Solicitors Regulation Authority Transparency Rules 2018

Rule 1 SRA Transparency Rules
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) in its wisdom has made it mandatory for solicitors to provide costs information in a specified format on their websites for the following subjects:

For members of the public
- Residential conveyancing (Freehold sale or purchase, leasehold purchase* or sale, mortgages* and re-mortgages*)
- Probate (uncontested cases with all assets in the UK)
- Motoring offences (summary only offences)*
- Employment tribunals (claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal)*
- Immigration (excluding asylum applications)*

For businesses
- Debt recovery (up to £100,000)*
- Employment tribunals (defending claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal)*
- Licensing applications for business premises (new applications or varying existing licenses)*

(*Butler & Kandler does not undertake the work marked with an * or work involving Welsh land and will not be providing information about such work.)

All conveyancing work is carried out by Stephen Butler, LLM, a solicitor who has been doing such work since 1975.

Referral fees
E-Solicitors will never obtain work by paying a referral fee which is a form of commission. This is the most important piece of information you should think about. If a solicitor pays a referral fee to obtain work it will come out of their figure for the costs you pay the solicitor and you should consider how this reflects on the quality of the firm.

Initial Interviews
We do not provide a service where the initial interview is free. - Residential Conveyancing - Sales and Purchases - Property in England

Buying a new freehold house
We never offer a fixed fee and do not make use of an online calculator for our costs.

Our fees cover all of the work required to complete the purchase of your new home, including dealing with registration at the Land Registry and dealing with the payment of Stamp Duty Land Tax if the property is in England. We do not act if you require a mortgage.

Conveyancer's fees and disbursements

Legal fees for the legal work we do
These will depend on the price of the house, the time taken and the complexity of the matter but in a normal matter our average charge would be between £450 (for lower value houses) and £700 (for higher value houses) plus VAT (currently at 20%).

In addition it is necessary to pay a number of fees to government and other organisations as follows:

Disbursements
Electronic money transfer fee £12.00 plus VAT payable to our bank (exactly what our bank charges us) for each payment made (usually only one).
Search fees - see below
HM Land Registry fee - see below

Disbursements are costs related to your matter that are payable to third parties, such as Land Registry fees. We handle the payment of the disbursements on your behalf to ensure a smoother process but will ask you to pay us money on account before we do so.