The Problem with Democracy
- Written by Nick Fluck
Let me say, before I start, this article deals with my personal views and does not represent the views of any other lawyer nor yet of my own (unashamedly brilliant) law firm, Stapleton & Son.
Winston Churchill (allegedly) said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others".
If you have not been living under a rock (probably on a different planet) you may have noticed there is a thing going on at the moment called BREXIT*.
The government ran a referendum to refer the difficult question of whether we should "Leave" the European Union or "Remain" a member of it. The result of this democratic process was that 16,141,241 people cast their votes to show they wanted to stay members of the EU but since 17,410,742 people voted to leave the EU all flavours of politicians have subordinated their personal views to "the will of the People".
The outcome looked like this:
My difficulty with this form of democracy is that with such a close vote, 52% to 48% in round terms, the deciding margin was less than 1.3 million people, changing the shape of our country (all the rest simply cancel each other out). Now 1.3 million people is a lot of people but our current population is about 66.02 million (last census figures from 2017) - and OK a lot of those people fall into categories who do not get a vote (too young, too imprisoned, too disenchanted with politics etc.) but it still seems to me to be wrong that less than 2% of the overall population is the deciding voting population that makes a change which is so fundamental and will affect the entire population of our country.
I have a few issues with politicians who stand behind the referendum vote insist on saying they are now, and must respect the "will of the people" - as a lawyer this should surely be "the will of a bare majority of the people", if for no other reason than to stay the right side of the trade descriptions act. If 17 plus million people want to leave the EU why is that such an important and to be respected mandate, when 16 million people voted to remain?
The underlying problem, of course, is the "first past the post" interpretation of democracy. Not "the will of the people", which implies a general will but the voice of the people - not necessarily the same thing at all. Given that the majority of centre votes for either side of a binary issue tend to cancel each other out - interestingly removing their direct democratic involvement in the outcome - the remainder tend to be from the shouty extremes, which, in my humble opinion, is not a great way to develop a strategy dictating the future of the country.
Referendums are peculiar animals. Even the definitions vary pretty widely between single issue matters being referred to an entire electorate for their opinion to a legally binding "decision of the people" - akin to a plebiscite. Whatever the process or intent the usual use of a referendum is to try and find a way forward when the "normal" political process either has, or would, stall if asked to decide the question through usual channels. For the record I am not impressed with the outcome of the last referendum - but I am not at all sure holding another one will do anything to improve matters - the simple God's honest truth is about half of us like to be European and the other half don't and our views are so strongly held and defended the country is busy tearing itself apart and I predict that whatever the outcome is - in, out or somewhere in between roughly half of the population will be unhappy with the result - unless of course we can achieve unity again by finding a solution which leaves both sides equally dissatisfied?
*[Which if you have missed it so far means "Brexit"]
Why should you care about your "Deeds"?
- Written by Practice Manager
We store a lot of deeds for clients. Many of the packets of deeds we hold may now be largely irrelevant to the process of selling that property and indeed some of the properties for which we are holding the deeds may have been sold without ever needing to refer to anything in the bundle.
How can this be? Well mostly because any transfer of ownership of a property now triggers the requirement to register the property at the Land Registry. Once registered the bulk of the information will be available to anyone who buys "office copy entries" (copies of the significant documents from the Registry) and those office copy entries may often provide all the information a buyer will need without reference to the old paper copy documents.
BUT not always.
Land Registry entries are not infallible and they often leave out things which can become very important, for example the planning permissions or building regulations approvals for the construction of the property will be in the original deeds but not in the Land Registry entries.
The title plan will show the outline of the property - but may not show any boundary ownership markers which may have been in the original sales documents.
There will certainly not be any Gas Safe certificates, electrical inspection reports or guarantees for windows, doors, boilers or conservatories held at the Registry - proving compliance with these matters, in the absence of the original deeds packet may cost quite a lot of money or lead to the bane of the conveyancers life - providing indemnity policies as a cheaper and more convenient option than actually being able to provide the real information.
This is only going to get worse as the short cut solution of indemnity insurance policies has now become subject to European regulation in the form of the Insurance Distribution Directive which will make the provision of an indemnity policy much more difficult.
If you are selling a property it is always worth finding your original deeds - and if you have sold a property without needing deeds but you know we may be holding a bundle for you then do please tell us - we have duties for safe-keeping and insurance of deeds and if you don't need us to store them we can put the saved money towards repairing our leaky roof!
