Terms and conditions

This page is the agreement between you and Deed Polls Online. It applies whenever you order a deed poll, a certified copy or one of our other services, and whenever you use this website. Paying at the checkout is how you accept it, which is why the checkout says so next to the payment button. Our privacy policy sits alongside it and forms part of the same agreement.

Last updated 23 September 2026. This version applies to orders placed on or after that date.

1. Who we are, and who you are#

The service is run by Deed Polls Online of 3rd Floor, 86–90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE. Our email address is support@deedpolls-online.co.uk. Messages are read by a person and answered the same working day where we can.

Throughout these terms, "we", "us" and "our" refer to Deed Polls Online, and "you" refers to the customer placing the order. A "working day" is any day from Monday to Friday that is not a bank holiday in England and Wales. "Deed" and "deed poll" mean the change of name deed we draft for you.

2. Accepting these terms#

You accept these terms, together with the privacy policy, at the moment you place an order and pay. Please do not order if there is anything in them you are not willing to agree to; ask us about it instead.

Your contract is on the version of this page that was published on the day you ordered, and the date at the top shows which version that is. Earlier versions are kept, and we can send you the one that applies to your order if you ask. We may revise these terms from time to time, for example when the law or our working methods change, but a revision only affects orders placed after it is published. Nothing changes for an order that has already been made.

The complete agreement consists of three things: this page, the details you entered at the checkout, and the order confirmation we send by email. If we told you something specific before you ordered and you relied on it, that promise still stands.

3. The service, described plainly#

We prepare unenrolled deed polls, and certified copies of them, from the details you enter at the checkout. A paralegal drafts the document, a second check compares it with what you typed, and the finished deed is printed on paper and sent to you by post. That is the whole of what we sell, and it is worth being equally clear about what we are not.

• We are not a firm of solicitors and we do not act as your representative. Nothing we send you, and nothing on this site, is advice about your own situation; the guides are general information.
• We are a private business with no connection to any government department, to the courts, or to the Royal Courts of Justice.
• Enrolment at the Royal Courts of Justice, notarisation and legalisation are separate procedures that we do not carry out. If your circumstances call for one of them, we will tell you so rather than sell you a document that will not do the job.
• No register of unenrolled deed polls exists, and we do not notify any organisation of your new name. Telling banks, government bodies and employers is something you do yourself, with the deed as your evidence.

4. What you promise us when you order#

The deed is drafted from what you tell us and nothing else, so each order carries a set of confirmations from you. By placing an order, you are confirming all of the following.

• Age. Either you are at least 16 and the name being changed is your own, or you are the parent or guardian of a child under 16 and are ordering on the child's behalf.
• Capacity. You understand what changing your name means and you are able to decide it for yourself. Where you hold a power of attorney or a court order for someone else and are acting for them, please contact us before ordering, as a deed poll may not be the correct route.
• Accurate details. Every name, the title, the date of birth and the postal address you enter are complete and correct, and spelled exactly as they should appear on the deed.
• A child's name. Every person who holds parental responsibility for the child consents to the change, that consent is recorded in writing, and you will send it to us on request. Working out who holds parental responsibility is your job, not ours, and a child's deed made without the agreement of everyone who holds it is not a valid deed.
• An honest purpose. The new name is not being taken to deceive or defraud anyone, to escape a debt or a duty the law places on you, or to get around a court order or a condition of a licence.
• Existing obligations. Registered sex, violent and terrorist offenders must tell the police about a change of name within three days, and not doing so is a criminal offence. If you are bound by a court order, bail or licence conditions, immigration conditions or anything similar, checking that a change of name is permitted is your responsibility.

Should any of these confirmations prove untrue, we may stop work and cancel the order, and the guarantee described in section 13 will not apply.

5. When your order becomes a contract#

Placing an order is an offer from you to buy. We accept it, and the contract comes into being, when we send you the order confirmation by email or when we dispatch your documents, whichever comes first.

We are entitled to turn an order down, in which case you receive a full refund. The situations in which we would do so are these: the name is one we do not draft (section 6); the details are incomplete and we cannot get hold of you to complete them; we have reasonable grounds to think the change is for an unlawful purpose; or something beyond our control prevents us from supplying.

Two further situations. If a price on the site or at the checkout is obviously wrong, and a reasonable person would have recognised the error, we may cancel and refund rather than supply at that price. And if anyone is abusive or threatening towards the people who work here, we may refuse to deal with them further and refund any order not yet drafted.

