12. What are your fees?

In England and Wales, notarial fees are set by each notarial firm and not according either to a scale set by the Government as is the case with many European countries, or in accordance with a general agreement made between all notaries. Indeed, any such general agreement would infringe the provisions of English law relating to price fixing.

Our fees range from a nominal statutory charge of £5.00 when acting as commissioners for oaths for the attestation of a simple affidavit or statutory declaration for use before an English court or registry, to several thousand pounds for large complex corporate transactions. VAT is charged where appropriate.

Our fees are calculated on the basis of the nature and number of documents and the time involved, together with a basic instruction fee and elements in respect of legalisation, translation, foreign languages and any other factors where these apply. We do not issue a sample price list as this could be very misleading: there are many different elements taken into consideration. However, we are very happy to give an estimate of our fees and the costs involved in advance of undertaking any work.

We expect private clients to settle our fees on completion of the work and corporate clients within 30 days of billing, unless there is agreement to the contrary.

We aim to ensure that our fees are reasonable at all times. In the event of a fee dispute, a formal profession-wide procedure exists for the review of fees, but in the very rare event of such a dispute, we always try to settle matters by mutual agreement with our client.