Stapleton & Son - Privacy Notice - what we do with your data
- Written by Practice Manager
Privacy Notice
Introduction
This Privacy Notice takes effect on 25 May 2018. It sets out the information summarised in the table of contents below:
- Who we are
- The categories of personal data we collect
- How that personal data is collected
- Our basis for processing your personal data and how we use that personal data
- Who we may share your data with
- Transfer and processing of your personal data outside the European Economic Area
- How long we will hold your personal data for
- Your rights
- Our communications, the Website and cookies
- Changes to this Privacy Notice
- How to contact us
1.1 Stapleton & Son, Solicitors (“Stapleton & Son”, “we” or "us") is a partnership which provides English law professional services in the UK to UK and overseas clients. The partners are James Alfred Buxton and Nicholas Peter Fluck.
1.2 We are:
(a) authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority under number 55746. Our office is at 14 Sheep Market, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 2RB;
(b) responsible for the www.stapletons.com website (“Website”);
(c) for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation EU 2016/679 ("GDPR") and UK data protection, Nicholas Peter Fluck is the controller in respect of the processing described in this Privacy Notice; and
(d) registered with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (Registration Number Z7880990).
2.1 We may collect the following categories of personal data about you:
(a) your name and contact information such as your home and / or business address, email address and telephone number;
(b) identity and biographical information including your nationality, date of birth, tax status, passport / national identity card details and country of domicile, your employment and employment history, job title and role, educational profile, interests and other information relevant to our provision of professional services;
(c) information in relation to your financial situation such as income, expenditure, assets and liabilities, sources of wealth, as well as your bank account details and other information necessary for processing payments and for fraud prevention purposes;
(d) an understanding of your goals and objectives and other information provided to us in connection with our provision of professional services;
(e) information about our meetings with you, in particular at our offices; and / or
(f) limited usage data relating to your viewing and accessing of our email marketing materials, and your marketing preferences (see Section 9 (Our communications, the Website and cookies) below).
2.2 Our provision of professional services may also require us to process special category data (including data relating to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership, health and sexual life) and / or data relating to criminal convictions and offences (together “sensitive personal data”).
3.1 We may collect your personal data or you may provide it to us through various means including from information:
(a) you provide to us when you meet us;
(b) about you provided to us by your organisation, agents, advisers, intermediaries or custodians of your assets;
(c) provided to us by our clients;
(d) you communicate to us by telephone, post, email or other forms of electronic communication. In this respect, we may monitor, record and store any such communication;
(e) collected when you complete (or we complete on your behalf) client engagement formalities or register for an event;
(f) drawn from publicly available sources or from third parties, for example when we need to conduct background checks about you;
(g) collected via closed circuit television monitoring in our offices;
(h) collected when you view or access our email marketing materials (see section 9 (Our communications, the Website and cookies) below); and / or
(i) collected otherwise in the normal course of providing professional services.
4.1 How we use your personal data will depend on whether you are a client, a representative of a client, a business contact, someone whose personal data we necessarily process as part of our provision of professional services, or otherwise. We may process your personal data for the following purposes:
(a) providing a proposal to you or your organisation in relation to the professional services we offer and for client engagement purposes (including the carrying out of background checks);
(b) providing professional services to you and / or our clients (including legal research and advice, and associated advisory services);
(c) managing our relationship with you and / or our clients (including billing and financial management), for record-keeping purposes and more generally for the proper operation of Stapleton & Son;
(d) dealing with any complaints or feedback you may have;
(e) monitoring and improving the performance and effectiveness of our services, including by training our staff;
(f) any other purpose for which you provide us with your personal data;
(g) the purposes set out in Section 9 (Our communications, the Website and cookies) below;
(h) seeking advice on our rights and obligations, such as where we require our own legal advice, and to exercise and defend our legal rights;
(i) compliance with our legal and regulatory obligations, such as anti-money laundering laws (which may include the carrying out of background checks and retention of a record of such checks), data protection laws and tax reporting requirements, and / or to assist with investigations by police and / or other competent authorities (where such investigation complies with relevant law) and to comply with Court orders;
(j) safeguarding the security of our systems and communications; and / or
(k) for security purposes generally and to ensure the safety of our employees and visitors.
