Terms of business

Who we are, and what we are not

SEND Advocates is a trading name of TM Advocacy Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company no. 12113793, of Suite 9, Dalton House, 60 Windsor Avenue, London SW19 2RR. We are specialist SEND advocates. We are not solicitors, we are not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and we do not carry out reserved legal activities. What that means for you, including which protections do and do not apply, is set out plainly on our about page. We are not a legal aid provider; if you may qualify for Legal Help, we will say so at the free call and point you to Civil Legal Advice.

How an instruction starts

No work is charged, and no obligation arises, until you have received and accepted a written client care letter. The letter confirms the scope of what we will do, the fee for it, the stage-billing schedule, and the confirmation we need to work with your child's information. The free call and anything we say in it are not an instruction. We take instructions from the person named in the client care letter: by instructing us you confirm that you have parental responsibility for the child, or are the young person bringing the appeal in your own right, and that you are entitled to give us instructions.

Fees and billing

Fees are as published on the fees page at the time of instruction, VAT included, and confirmed in your client care letter. Casework fees are billed in four equal stages of 25%: on instruction, when the council files its response, at final evidence, and before the hearing. A stage your case does not reach is never billed. Hearing advocacy is charged per hearing day. If a listed hearing is vacated or adjourned before the day, the hearing fee is not charged, and if it has already been invoiced it is carried forward to the relisted day at no additional cost; a hearing day we have attended is charged, and any relisted or further day is a further hearing day. The hearing fee itself is invoiced on our normal 14-day terms. Our attendance at a hearing, though, is confirmed only once any outstanding invoices for the earlier stages of your case have been paid: when the hearing is listed we will tell you exactly what needs to be settled and by when, well in advance, so this is never raised for the first time in the days before a hearing. Invoices are payable within 14 days. If an invoice remains unpaid 45 days from its date, we may pause work until it is paid, and we will tell you before we do. We never hold your money on account: we invoice for our own fees only, after the work of each stage. Independent expert reports are not part of our fees: experts are engaged and paid by you directly, at their own rates, with your agreement; we help you choose them and take nothing from the transaction.

The written case review is £420 including VAT, invoiced after the review is delivered, and credited in full against casework if you instruct us within 28 days of receiving it.

Your right to cancel

Where you instruct us at a distance (by phone, email or through this website), the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you 14 days from the date the contract is made to cancel without giving a reason. To cancel, email [email protected] saying you wish to cancel; a model cancellation form is available on request and is attached to the client care letter.

Appeals rarely wait, so the client care letter asks whether you want us to start within the 14-day period. If you expressly request that and later cancel within the period, you pay only for the work actually done up to cancellation, in proportion to the agreed fee, and anything you have already paid beyond that, including any part of a stage payment, is refunded. If the service you asked us to start has been fully performed before you cancel, the right to cancel that service no longer applies.

What you can expect from us, and we from you

We perform our services with reasonable care and skill, as the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires, and to the standards we publish. We do not and cannot guarantee any outcome: tribunal decisions belong to the Tribunal. If at any stage we think the evidence does not support continuing, we will say so. Everything you tell us is confidential: we share it only as your case requires, with your agreement, or where the law compels us.

We rely on you to give us accurate and complete information, to send us the documents the case needs when we ask for them, and to tell us promptly about anything that changes, including anything you receive directly from the council or the Tribunal.

Ending the arrangement

You can end the instruction at any time by writing to us. We can end it by giving you reasonable written notice, and only for good reason, such as a breakdown in the working relationship or discovering we cannot properly act. Either way, you pay for the stages reached and the work done within any part-completed stage, in proportion, and nothing beyond that; anything paid for work not done is refunded. We will hand over your papers promptly so your case is not prejudiced.

Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded. Subject to that, our total aggregate liability in connection with an instruction, whether in contract, tort including negligence, breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited to £5,000,000. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, or for losses caused by information we were not given or delays outside our control, including the Tribunal's own timescales.

Complaints

If anything about our service falls short, our complaints procedure sets out how to raise it, our response times, and where things go if we cannot resolve it between us.

Governing law

The terms that apply to your instruction are the ones confirmed in your client care letter; later changes to this page do not change a live engagement. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction over any dispute. Nothing in them affects your statutory rights as a consumer.