Clapham Law LLP | Regulatory Notices

Regulatory Notices

Below you will find information regarding our Anti-Bribery Policy, Data Protection Statement, Interest Policy, and Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement.

Clapham Law LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England with no. OC354931 whose registered office is at the below address. Authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We use the terms ‘partner’ or ‘partners’ to refer to a member of Clapham Law LLP, or an employee or consultant who is a lawyer with equivalent standing and qualifications. A list of members is available for inspection at the principal place of business at which service of documents will be effective.

SRA ID: 542042

Anti-Bribery Policy

The Bribery Act 2010 came into force on 1 July 2011. It is the Firm’s policy to comply with the Act and to conduct its business in an honest and ethical manner, avoiding any appearance of impropriety or improper inducement to unfairly gain a business advantage. The Firm takes a zero-tolerance approach to bribery and corruption and is committed to operating and implementing effective systems to counter all forms of bribery. The COLP and COFA have overall responsibility for overseeing the Firm’s anti-bribery procedures and for reviewing them on a regular basis.

Click here to read our Anti-Bribery Policy

Commitment to anti-bribery

The Bribery Act 2010 came into force on 1 July 2011.

It is the Firm’s policy to comply with the Act and to conduct its business in an honest and ethical manner, avoiding any appearance of impropriety or improper inducement to unfairly gain a business advantage. The Firm takes a zero-tolerance approach to bribery and corruption and is committed to operating and implementing effective systems to counter all forms of bribery. The COLP and COFA have overall responsibility for overseeing the Firm’s anti-bribery procedures and for reviewing them on a regular basis.

Purpose of this policy

The purpose of this policy is to:

1. set out our responsibilities as a Firm and the responsibilities of all members of the Firm, including partners, consultants, lawyers and all other staff, in complying with the Bribery Act 2010 and in observing and upholding the Firm’s policies and procedures on bribery and corruption; and

2. provide information and guidance on how to recognise and deal with bribery. The Bribery Act 2010 covers a wide range of activities. Any form of corporate hospitality, or gifts, either given or received by the Firm could be regarded as bribery. The maximum penalty imposable for bribery and corruption is an unlimited fine, and/or up to 10 years’ imprisonment. Any conviction or, indeed, allegations of bribery, could also be very damaging to the reputation of the Firm, hence compliance with the policy and all internal reporting requirements is essential. This policy forms part of your contract of employment.

What is bribery?

A bribe is an inducement or reward offered, promised or provided in order to gain any commercial, contractual or personal advantage. It must be intended to induce or reward the improper performance of a function or activity.

A bribe could be made to, or received by, any individual or organisation you come into contact with during the course of your work, for example: actual and/or potential clients, business contacts, agents, advisers and government and/or public bodies.

The Bribery Act 2010 sets out three main offences. These are:

(a) giving a bribe to induce or reward a person to perform a relevant function improperly;

(b) requesting, accepting or receiving a bribe as a reward for performing a relevant function improperly;

A relevant function is any function of a public nature, any activity connected with a business, trade or profession, any activity carried out in the course of employment, or any activity carried out on behalf of a body of persons. Improper performance of a relevant function would be a failure to perform it in line with one or more of the following relevant expectations:

it will be performed in good faith;
it will be performed with impartiality;
that by virtue of performing the activity, the person doing so is in a position of trust.

The Bribery Act 2010 also recognises the existence of an additional, corporate offence whereby commercial organisations, and their employees and/or contractors, agents etc., commit bribery to gain or retain a business advantage. However, it is a defence, in this case, for the organisation to have in place ‘adequate procedures’ to prevent bribery.

Who is covered by the policy?

This policy applies to everyone working at Clapham Law LLP, including solicitors, consultants, partners, trainees and support staff. It also extends to any other person associated with Clapham Law LLP who carries out work on our behalf, including agents.

If your work involves liaising with agents (rather than the client direct), you will need to consider whether (either in an engagement letter or at another stage) you notify the agent of the Firm’s anti bribery policy and whether you require a reciprocal commitment to anti bribery from the agent.

Gifts and Hospitality

The provision of gifts and hospitality are an accepted part of doing business and are not unlawful. It remains an established and important part of networking with our clients and contacts that we continue to invite them to Firm events and accept hospitality offered where appropriate.

Gifts, hospitality and political or charitable donations, when given or received, may, however, constitute a bribe in certain circumstances. You will need to identify when those circumstances arise.

