Client Care and Provision of Service Regulation

All self employed barristers are required by the Bar Standards Board of England and Wales to comply with the enforcement regulations and are subject to a non-judicial dispute resolution procedure which may be accessed through the England and Wales Legal Ombudsman’s website.

If you are not satisfied with the final written response to your complaint to Tennyson after using our complaints procedure, or you have not received a response within 8 weeks from lodging your complaint, then you have the option of raising the matter with the Legal Ombudsman, which covers England and Wales. This is a free, impartial and independent service set up by United Kingdom government which deals with any complaints about the legal service you have received.

You must complain to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving a final response to your complaint (provided the response specifically notifies you of your right to complain to the Ombudsman and of the six month time limit). A complaint to the above Ombudsman must also be made not more one year from the act/omission or one year from when the complainant should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.There are other limitations on when and how you can bring your complaint to the  Legal Ombudsman. For more information, see the publications section of their website.

Further details about how to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman may be found at the make a complaint page here and please contact the Legal Ombudsman directly at;

Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6806
Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 (0) 300 555 0333
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

If you are not satisfied with the final response to your complaint using our complaints procedure, and wish to make an allegation of misconduct against any barrister who belongs to our chambers, then you may contact the Bar Standards Board of England and Wales (“BSB”) at the address below namely:

The Bar Standards Board
289-293 High Holborn
London WC1V 7HZ
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 207 611 1444
Fax: +44 (0) 207 831 9217

E- mail:
contactus@barstandardsboard.org.uk
assessmentcomplaints@barstandardsboard.org.uk

Web site: http://barstandardsboard.org.uk

For a detailed description of how to report a concern about a barrister to the Bar Standards Board please click here. The complaints procedure is a non-judicial dispute resolution procedure operated by the BSB.

You may also contact the BSB who have an online reporting form.

To satisfy the Provision of Services Regulation 2009 the following information is provided to clients and solicitors using the services of barristers at Tennyson Chambers.

Business:

All members of Tennyson Chambers – the Chambers of Susan Brown- are individual sole practitioners operating their individual legal practices in their own practising names and where appropriate are registered for VAT in their own personal trading name with Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. VAT numbers are available on request prior to first instruction.  The trademark of Tennyson Chambers is not VAT registered as it is not a company. LPP, or corporate entity and has no legal existence of its own other than as a United Kingdom registered trademark.

Invoices of external suppliers should be rendered to barristers of Tennyson in the personal/practising name of the barrister member concerned.

Legal Status:

A barristers Chambers. Providing legal services.

As stated above Tennyson Chambers is not a company, LLP, or partnership or a firm, but a United Kingdom registered trademark of Miss Susan Brown. Individual barrister sole practitioners are led by the Head of Chambers and work in their own individual practices whilst sharing some of the facilities available within Chambers which, for marketing purposes only, is known by Miss Brown’s United Kingdom registered trademark of “Tennyson Chambers”.

Tennyson Chambers is established at the following address and contact details are as follows –

Contact details are:

Miss Susan Brown
The Head of Chambers
Tennyson Chambers
Ocean Village Innovation Centre
Ocean Way Southampton SO14 3JZ.
United Kingdom.

Tel: +44 (0) 2381 511511 (Southampton UK)
Tel: +44 (0) 203 470 0047 (London appointments)

E Mail: practicemanager@tennysonchambers.com

Web site: https://www.tennysonchambers.com

All fully qualified registered barrister members of the Chambers of Susan Brown (“Tennyson Chambers”) are regulated and authorised to practice by the BSB (and the United Kingdom is the EEA state) which grants authorisation to practice to registered barristers who must abide by the Code of Conduct contained in the current version of The Bar Handbook  issued by the BSB.

Solicitors and clients will find an English (UK) copy of The Bar Handbook on BSB web site above. The Bar Handbook sets out the professional code of conduct rules applicable in England and Wales to every registered barrister practising at the Bar of England and Wales.

A new edition of the above Bar Handbook was published 31st December 2020 in English only. The full code of conduct is not currently available in any other language.

Clients and solicitors are also referred to the Barristers Register on the BSB website (which gives details of all our members registration details with the BSB).