6. Names we will and will not draft#

Some names cannot go on a deed from us: a name containing digits or symbols; a name that is vulgar or offensive; a name that promotes crime; and a name that suggests a rank, a title or a qualification the person does not hold. Where we decline on any of these grounds you receive a full refund. The rules are set out in what you can change your name to, so you can check before you pay.

Organisations keep rules of their own on top of ours. HM Passport Office, for instance, publishes guidance on names and titles and imposes a maximum length. When a body objects to the name rather than to the deed, that is a decision about the name, and the guarantee in section 13 cannot reach it.

7. What it costs, and how you pay#

An adult, child or replacement deed poll costs £18.50. Optional extras, each chosen at the checkout, are certified copies (from £6 for 2, up to £25 for 20), custom cover letters, delivery by Royal Mail (from £2.99), a board-backed envelope (£1.99) and SafeKeep (£4.99).

The figure shown at the checkout is the whole price, VAT included where it applies. Nothing else becomes payable later, and no charge repeats.

Stripe takes the payment on its own secure page and accepts debit and credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Klarna. Your card details go to Stripe and never to us. Drafting starts once the payment has gone through.

8. When we draft and post#

An order received on a working day is drafted, checked and handed to the post that same working day. Orders that arrive at the weekend, on a bank holiday or after that day's post has been collected go out on the next working day.

Where something in your application is unclear, a paralegal will email you before drafting rather than guess. The clock pauses while we wait for your reply.

9. Delivery#

• Carrier and timing. Royal Mail carries your documents by the service you selected at the checkout. The delivery times quoted for each service are Royal Mail's own estimates, not promises we can make, and the delivery charge is separate from the price of the deed.
• Discreet packaging. Nothing on the envelope says what it contains. The two exceptions are post to a prison and post to an address abroad, where the sender has to be shown on the envelope.
• International orders may travel by courier instead, and we cannot promise which carrier will be used.
• Your address. We send to the address you gave us. If it is wrong, or you move, let us know before dispatch; once documents have left for an address you supplied, a fresh copy is a new order.
• Delay or loss. If your post is late or missing, tell us. We will help you trace it and make a claim to Royal Mail, and we will work out with you how to put things right.

Responsibility for the documents passes to you when they are delivered to you, or to anyone at the address you gave.

10. Check the deed before it is signed#

On the day your deed poll arrives, read both names through letter by letter, and do it before anyone signs. Once signed, a deed cannot be corrected: no correction fluid, nothing crossed through and nothing written over.

If an error is ours, tell us and we will redraft the deed and post the replacement at our own expense. If the error is in the details you entered, a corrected deed is a new order. Either way, please tell us; we would rather resolve it than leave you holding a document you cannot use.

11. Changing your mind#

Because every deed is drafted to your instructions and is personal to you, it is a personalised item under regulation 28(1)(b) of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. The fourteen-day right to cancel that applies to most distance purchases therefore ends once drafting has begun.

To cancel, email support@deedpolls-online.co.uk as early as you can, quoting your order. If we have not started drafting, we cancel the order and refund the whole amount. If we have, we will tell you exactly where the order has got to and what can still be done.

This section takes nothing away from the acceptance guarantee, or from your rights if what we sent is faulty, does not match its description or was not prepared with reasonable care and skill.

12. How refunds are paid#

A refund is sent to the card or account you paid with. We issue it within two working days of deciding to refund, and Stripe usually has the money back in your account seven to ten working days later.

13. Our acceptance guarantee#

If an organisation refuses to accept a deed poll we drafted as proof of your change of name, tell us and we will take it up. If the refusal cannot be overcome, we refund the whole order. The guarantee applies to refusals by UK government departments, public bodies, UK companies and organisations, and British diplomatic missions abroad.

Making a claim

• Show us the refusal. We need the letter or email in which the organisation turns the deed down, and its reasons.
• Give us the first go at it. We write to the organisation, explain what an unenrolled deed poll is, and ask for the decision to be reviewed. Most refusals end there.
• Do it promptly, and at the latest within 30 days of the refusal, while the organisation still has the matter in front of it.

Outside the guarantee

• Deeds we did not draft. We stand behind our own work only.
• Objections to the name. When HM Passport Office declines to put a particular name in a passport, it is applying its rules about names; the deed itself is not at fault.
• Authorities outside the UK, which apply their own law. A passport issued by another country can only be changed by that country.
• Refusals you caused, whether by giving us wrong details, by signing or witnessing the deed incorrectly, or by making a child's deed without the consent of everyone with parental responsibility.
• Copies where an original is required. HM Passport Office and DVLA, among others, ask to see the original deed, and a refusal of a copy is not a refusal of the deed.

14. Personal data, and email from us#

Our privacy policy explains in full how your personal data is handled. The part about marketing is repeated here because it is one of the things you agree to when you order.

