The terms for using
this website.

Last updated: July 2026

What this page is, and what it is not

This page sets out the terms on which you use this website — the pages, the guides and the online tools on it. By using the site, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site.

To be clear about what this page is not: it is not a client care letter, and it is not a retainer. If you instruct us to act for you, the terms of that work — what we will do, who will do it, what it will cost and where our responsibility begins and ends — are set out separately in the client care letter and terms of business we send you. Those documents govern the work. This one only governs the website.

How we handle the information you send us is covered in our Privacy Policy and our Cookies page.

Who runs this site

This website is operated by Jefferson Clarke Limited, a company registered in England and Wales.

Jefferson Clarke Limited is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Our SRA number is [to be confirmed before launch].

Using this site does not make us your solicitors

This is the most important thing on this page, so it is worth saying plainly. Reading this website, sending us an enquiry through a form, emailing us, calling us, or using one of the online tools here does not make you our client and does not create a solicitor–client relationship.

That relationship starts only when we have agreed to act for you and confirmed it to you in writing. Until that happens, no deadline of yours is being protected, no work is being done on your matter, and nobody here is acting on your behalf. If you are up against a time limit — and in immigration and housing matters, you often are — please do not treat an unanswered enquiry as though your case is in hand. Call us.

Please also bear in mind that an enquiry sent through this site is not covered by legal professional privilege in the way that advice to a client is, and that we may already be acting for someone on the other side of your matter. For that reason, do not send us anything confidential or sensitive until we have confirmed that we are able to act for you.

The guides and tools here are general information, not advice

The content on this site — including our written guides and the online tools, such as the visa finder and the disrepair checker — is general information about the law. It is not legal advice, and it is not a decision about your situation.

The tools work from a small number of general questions. They do not know your history, your documents, your dates or the facts that often turn out to be the ones that matter. Two people can give a tool identical answers and still have completely different legal positions. Whatever a tool suggests is a starting point for a conversation, not an answer you can rely on.

So please do not act, or decide not to act, on the strength of anything on this website alone. If it matters, get advice on your own facts — from us or from another solicitor. That is what advice is for, and it is the only thing that takes account of your actual circumstances.

Things change, and pages go out of date

The law changes, and in some of the areas we work in it changes often. The information on this site is correct as far as we are aware at the date shown on the page, but we cannot promise it is complete, current or free of errors — and a page that was right when we wrote it may not be right by the time you read it. Any figures, timescales or requirements mentioned are for general guidance and may have moved since.

We may change, update or remove any part of this site, and we may change these terms, at any time. The version published here is the one that applies to your use of the site.

Using the site fairly

You are welcome to use this site for your own lawful purposes. Please do not:

• use it for anything unlawful, or to send anything abusive, misleading or deliberately false;
• try to gain unauthorised access to the site, its server or anything connected to it;
• introduce viruses or anything else designed to cause harm;
• attempt to disrupt the site or interfere with anyone else's use of it;
• use our enquiry forms to send unsolicited marketing, or to submit automated or bulk enquiries;
• or systematically copy or extract content from the site to reuse in a competing service.

We may withdraw access to the site from anyone who does any of these things.

Who owns what is on the site

The words, guides, design and layout of this site belong to Jefferson Clarke Limited, and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. You are welcome to read our pages, print a copy or share a link for your own personal or internal business use. Republishing our content, or using it commercially, needs our permission first — ask us, and we will usually say yes.

The photographs on this site are licensed from Unsplash and remain the work of their photographers under the Unsplash licence. They are illustrative stock images: unless a page says otherwise, they are not photographs of our staff, our clients or our office.

Links to other websites

We link to other websites where they are useful — GOV.UK, the Legal Ombudsman, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and others. Those sites are not ours and we have no control over them. We link to them because we think they will help, not because we are endorsing everything on them, and we are not responsible for their content, their accuracy or how they handle your information. When you follow a link away from this site, that site's own terms and privacy policy apply.

Where our responsibility ends

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded. Nothing here affects your rights as a consumer that cannot be excluded by agreement, and nothing here limits our responsibility for legal work we do for you as a client — that is dealt with in your client care letter, not on this page.

Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows: this website is provided as it is. We have taken care over it, but we cannot promise it will always be available, uninterrupted or free of errors, and we are not liable for any loss you suffer from relying on the general information or the online tools here rather than taking advice on your own facts. We are also not liable for any loss caused by viruses or other harmful material you may pick up through using the site or anything linked from it.

Which law applies

These terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of them or out of your use of this website, are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales will deal with any dispute.

If something on this page is unclear

If anything here does not make sense, or you want to check whether something you have read on this site applies to you, ask us. We would much rather answer a question than have you rely on a page that was never written with your situation in mind.

If you are unhappy with our service, our Complaints Procedure explains how to raise it and where you can take it if we cannot put it right.