclose any such information to those other advisers and discuss it with them where necessary.
You should also be aware that there is a statutory duty imposed on us to report to the relevant authorities any knowledge or suspicion of money laundering. This obligation overrides our duty of client confidentiality.
If there is more than one client instructing us (for example, partners, trustees, executors or joint owners of a property), we assume that we may act on the instructions of any one of you.
There is also no right of confidentiality between joint clients, meaning that the client file will be available to all joint clients.
If, at any stage, you find you cannot agree on a course of action, it may be necessary for one or more of you to be separately represented. If a conflict of interests arises between joint clients, we may have to cease acting for all joint clients.
We expect to continue to act in any letting on which we accept instructions from you until the property is let.
You may, however, bring your instructions to an end at any time on not less than 3 months’ written notice. We may also bring instructions to an end at any time by written notice to you.
In the letter that accompanies these terms, we shall give you the names of the individuals in sub800 who will be dealing with your matter on a day to day basis.
Please note that we do not provide property or tax advice and you should seek specialist advice in relation to valuation, property and taxation matters prior to engaging our services.
Our fee structure is set out in the letter that accompanies these terms.
if we are asked by you to carry out additional tasks over and above our general retainer to let properties owned or managed by you, you will be charged for such additional tasks on a quantum merit basis.
In addition, you are liable to meet the cost of disbursements, that is money due by us to third parties on your behalf, including, for example, advertising fees.
We do not ordinarily charge a fee for postage or photocopying, although we reserve the right to do so where such costs are unusually large.
All fees are subject to VAT.
Our invoices are due for payment within 7 days of presentation to you, which, ordinarily, will be by email only to your email address.
If any invoice remains unpaid for more than 28 days, we reserve the right to apply the provisions of the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 (as amended). This comprises the right to charge interest from the date of the invoice to the date of payment at 8% above the bank rate of the Bank of England and the right to seek compensation for late payment and costs of recovery.
You should note that you will remain personally liable to pay our fees even if you are entitled to reimbursement from another source.
Where you are a company or an LLP, the directors of the company or the members of the LLP jointly and severally personally guarantee the client’s liabilities to us. By countersigning the retainer letter, the signatory(ies) personally accept these liabilities.
Where you comprise two or more joint clients, your liabilities to us are joint and several liabilities. This means that we can require any one (or more) of you to meet all liabilities to us.
Where you receive an email request from us to transmit money to our account, you must, due to the high incidence of email fraud, verify the account details by telephoning our accounts department, on the number appearing on our website, rather than on any other number that you may have for sub800. We exclude any liability for lost funds in circumstances where you have failed to take this precaution, regardless of whether the email fraud originated either in your email system or in our email system.
To the extent permitted by law, our liability to you for all claims, for negligence, or otherwise, is limited to £500,000. This is the limit of the indemnity insurance carried by us.
Where, during the course of our retainer, we hold monies on your behalf, these will be credited to our client account. We will take care to ensure that such monies are lodged with a mainstream bank. That said, we can take no responsibility for the failure of any such institution. It follows that where any such institution is unable to refund to us all deposits and interest earned, any such shortfall will be borne by you.
The expressions “Data Protection Officer” (DPO), “data subject”, “personal data”, and “process” shall have the meanings given to them in the GDPR.
Ben Grant is the Data Protection Officer. If you require any details regarding our treatment of personal data, please contact Ben at our office by telephone or by email.
We shall only process client personal data, which is any personal data provided to us by you, or on your behalf:
in order to provide our services to you and perform any other obligations in accordance with the provisions of our services to you;
in order to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations; and where it is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests and those interests are not overridden by the data subjects’ own privacy rights.
Our privacy notice (found on our website) contains further details as to how we may process client personal data.
For the purpose of providing our services to you, we may disclose the client's personal data to third parties (for example, our professional advisors or service providers).
The third parties to whom we disclose such personal data may be located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
We will only disclose Client personal data to a third party (including a third party outside of the EEA) provided that the transfer is undertaken in compliance with the GDPR.
We shall maintain commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures, including administrative, physical and technical safeguards, to protect against unauthorised or unlawful processing of client personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to client personal data.
Provided that we are legally permitted to do so in respect of client personal data, we shall promptly notify you in the event that:
We are served with an information, enforcement or assessment notice (or any similar notices), or receive any other material communication in respect of our processing of client personal data from a supervisory authority as defined in the data protection legislation (for example in the UK, the ICO); or
We reasonably believe that there has been any incident which resulted in the accidental or unauthorised access to, or destruction, loss, unauthorised disclosure or alteration of, client personal data.
Upon the reasonable request from another party, we shall each cooperate with that party and take such reasonable commercial steps or provide such information as is necessary to enable each of us to comply with the GDPR in respect of the services provided to you in accordance with your engagement of this firm.
In accordance with the provisions of article 5(1)(e) of the GDPR, we may only store client data for as long as is necessary. We take the view that it is of significant benefit for you, as our client, for us to retain electronic documents relating to your matter for up to 20 years. By countersigning the retainer letter, you are giving your consent to us storing your data for up to 20 years, should we deem it appropriate to do so, but without any obligation on us to store your data for any longer than 6 years.
If you have any complaint about the service which we have provided, you should write without delay to Ben Grant, setting out the nature of your complaint.
It is our practice to store your file at the end of the retainer. File storage is not chargeable to you. We reserve the right to destroy files on the date 3 years following the end of the retainer. If you do not wish us to destroy your files, you must request that they be forwarded to you within this 3 year period.
The relationship between you and us is governed by and construed in accordance with English Law and any dispute will be dealt with in the English Courts.
Unless you notify us to the contrary in writing, the majority of communications between us will be by email. We will not, however, be liable for misdirection, interception, corruption or failure of any communication sent by email.
You authorise us to sign Leases, statutory declarations and other documents as your agent and on your behalf.
