Terms & Conditions

We aim to offer all our clients a quality family mediation service at a fair cost and we are confident that we will do so in your case.

You will be told the name of the Mediator responsible for your case and we will endeavour to ensure that the same Mediator conducts all of your Mediation sessions. However, if this is not possible and in exceptional circumstances, we will reserve the right to change the Mediator assigned to your case. We shall endeavour to provide you with as much notice as possible of any change before your next scheduled Mediation session.

Your Mediator is responsible for:-

    a) The organisation of each Mediation session and associated administration

    b) Facilitation of Mediation sessions.

    c) Providing a written summary of each Mediation session unless agreed with you otherwise.

    d) Preparing the final documents at the conclusion of the Mediation process.

We would ask you to agree to act in good faith to attempt to settle matters using our Mediation service.

Mediation is a voluntary, confidential process in which an impartial third party, the Mediator, facilitates negotiation between two (or more) parties on an agreed agenda of issues. The Mediator cannot provide legal or other specialist advice or impose agreements, and we cannot guarantee that the service we provide will result in an agreed set of proposals between the parties.

Our fees will be calculated based on the amount of time spent on your case, If you are eligible for Legal Aid, your Mediation fees will be covered by the Legal Aid Agency and you will not be required to repay theses fees at any stage.

If you are not eligible for Legal Aid, fees payable will be explained and an estimated total provided at the outset of your case and are published on our website, www.venturemediation.co.uk  and in other standard documentation provided. We reserve the right to review and change our fee structure from time to time and will advise you in writing of any increase in costs throughout your case.

Mediation fees are charged per person per session and must be paid either in advance or immediately following a mediation session or MIAM. Each Mediation session shall last for up to a maximum of one hour and thirty minutes unless both parties agree to continue

There are no charges for any associated documentation, apart from (1) Open Financial Summary, (2) a Memorandum of Understanding, (3) Parenting Plan, (4) Signing Court Forms where an additional fee shall be payable by you in advance of the commencement of drafting each document.

Mediation fees must be paid either before or immediately following each Mediation session and we reserve the right to refuse to conduct any further Mediation if any amounts due by you remain outstanding. Failure to pay Mediation fees in full when due, will result in you remaining liable for the Mediation fees applicable to the past Mediation session plus all fees and/or expenses incurred in the relation to the cancellation of any future Mediation session.

If you wish to cancel a scheduled Mediation session, you must give ourselves and any other parties at least 48 hours’ notice before the date of the Mediation session or MIAM, except in unforeseen circumstances. If you give no notice, or less than 48 hours’ notice of cancellation, you will remain liable to pay the Mediation fee in full for the relevant Mediation session.

Mediation is a voluntary process from which either/any party may withdraw at any time. However, you will remain liable for any Mediation fees payable to Venture Mediation arising under these Terms of Business.

The Mediator, acting in his or her sole discretion may decide to withdraw from your case at any time (whether or not during a Mediation session) on the basis that Mediation is no longer suitable. This will be without Venture Mediation or the Mediator incurring any liability to you, even if you and/or the other party wish to continue.

To the fullest extent of the law, neither Venture Mediation nor the Mediator shall be liable to you for any losses, costs, expenses fees or any other liabilities arising from any act or omission in relation to the Mediation service provided, unless the act or omission is proved to have been fraudulent or involved wilful misconduct.

If owing to any exceptional unforeseen circumstance Venture Mediation must cancel a Mediation session without adequate notice, we will not be liable to you for any fees, costs or expenses incurred by you (including without limitation court fees) arising from or in connection with such cancellation or non-attendance, except for the fees paid for the cancelled session.

Exceptional unforeseen circumstances in relation to these terms and conditions shall include:-

    a) Illness, certified by a doctor’s certificate.

    b) Epidemic or pandemic

    c) Compliance with any law or government order, rule or regulation or direction, or any action taken by a government or public authority.

    d) Acts of God, flood, earthquake, windstorm or other natural disaster.

    e) War, threat of or preparation for war, or related/similar actions such as terrorist attacks, civil commotion or riot.

    f) Severe adverse weather conditions

    g) Fire, explosion or accidental damage.

    h) Interruption or failure of utility service or services at the Mediation premises, including, but not limited to electric power, gas or water.

    i) Collapse of building structures, failure of machinery, computers or vehicles.

Subject to the limited exceptions detailed below, you understand and agree that all discussions, negotiations, communications and disclosures (whether written or oral) within and during mediation are covered by the confidentiality of the Mediation process in accordance with the Family Mediation Council’s Code of Practice and cannot be referred to as evidence in any court proceedings. (The provisions of which Code in this regard are deemed incorporated into these Terms and Conditions).

The only exceptions to confidentiality are as follows:-

    I. All factual financial information material to finance property matters is provided by you on an open basis and can be referred to in legal proceedings if you do not reach full agreement in Mediation. (The Open Financial Summary which you prepare with your Mediator is itself an open document).

    II. Venture Mediation and the Mediator may disclose any information (whether or not confidential) where required by law or where we reasonably consider that there is a significant risk to the life, health or safety of a child or children, the other party of the Mediation or any other party.

    III. For the protection of all of our clients and, as required by law, we operate a money laundering reporting procedure. If there is a suspicion of money laundering, information will be given to the appropriate authority.

Following the conclusion of your case we will return all original papers that are no longer required and retain papers in your file belonging to you free of charge for an appropriate period and tell you what that is. At the end of that period the file will be confidentially destroyed. If you require any papers to be kept for any specific period, you must agree this with us.

