Charges and Billing
Our charges and billing arrangements are set out as follows:
The initial one-to-one meeting with the mediator (or MIAM) costs £185.00 and will last up to one hour.
Mediation sessions thereafter are charged at £250 per hour per client (and pro rata for any period of time less than an hour). Sessions are usually around 90 minutes
long so a typical session costs £375 per person.
We will usually provide a written summary at the end of each session which is included in the cost of the session.
In addition to the above session cost, you may wish us to draft documentation to reflect the outcome and agreement reached. This may be a Summary of Proposals (SOP), an open Financial Summary (OFS) or a parenting plan for which we charge £600 per document.
Our fees are payable in advance of each session and should be paid by bank transfer.
We’re sorry but we do not accept payment by credit card or cheque.
You may be eligible for public funding (which used to be known as legal aid). We do not undertake publicly funded work, but we are happy, upon request, to provide you with details of mediation services that do undertake such work in your area and to give you some information to help you decide whether you would be eligible for public funding. You can check your eligibility here: https://www.gov.uk/legal-aid/eligibility.
Invoices in advance of mediation sessions will usually cover 90 minutes of mediation time plus any additional time incurred from previous sessions that have not yet been invoiced.
If, for any reason, an invoice remains unpaid prior to the session we reserve the right to refuse to conduct the session. We reserve the right to refuse to conduct further sessions while fees remain outstanding.
If, in breach of the Agreement to Mediate, we are asked to provide evidence for court proceedings concerning any aspect of the mediation, both clients will be responsible for any resultant costs (including legal costs) incurred by the mediators, which may include any costs relating to a court application that we may make, in which we ask for the confidentiality of the process to be upheld.
Cancellation
The full agreed fees for one hour of mediation will be charged if a mediation is cancelled within 48 working hours of the time at which the mediation was due to take place (excluding Saturday, Sunday and public holidays).
Complaints
We aim to provide a dedicated and high-quality family mediation service. So although we very much hope that this is not the case, if something does go wrong we would ask you to contact us directly so that we can have a conversation about it and hopefully resolve the issue. You can contact us by email or telephone, and you can do this up to 3 months from the event that has concerned you.
Your complaint will be acknowledged within 10 days of receipt, and will be investigated and responded to within 30 days of receipt. If further time is needed, we will inform you in writing. If you and the mediator agree, then the complaint can be mediated.
If this doesn’t help, then you can ask the Family Mediation Standards Board FMSB to consider the complaint if certain criteria are met. You will find more details here: https://www.familymediationcouncil.org.uk/complaints-about-mediators/.
If we receive a complaint from one of you, we will usually inform the other person that a complaint has been made. (We must do this if a professional adviser we have consulted about the complaint (normally a PPC – see below) considers that the other person needs to be informed.)
A PPC is a Professional Practice Consultant. Every qualified family mediator recognised by the Family Mediation Council is required to have a professional practice consultant (PPC), who provides the mediator with professional support and guidance. We are required to inform our PPCs about the complaint.