4.2 We may process your personal data for any of the purposes set out above where one (or more) of the following lawful processing grounds applies:
(a) the processing is necessary to perform a contract with you, or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract with you;
(b) the processing is necessary for us to comply with our legal obligations;
(c) the processing is necessary for our legitimate interests (including the operation of Stapleton & Son, and the provisions of professional services) or those of any client or relevant third party, unless those legitimate interests are overridden by your interests or fundamental rights or freedoms; and / or
(d) you have consented to the processing in question.
4.3 Where we process sensitive personal data, other lawful processing grounds may apply, such as that the processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims (for example to protect and / or defend our property or rights, or those of our clients) or for reasons of substantial public interest; or where you have given us your explicit consent.
5.1 We may share your personal data with:
(a) your organisation;
(b) with our client in the particular matter;
(c) third parties we engage to assist in providing our professional services, such as lawyers (including barristers), other professional services firms, IT and other consultants, public relations advisers, translators and / or couriers;
(d) intermediaries to whom we introduce you;
(e) third party service providers who provide business services to us, such as shared service centres, and with providers of anti-money laundering services and background checks, for processing in accordance with our instructions;
(f) our own legal and professional services providers and insurers, where appropriate;
(g) third parties and their advisers in the event of the potential or actual sale or purchase of all or part of our business or assets (or any other business or assets), subject to appropriate obligations of confidentiality; and / or
(h) Courts and other authorities in connection with the enforcement or defence of legal rights and provision of our professional services.
6.1 Our provision of professional services may require us to transfer your personal data to countries outside the European Economic Area which may not provide the same level of data protection as within it.
6.2 We ensure that any such transfer meets the requirements of GDPR, for example because it is necessary for the provision of our professional services to you or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; or is otherwise subject to prescribed safeguards such as model clauses approved by the European Commission. More information is available from us upon request
7.1 We will retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice.
7.2 In many cases this will mean that we shall retain your personal data for the same period as we retain your files or a copy of your files. Usually this will not be less than 6 years from the date that the relevant matter came to an end. In addition, we shall retain information obtained to meet our obligations under the anti-money laundering regulations for at least 5 years following the end of our business relationship with you.
7.3 Longer retention periods may be appropriate where, for example, specific legal or public interest archival reasons apply.
8.1 Under GDPR you have the right to:
(a) obtain access to, and copies of, the personal data we hold about you and information about how we process it;
(b) require us to correct any inaccuracies in the personal data we hold about you;
(c) require, in certain circumstances, erasure of your personal data;
(d) require us, in certain circumstances, to restrict our data processing activities;
(e) obtain from us the personal data you have provided to us in a reasonable format specified by you, including for the purpose of you transmitting that personal data to another data controller;
(f) object to our use of your personal data based on our legitimate interests, on grounds relating to your specific situation;
(g) withdraw your consent, where our use of your personal data is based on that consent; and
(h) complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, which can investigate compliance with data protection law and has enforcement powers, if you are not satisfied with how we are processing your personal data.
8.2 Please contact us in writing using the contact details below if you would like to action any of your rights above. You should note that these rights are not absolute, and we may be entitled (or required) to refuse requests where exceptions apply.
9.1 We may use your contact details to send you (by post or electronically) briefings, newsletters, event invitations and other mailings promoting our services. We do so on the basis of our legitimate interests or your consent (as appropriate to the communication in question). You can always unsubscribe from these mailings, by clicking on the link in the relevant email; or by contacting us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
9.2 We use mailing list management / marketing software to manage how we contact you as set out above. This enables us to record and manage how we contact you, and to manage your preferences and bookings for our events. It also enables us (as set out in any such email) to review whether emails are opened or forwarded, and whether briefing links are clicked. This data helps us to ensure our mailing list remains up to date; it also provides us with some basic information about your interests and to personalise our communications with you.
9.3 We use cookies on our Website, in accordance with our cookie policy as published on our website.
We may update this Privacy Notice in line with changes to how we process personal data. We will publish any new version of the Privacy Notice on the Website and, where appropriate, will provide you with a copy.
If you have any queries about this Privacy Notice or how we process your personal data, you can contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by post at Data Protection, Stapleton & Son, Solicitors 14 Sheep Market, Stamford, Lincolnshire, PE9 2RB.
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