Three things we never do

• We never sell your personal data, rent it out or swap it.
• We never give it to another organisation so that they can market to you.
• We never share it more widely than the suppliers who help us complete your order (payment, post, email and reviews), who act only on our instructions, and anyone the law requires us to give it to.

News about our own services

As a customer, you may receive emails from us about our own similar services and offers. Regulation 22 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 permits a business to write to its own customers in this way. Each email has an unsubscribe link, and you can also opt out by emailing support@deedpolls-online.co.uk. We stop at once, and opting out has no effect on your order or on the guarantee.

Companies in the same group as us

We may also want to tell you about services offered by other companies in our group. In law that counts as marketing from a different business, so it only happens if you have agreed to it, for instance by ticking the box at the checkout. The box is optional, ordering never depends on it, and you can change your mind at any time in the same way as above.

Reviews

After your order we may invite you to leave a review through Reviews.co.uk. Doing so is entirely up to you, and unsubscribing stops the invitations as well.

Emails that are part of the service

Your order confirmation, any question a paralegal needs to ask, and the dispatch notice are not marketing. They are sent while your order is open regardless of your marketing choices.

15. Copyright, and using this website#

The wording of our deeds, our guides and cover letters, and the text, drawings and design of this website belong to us. You are welcome to use the documents we draft for you for any lawful purpose that relates to your change of name, and to read, print and pass on pages of this site for your personal use. You may not sell our documents on, publish our wording or guides as though they were your own, or lift material from this site to run a competing service.

The website is offered as it stands. We work to keep it accurate and we put errors right when we find them, but we do not promise that it is complete, that it will always be available, or that it will work on every device and connection. Links to other websites, GOV.UK among them, are provided to help you; those sites are not under our control and we are not responsible for their content.

16. What we are liable for#

Our duty is to do our work with reasonable care and skill. If we fall short and you suffer loss as a result, we are responsible for that loss so far as it was foreseeable, meaning loss that we both could have anticipated at the time you ordered.

Where responsibility does not lie with us

• An organisation's decision. Each organisation judges for itself the document put in front of it. Our answer to a refusal is the guarantee in section 13.
• The postal service. Once your documents are in Royal Mail's hands, delivery times are Royal Mail's.
• Rules set outside the UK, which belong to the authority that makes them.
• Loss we could not have foreseen, for example a flight or booking missed, an opportunity lost, or the cost of an application held up, unless you told us about that risk before you ordered and we agreed to it in writing.
• Losses of a business. Our customers are consumers. If you order for business purposes, we are not liable for lost profit, lost business, interruption to business or lost opportunity.

The cap, and the things no cap can touch

Where we are liable to you, the most we will pay in respect of any one order is the amount you paid for it, unless the law does not permit a limit of that kind.

No part of these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or for anything else the law says cannot be limited or excluded.

17. Your rights as a consumer#

These terms sit on top of the protection that UK consumer law gives you, and they never take any of it away. Goods must match their description and be of satisfactory quality; services must be carried out with reasonable care and skill. If any term here conflicts with those rights, the rights prevail.

18. Delays we cannot control#

Sometimes an event outside our control holds an order up: a postal strike, the failure of a supplier we depend on, or a loss of power or communications. If that happens we will let you know and do what we reasonably can to keep the delay short. We are not liable for a delay of that kind, but if it becomes substantial you may cancel the affected order and we will refund anything that has not yet been drafted.

19. Complaints#

If something has gone wrong, email support@deedpolls-online.co.uk with your order details. A person will read it, normally the same working day, and putting a problem right matters more to us than any review.

Where we cannot settle a problem between us, nothing in these terms prevents you from going to court. A complaint about how we handle your personal data can be made to the Information Commissioner's Office, although we would ask you to raise it with us first.

20. General provisions#

• Assignment. We may pass this contract to another business, including another company in our group, provided your rights under it are unaffected. Your own rights and obligations cannot be passed to anyone else without our agreement.
• Third parties. The contract is between you and us alone. Nobody else may enforce any part of it, including under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
• Severance. If a court finds that any paragraph of these terms cannot be applied, the remaining paragraphs continue in force.
• No waiver. Where we do not enforce a term immediately, or we are slow to act, we keep the right to do so later.
• Notices. Notices to us go to support@deedpolls-online.co.uk. Notices to you go to the email address you entered at the checkout, so please keep that address working while your order is open.

21. Which law applies#

The law of England and Wales governs these terms and every contract made under them, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction over any dispute. A customer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland may also bring a claim in the courts of the part of the UK where they live.