Notaries in England and Wales must adhere to The Notarial Practice Rules 2019. In accordance with the Rules, we must provide notarial clients with information on pricing, services, redress, complaints and regulation. Find out more about these matters in this section.
Our notaries are regulated through the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury:
The Faculty Office
1, The Sanctuary
Westminster
London
SW1P 3JT
Telephone: 020 7222 5381
Email: faculty.office@1thesanctuary.com
Website: www.facultyoffice.org.uk
If you are dissatisfied about the service you have received, firstly please contact us at info@notary.co.uk. We will try our best to promptly address your concerns.
If we cannot resolve the matter you may then complain to the Notaries Society, of which our notaries are members, who have a Complaints Procedure which is approved by the Faculty Office. This procedure is free to use and is designed to provide a quick resolution to any dispute.
To contact the Notaries Society, please write (but do not enclose any original documents) with full details of your complaint to:
The Secretary of The Notaries Society
PO Box 1023
Ipswich
IP1 9XB
Email: secretary@thenotariessociety.org.uk
If you have any difficulty in making a complaint in writing, please do not hesitate to contact the Notaries Society/the Faculty Office for assistance.
Finally, even if you have your complaint considered under the Notaries Society Approved Complaints Procedure, you may at the end of that procedure, or after a period of 8 weeks from the date you first notified us that you were dissatisfied, make your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman if not happy with the result:
Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6806
Wolverhampton
WV1 9WJ
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
If you decide to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman you must refer your matter to the Legal Ombudsman within one year from the act/omission or within one year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.
Before we do any work for you, we will provide you with a detailed cost breakdown. The total cost will include our fees, and if applicable, value added tax (VAT) and disbursements.
Our fee is for any work we do in order to notarise your document. For standard notarisation, the minimum fee is £80.00 and this is calculated on a fixed fee basis considering the number of documents requiring notarisation. For more complex notarisation, fees are calculated on the notary’s hourly rate which is currently £240.00. In addition, our fee may include ancillary services, such as handling fees for legalisation or translation. The fee for legalisation is calculated on a fixed fee basis, with a minimum fee of £50.00. The fee for translation services is calculated on a per word basis and the minimum fee is £50.00.
If you are based in the European Union, VAT will be applied to our fees. This is currently 20% of the total price for our fee. Our VAT registration number is 946522901. If you resident outside of the European Union, VAT will not be charged.
Where we incur any costs from third parties, these fees will be passed directly on to you as disbursements. These disbursements include any fees charged by consulates and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office when legalising a document. We will inform you of likely disbursements when providing you with a quote and for an indication of fees you can also visit our apostille section and consular legalisation guide. Please note that any consulate fee will be provided to you in good faith, however consulates can change their fees and procedures without notice. Additional disbursements may include translation fees, Companies House fees, and fees charged by universities for verification. These fees will be advised to you at the outset and we will not incur any disbursements without your consent. VAT will not be charged on disbursements.
We provide Commissioner for Oaths certification on a discretionary basis for documents to be used only in England and Wales. Pricing is subject to the current statutory rate, namely £5.00 for witnessing an affidavit, declaration or affirmation, and £2.00 for each exhibit to be signed. Where the statutory rate is not applicable, the fixed fee for a Commissioner for Oaths certification is £10.00. A fixed appointment fee of £30+VAT will also apply. Please note that for any document to be used outside of the United Kingdom, including South Africa and Hong Kong, we only provide notarial certification.
We carry professional indemnity liability cover of £1,000,000 (one million pounds sterling). We therefore limit the level of our liability to you to £1,000,000 (one million pounds sterling), unless you are injured or die as a result of our negligence, in which case our liability is without limit.
We are a provider of notarial services. In addition we offer ancillary services including legalisation and translation services if required. A general outline and likely timescales for these services are set out below.
Our notarial service begins by booking an appointment to see a notary. At the appointment we will ask you to complete a client registration form and will carry out any identity checks that are deemed necessary. An appointment will usually take between 15-30 minutes, during which time the notary will notarise your document. On completion of the job, the notary will provide you with your notarial document, a scan of the document and we will take payment. For further guidance please visit our notarisation page.
Our legalisation service usually follows on from notarisation. If you require either an apostille or consular legalisation, we will discuss the options for getting this done during our initial conversation. At your appointment we will ask you to complete a client registration form and take payment from you. You will then leave the document with us, and we will carry out the required legalisation.
If you opt for an apostille on our premium service, we aim to complete this within 24 hours of receiving the document. If you opt for an apostille on our standard service, we aim to complete this within 4-5 working days, however during busy periods at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office this can take up-to ten working days.
If you require consular legalisation we will take your document to the required consulate after the document has been apostilled. Timescales and requirements vary per consulate, and for more guidance on timescales you can visit our consular legalisation page.
To use our translation service you will need to email a scan of the document you require translating. Most translations are completed within 2/3 working days.