Where stored papers are retrieved from storage in connection with continuing or new instructions to us to act in connection with your affairs, no charge will be made for such retrieval. However, we reserve the right in other cases to make an administration charge based on the time spent in retrieval and other work necessary to comply with your instructions.

The physical, or online, file will be stored for six years from the date that the matter is completed. We need to retain the information collected should it be necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of any legal claim. If you wish for the physical or system file to be deleted, please contact Venture Mediation after the elapse of six years form the date your file was closed and we can delete it.

We will aim to communicate with you by such methods as you request. Unless you notify us otherwise, we may communicate with you and others in connection with your matter by email but we cannot be held responsible for the security of correspondence sent by email.

The recipients of personal data:

We do not sell or share your data with any other organisation or individual save for:

The legal Aid Agency (if your matter is legally aided).

We physically store your file in a secure location

We do not use card machines but accept online payments made by clients.

As a result of working for you, we obtain personal data about you. As a mediation service we are under an obligation to keep your affairs confidential. However we are also subject to the general data protection regulation and the below information is set out as required by the GDPR. Please in any event rest assured that as mediators we take the protection of all the information we hold in relation to all clients very seriously. Please do not hesitate to contact Julian Rendall, our practice director and the person in charge of data protection act this office an should queries or  concerns. Please also note that throughout this notice we have used the word process/processing in relation to data. A simpler terms of data processing is inverted, is using the information you provide us with inverted colours. However we have used the term ‘data processing’ processing etc as this is what the law refers to.

Our name and contact details:

Venture Mediation – contact details on the accompanying letter

Name and contact details of our representative:

Julian Rendall

Purpose for which we process your data:

To work for you in mediation and – where we take payment from you via a card payment – to arrange for the payment of costs due to us.

The lawful basis for proceeding:

To work for you and the processing is necessary for the performance of the contract we have with you.

Right to clarification:

If you believe that any of the information we hold in relation to you is wrong, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will amend any errors within seven days.

Right to restrict processing and right to object to processing:

You are free at any time to request that we cease processing your personal data or that we take different measures to those we already have for processing your data. If you request that we cease processing your personal data, we will do so immediately and that will mean that we can no longer work with you. In regards to any request that we adopt different measures as to how your data is processed, we will respond to any demand as soon as possible and in any event within 28 days.

Right to access your data:

Should you wish to access the data we hold in relation to you please make contact and we will respond with 28 days.

Right to complain to the Commissioner’s Office:

You have the right to complain to the ICO if you have concerns about how we handle your data. The ICO contact details can be found online.

Generally:

We hope that this information is clear and jargon free. Please let us know if you have any difficulty in understanding it so that we can consider revising it to make it clearer.

All work done by us is for your use only as our client and should not be relied upon by anyone else. Our duty of care is owed to you only, not to third parties, unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.

No person other than you, the client, may enforce the terms of any agreement between us by virtue of the Contract (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

We work hard to give a good quality and efficient service. We are proud of approvals that we hold from Regulatory Bodies in recognition of our high standards. We may need to show that we keep these standards and unless you notify us otherwise, we will assume that we have your authority to produce your file and other documents and to give information for that purpose only, as an exception to our undertaking as to confidentiality. This may also include the Legal Aid Agency who are providing funding for some of our clients and who are entitled to ensure that our files comply with their requirements.

Information you give us about your affairs is generally confidential to Venture Mediation. However, in order to provide an efficient service to our clients, details of our dealings with you may be disclosed to our cashiering service, our external storage provider or the Legal Aid Agency. On occasion we may need to use external agencies to provide administrative services for us such as typing, printing, or photocopying; and such agencies if used will also be obliged to keep your affairs confidential.

For the protection of all of our clients and, as required by law, we operate a money laundering reporting procedure. If there is a suspicion of money laundering, information will be given to the appropriate authorities.

You authorise us to discuss your affairs by telephone or in writing with any other person or professional where we believe it to be appropriate and in your interests to do so.

Unless in all the circumstances it appears to be appropriate or reasonable to divulge information, your affairs will remain confidential.

We will not be responsible after completion for reminding you of any specific dates within any agreements that fall due.

We may vary these terms of business from time to time by giving you reasonable written notice.

These terms of business are governed by English Law.  By instructing us you agree that any dispute arising in connection with these terms or our services shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Court.

Venture Mediation follows a strict Equality and Diversity policy which requires us not to discriminate in our dealings with clients, staff and third parties.  We would be pleased to provide a copy of our policy upon request.

You may terminate your instructions to us in writing at any time for any reason.  However, we reserve the right to keep your papers and documents while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses. If at any stage you do not wish us to continue doing work and/or incurring charges on your behalf, you must tell us this clearly in writing.

Provided we have fulfilled our obligation to you to provide a professional service, we may terminate our agreement to provide services to you on written notice.  This may be necessary where, for example, you fail to give us proper instructions, where continuing to provide our services would be impractical, unethical or unlawful, or you fail to pay our invoices in accordance with these terms.

We are obliged to put in place professional indemnity insurance to cover the service that we provide.  Details of this cover can be supplied upon request.

All our Mediators are bound by The Family Mediation Council’s (FMC) Code of Practice for Family Mediators (agreed by the Member Organisations). Details of this code of practice are available on the Family Mediation Council website www.familymediationcouncil.org.uk