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COVID-19 Business Service Continuity

The outbreak of the Coronavirus is having a significant impact globally. Winckworth Sherwood has now implemented its Business Continuity Plan in order to safeguard our teams and ensure service delivery and client support during this period. Below are the specific measures we have in place:

Safeguarding Service Delivery and Remote Working

Our teams continue to work flexibly, either from the office where necessary or on a remote basis, and we remain fully operational. Your usual contacts can be reached by email and mobile phone.

All our key personnel are equipped with a device (laptop or PC and a mobile phone) enabling them to work from home using our remote working facility which provides access to all our key business systems.

The wellbeing of all is a priority of the firm and as such everyone at WS is requested to follow the current government measures on staying at home, social distancing and only travelling where absolutely necessary.

Our Documents and Emails

We have invested in cloud-based technologies which means our documents and emails are accessible securely over the internet should remote working facilities be unavailable.

Continuity of Service for Receiving and Transferring monies

We continue to process funds in relation to all the Firm’s activities through established systems.

Cyber Crime

COVID-19 has led to a surge in phishing scams and other cyber-related crime. We do not rely on email notification of bank account changes without direct oral confirmation from a trusted source.

Contacting Winckworth Sherwood

  • Phone – Our lawyers can be contacted on their mobile phones. Direct landline numbers have also been transferred to the relevant individual’s mobile phone. If you are contacting our main switchboard number and the relevant person is not available, our switchboard service will take a message and email the relevant person or team. We have enabled voicemail to email facility for everyone who has a voicemail set up ensuring voicemails are not missed.
  • Emails – Email service should work as normal. Should we experience any downtime with our Email servers, all our partners and staff can use Mimecast for email continuity.
  • Post – To minimise the disruption caused by Coronavirus/COVID-19, we are requesting that clients please communicate with us only by email and not by post/DX wherever possible. Winckworth Sherwood will now only communicate electronically unless otherwise agreed. All documents and letters will be sent in pdf format attached to emails. This does not apply to service of contractual or statutory notices or court or tribunal documents or where strict statutory attestation rules apply.

Other Potential Impact

  • Meetings – Client meetings are now mainly taking place remotely using video or telephone conferencing. Our offices are available for client meetings where these are necessary.
  • Printing – We are now mainly operating digitally, however, where this is necessary, we are using designated printing services.

Internal Business Services

All our business services teams are fully operational and continue to fully support our legal staff during this period of large-scale remote working.

Many thanks
Winckworth Sherwood Business Continuity Team