All individual barristers in private practice are required to hold sufficient professional indemnity insurance to satisfy the requirements of the Bar Handbook. All members of Tennyson are therefore required to hold their own individual professional indemnity insurance and do so also as part of their membership of Tennyson Chambers.

Under arrangements for the Bar of England and Wales such professional indemnity insurance is held with the Bar Mutual Indemnity Fund Limited (“BMIF”) in the UK. A mutual indemnity fund which offers cover to practising barristers of England and Wales of up to £2.5 million.

Where, as frequently happens, individual members of Tennyson require increased professional indemnity insurance levels because of the cases that they are advising upon they are required to obtain top up professional indemnity insurance from a third party provider to satisfy the BSB’s code in the Bar Handbook. Such top up insurance is currently available from TLO or Lonmar although a barrister is at liberty to obtain top up insurance from elsewhere if they choose to do so. Further details can be obtained from each individual barrister upon request.

The contact details of BMIF are as follows: –

The Managers

Bar Mutual Indemnity Fund Limited

90 Fenchurch Street
London
EC3M 4ST
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7621 0405
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7283 5988

E Mail: info@barmutual.co.uk

Professional indemnity insurance cover by the BMIF is provided on the terms set out on their web site here. Cover including geographical/territorial is worldwide subject to any exceptions and applicable terms of cover set out in BMIF’s terms and conditions of cover.

The common parts of Ocean Village Innovation Centre including conference rooms used by the members of Tennyson Chambers and their clients are owned by Marina Developments Limited and run by Oxford Innovation Limited. Individual members of Tennyson hire these rooms for their conferences on an hourly basis. Please contact Oxford Innovation Limited for further details about the public liability insurance for those areas. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic members of chambers are working from home on a virtual office basis with Ocean Village Innovation Centre so physical office public liability insurance is not required and conferences are taking place by video link.

In general counsel at Tennyson take into account, when agreeing fees for any particular case, the complexity of the case, the importance of the case to the client, the amount of material there is for counsel to read and deal with, any legal research which may be needed, the length of the hearing/trial (where applicable), the preparation time required for a hearing/trial including the preparation and filing of skeleton arguments and any other written documents required to be prepared and filed by counsel under the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 and the Chancery and Commercial Court Guides, and any administration on a case which needs to be done, for example,  emails, telephone conferences, and conferences with the client. Please refer to each barrister’s profile on this site for further information about each individual barristers’ pricing model. Barristers in chambers use a mixture of fixed fee and hourly rate charges for the provision of legal services.

Travel time and travel costs for travelling to court and for conferences outside chambers are charged separately to brief and/or instruction fees where appropriate. However, in Tennyson, there is a policy of not charging for travel time or travel costs for attending the UK Royal Courts of Justice (including the Business and Property Courts of England and Wales), or the UK Supreme Court. This policy does not apply to any other court or geographical area in the United Kingdom or overseas.

The factors which commonly might influence the timescales of the barrister’s and chambers most commonly provided legal services are where for example the client or his/her solicitor, public access or licensed access client has stated the length of time in which paperwork including written legal advice is to be returned, where the court has set a time estimate for a hearing or trial or the length of a hearing or trial or the court has set directions which need to be complied with by the client, availability of counsel or other reason such as urgency or availability of solicitors counsel and client to attend conferences. Members of Tennyson Chambers target turn around time for completion of paperwork is normally within 21 days but may vary depending upon the case type, volume of papers, urgency of the work, and the wishes of the client and/or his or her solicitor.

Please see the contractual terms page for further details on the contractual terms for supply of legal services upon which members of Tennyson Chambers engage with solicitors and authorised persons. Unless otherwise stipulated all contracts entered into by members of Tennyson for the provision of legal services as registered barrister members of Tennyson are governed by the law of England and Wales and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

If you are a public access client, then please see your client care letter with your chosen barrister in Tennyson Chambers for further details of the fees which your barrister will charge you, and the basis upon which those charges are made. You should read this carefully.

There is no after sales guarantee which provides more protection than that required by law and no after sales guarantee at all.