By way of guidance, the giving or receiving of gifts and hospitality is not prohibited if the following requirements are met:

it is not made with the intention of unduly influencing you/a third party to obtain or retain business or a business advantage, or to reward the provision or retention of business;
it does not include cash or a cash equivalent (such as gift certificates or vouchers);
it is appropriate in the circumstances, for example, giving or receiving a small gift at Christmas time;
taking into account the reason for the gift or hospitality, it is of an appropriate type and value and given at an appropriate time;
it is given openly, not secretly.

You must on every occasion consider whether to accept or provide a gift or hospitality. By way of example only, it would not be appropriate to do so in the following circumstances:

offering a gift or hospitality to a client at a time when the client is re-tendering for its legal services or accepting a gift or hospitality from a supplier/consultant at a time you are involved in the Firm’s decision in relation to a contract/appointment;

the gift or hospitality is lavish or excessive in the circumstances.

If you are at all unsure about whether to accept or provide a gift or hospitality, you should consult with the COFA.

Reporting Obligations

Receiving gifts or hospitality

You must inform COFA in writing to report all gifts offered or received which exceed £250 in value and all hospitality offered or received which exceeds £250 in value per head. This might require a reasonable assessment of what the gift or hospitality is worth. You must declare the gift or hospitality to COFA before it is accepted. For hospitality provided by the firm, secretaries must make a record in the Gift or hospitality annual ledger, including the details of the intended guests and an estimate total value of the hospitality.

If you have any concerns as to whether any hospitality or gifts being given or received is appropriate, please discuss either with the Compliance team or with the COLP.

Unusually frequent hospitality/entertainment provided by the same client might constitute bribery and each occurrence must be recorded separately in Gift/ hospitality ledger sheet.

Giving gifts or hospitality

This policy is not designed to prevent the provision of appropriate hospitality to clients and contacts.

It is, however, important that full and up to date records are maintained so that we are able to demonstrate that the hospitality provided is both appropriate and proportionate. If you propose to provide hospitality where the cost will or may exceed £250 per head, you must record the hospitality in Gift and Hospitality Annual Ledger.

Please note that this is in addition to obtaining the necessary prior approval of any expenditure under our expenses policy. An application for reimbursement of expenses will not be met unless it has been recorded in Gift and Hospitality Annual Ledger.

Other responsibilities

You must ensure that you read, understand and comply with this policy and sign below to confirm that you have done this. You should return this document signed and dated to the COLP and COFA of the Firm.

Any employee who breaches this policy is likely to face disciplinary action, which could result in dismissal for gross misconduct.

Reporting suspected acts of bribery

You must notify your COFA as soon as possible if you believe or suspect that there has been a breach of this policy. For example, if a client or potential client offers you something to gain a business advantage with us or indicates to you that a gift or payment is required to secure their business.

A decision will then be taken on whether the matter will be investigated and if the gift or hospitality may be accepted.

Staff who refuse to accept a bribe, or those who raise concerns about wrongdoing, are sometimes worried about possible repercussions. We aim to encourage openness and will support anyone who raises genuine concerns in good faith under this policy, even if they turn out to be mistaken.

Complaints Policy

Clapham Law LLP is committed to providing a first-class service to each and every client. We recognise that there will be occasions when we may fail to achieve the very high standards, we set for ourselves and which our clients expect from us. Mistakes may occur, things may go wrong or we may fail to explain something clearly. When something does go wrong, we need you to tell us about it straight away so that we can put matters right without delay. Addressing your complaint or dealing with your concern as quickly as we can is important to delivering the first-class service we strive to provide.

If you have any complaint, question or concern whatsoever about the service we are providing or have provided to you we ask you to let us know immediately and we promise to deal with your complaint without delay.

Click here to read our Complaints Policy

Our Commitment

How to make a complaint

Please communicate your complaint to us as soon as possible after the cause of concern has arisen. This will allow us to investigate what may have gone wrong and put matters right as quickly as possible.

Please raise your complaint with the lawyer you regularly deal with in relation to the matter or instruction to which the complaint relates. If you would prefer to speak to someone else, please contact the partner who is responsible for the matter or instruction.

In some cases, you may prefer to communicate with someone else, in which case please contact another partner in the firm who is known to you or alternatively please address your complaint to our client care partner, Mr James P Ramdhun. His details can be obtained from our website.

How we will handle your complaint

When we receive an oral complaint, we will respond to you initially setting out what we understand to be your complaint so that we can confirm that we have understood your concerns.

Alternatively, you may want to write to us by email or by post setting out your complaint.

In every case we aim to acknowledge your complaint within 48 hours.

