Notary Services

Notary Public services

A Notary verifies, authenticates, and records deeds, documents, and facts for cross-border transactions, performing a vital function for individuals and international trade and business.

Common Notarial tasks we undertake include:

• Witnessing Powers of Attorney for overseas use
• Authenticating:
  • Documents and information for immigration or emigration purposes
  • Documents for people wanting to apply to marry or work abroad
  • Company and business documents
  • Bank instruction documents
  • International affidavits and statutory declarations
  • International copyright documentation
  • Change of name
  • Confirmation of single status
  • Passport photos and true likeness certificate
• Verification of adoption documents
• Education and qualification verifications
• The legalisation of documents for overseas use

Notaries can also do work for businesses involved in international trade.

Our Notary Public services

Key stages of work and timescales:

• Before the meeting with the Notary, you will receive information regarding our requirements plus a copy of the Notarial terms. Please ensure you read through the requirements carefully and raise any queries before the meeting as this should save time at and following the meeting.
• The meeting itself will normally last approximately 30 minutes. It is usually possible, subject to holidays, etc., to obtain an appointment with one of our Notaries within 10 working days.
• If you also need to obtain an Apostille on any documents that we have notarised, you can apply via this Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) page. Presently, the fee for an Apostille is £40 per document, plus courier fees or postage. Please note that it normally takes the FCO about a week to turn it around. If legalisation at another embassy is also required then there will be an additional timescale – this can vary greatly, anything from one to 20 working days.
• Most notarial work can be completed at one attendance. If a second attendance is required we will normally try to arrange this at the time of the first attendance and would hope to do this within 10 working days.

Please note, that we carry professional indemnity liability cover of £30,000,000 which is in excess of the minimum level of cover specified by the Master of the Faculties. Therefore we limit the level of our liability to you to £30,000,000.

Our Notary Public fees and services

For details of our Notary Public fees, please click on the relevant drop-down option below.

• Notarial fees

  Our notarial fees are generally calculated on a time-cost basis at the rate of £300 + VAT for the notary’s time.

  The minimum notarial fee is £300 plus VAT and this will usually cover initial advice, preparation, one notarial attendance, provision of PDFs of the notarised documents as well as the original, record keeping and administration.

  We will normally advise you before the notarial meeting if we think that the fees may increase from these minimum fixed figures. If, during the meeting, we become aware that the figures are likely to increase, then we will advise you at the meeting of the likely level of new fees.

  If the fees are to increase, we will endeavour to give you a new figure on a fixed-fee basis. If we are unable to do so then we will charge for the additional work on a time-costed basis at our notarial hourly rate which is £300 plus VAT.

• Legalisation

  At present the fee for an Apostille is £40 per document, plus courier fees or postage. If you also need to obtain an Apostille on any documents that we have notarised, you can apply via the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) here. Please note that it normally takes the FCO about a week to turn it round.

  Specialist legalisation agents (such as CDN Consular Services Ltd) can assist you in obtaining Apostilles and other forms of embassy/consulate legalisation.

  Individual embassies charge fees if legalisation is required with them – these generally start at £30 per document but can be substantially higher than that, with some embassies charging over £100 per document.

  For commercial documents, some embassies charge an even higher amount, sometimes as high as £500 per document.