Please find our Terms and Conditions below, including the offer of Deferred Fee Payment. If you are looking for our Reasonable Timescales, Guideline Hours for Additional Work, or our GDPR Policy you can find these here:
Our Reasonable Timescales and Guideline Hours
Payment terms
Standard – Accounts are payable 30 days from the date of invoice and VAT will be charged at the prevailing rate. The company reserves the right to charge 10% per annum simple interest above base rate accruing on a daily basis from the 31st day of the invoice.
Deferred – Deferred payment period: Payment of our fees may be deferred at the discretion of the Company for up to 3 years from the date of the invoice(s); The charge for the payment deferral is 10% per annum, and is reflected via a higher hourly rate charged for our expert’s professional time. VAT will be charged at the prevailing rate.
Failure to pay by due date: Simple interest of 10% per annum above base lending rate will accrue on a daily basis from the due date of payment of the invoice.
Additional work
Updates, research, edits, comments on opposing experts’ reports, etc, will be charged on a time incurred basis at the hourly rate prevailing at the time of receipt of further instructions. There will be no charge for correcting minor factual errors.
Requests for urgent work
We will do all we can to accommodate your needs. Urgent work carried out in less than four hours will be charged at the standard rate. Urgent work taking four or more hours will be charged at the appropriate urgent rate. Please note that in cases where, after acceptance of our timescale, the report completion date is brought forward at your request, our urgent rates will apply accordingly. If the assessment visit is postponed or cancelled by you or your client and the deadline for the production of the report remains extant, the appropriate hourly rate may be applied to reflect the truncated production time.
Court
In cases where the company receives less than five working days’ notice of cancellation of court appearance, we will charge for any court preparation time that has been incurred at the current hourly rate. Any non-refundable travel and hotel expenses incurred will also be charged as well as any wasted travel time. In order to keep costs to a minimum it is essential that we are informed at the very earliest opportunity of settlement of a case.
Case conferences/Stand-by time
The appropriate hourly rate will be charged for experts’ professional time. With regard to professional time that has been booked but is not used, the Company reserves the right to continue to charge the full rate unless the expert can productively use the time for alternative professional purposes in which case a reduced rate may be agreed.
Aborted visits
If we have less than 48 hours’ notice of a cancelled appointment, we will charge our expenses and the lost travel time for the aborted visit.
Publicly funded cases
Funding delays cannot be regarded as reason for deferring payment of our invoice.
Assessment
We are not prepared to agree to our accounts being paid subject to assessment, nor do we accept payment delays because of pre-assessment negotiations of costs. Payment to us can never be linked to the outcome of the case.
Safety of our expert
If you have any knowledge of circumstances within the family environment which could pose a risk to our expert when visiting, please advise us so that arrangements can be made for the expert to be accompanied either by someone from your office or our office. We will charge for the accompanying person’s time if that person is supplied by Jacqueline Webb & Co Ltd.
Expert Reference Tool – Data
We reserve the right to use information pertaining to this instruction to populate our ‘Expert Reference Tool’. If you do not wish to have your cases displayed in this tool please inform us at the time of instruction.
Updated November 2020