We find that many complaints result from a simple misunderstanding and in those cases, we expect to be able to resolve the issue to your satisfaction without delay. In almost every case we would hope to be able to provide you with a further oral and/or written response within five working days of your original complaint. In simple cases this will be our suggested resolution but in other cases, where more detailed investigation is needed, we will let you know what we are doing and when you can expect to receive a substantive reply from us.

We will aim to deal with all matters within 20 working days but wherever possible we hope to have dealt with your complaint, to your satisfaction, much sooner.

As part of our substantive response we will outline the investigation we carried out and explain our conclusions and how we reached them. If we find we have not met expectations we may also explain what went wrong and propose one or more remedies to you.

if you wish to meet with us to discuss your complaint or our response to your complaint a meeting will be arranged, usually at our offices, at a time to your convenience. • Any information received from you during the complaints management process will be treated with upmost confidentiality. We will only make personally identifiable information about you available where needed, for the purposes of addressing the complaint within the practice.

What you should do if you are unhappy with our response

We hope that we will be able to deal with your complaint to your satisfaction but if you are dissatisfied with our response, you may have the right to refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman.

You can contact the Legal Ombudsman at: PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ

or by calling on 0300 555 0333 (or if you are calling from overseas +44 121 245 3050),

or emailing [email protected]

You should submit your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint or within six years of the act or omission about which you are complaining or three years from when you should have known about the complaint.

The Legal Ombudsman is the designated scheme for dealing with legal services complaints.

in certain situations, you may be able to raise your concerns with The Solicitors Regulation Authority who can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. Further information on when you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority is available on their website.

Complaints about a bill

If your complaint relates to our bill you should raise your complaint in exactly the same way as for any other complaint.

You may also be entitled to object to our bill by making a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, and/or by applying to the court for an assessment under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.

If all or part of the bill remains unpaid, the firm may be entitled to charge interest.

Data Protection Statement

Clapham Law LLP takes the security and privacy of data seriously. This document sets out our approach to compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation and provides information about how we will manage our data privacy and security obligations.

Data-Protection-Statement_August2021

Compliance with the EU General Data Protection regulation (GDPR)

Clapham Law LLP takes the security and privacy of data seriously. This document sets out our approach to compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and provides information about how we will manage our data privacy and security obligations.

Collection and processing of personal and/or sensitive data

We will collect and process personal data, including sensitive data, in order for us to carry out our contractual responsibilities with our clients and legal obligations with our regulators and/or insurers.

We will collect data on behalf of ourselves and/or third parties directly related to the performance of a contract with our clients. We will not pass client data to unrelated third parties other than as required for the provision of our services. We do not normally copy such information to anyone outside the European Economic Area However, we may do so when the particular circumstances of a matter so require.

Personal data we collect for the purposes of compliance with our money laundering obligations will be processed only for the purposes of preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, or as otherwise permitted by law or with your express consent. Such data will be retained in accordance with our file storage policy.

Use of personal data for marketing purposes

Personal data will only be used for marketing purposes where we have the consent of the person(s) to whom the data relates, or where there is a legitimate business reason for us to do so. In situations where the latter is applicable, individuals will always be given the opportunity to opt-out of receiving further communications. We will not initiate unsolicited contact with any individuals.

Authorised access to Personal Data

Only partners and staff of Clapham Law LLP LLP and Clapham Law LLP Service Company Limited and approved third parties – where it is necessary for the performance of our contract with our clients – will have access to the personal data we hold.

Vetting and due diligence procedures for employees and providers

Pre-employment vetting, including criminal background checks, is conducted on all employees and references are obtained from previous employers.

Due diligence on third parties and suppliers

We undertake due diligence on a risk-based approach when engaging with potential suppliers or other third parties.

In accordance with Article 28 of GDPR, we will be reviewing our internal supplier management policies. We are in discussions with each of our key suppliers (those who process personal data on our behalf) to seek clarification of the steps being taken to ensure they are GDPR compliant and to ensure that our agreements with those suppliers provide adequate protection for data they process on our behalf.

Training

In accordance with our GDPR implementation process, training is provided to all staff via our written Office Manual and other training module through our online training provider Data Law online.

Remote policy

We have an agile working policy which allows, where appropriate, employees to work remotely. The same technological measures are in place to protect remote workers from viruses and social engineering. Remote access to our network is controlled via secure authentication, including password protection for firm issued devices as well as our cloud platform.

Receiving Personal Data

We receive personal data throughout the course of performing our contract with clients via electronic means, mail, telephone, or as a result of notes taken during face to face meetings.

Personal Data back ups

Our key business service systems, within which personal data is held, are backed up to disk every evening and we perform a full back up once per month.

Physical security measures

Secure entry systems are in place across all of our offices. There is a manned reception presence at each office.