Notary public vs solicitor in the UK

The notarial act, the one thing a solicitor cannot do

The Faculty Office, which regulates notaries in England and Wales, describes the principal role of a notary as attesting the authenticity of deeds and other legal documents for use abroad. Attesting is more than checking a copy against an original, and it is why an authority abroad can accept the document without going behind it. Each notary has their own seal.

Notary and notary public are protected titles, and notary is a separate profession with its own admission. Most notaries are also solicitors, but they do not have to be, and a solicitor who has not been admitted as a notary is not authorised to carry out notarial acts. Scrivener notaries are a smaller group inside the profession, with extra qualifications and at least two foreign languages.

Before attesting, a notary must verify identity, legal capacity, understanding of the document and authority to sign for another party, and will not attest without seeing originals rather than copies, which is why a document generally cannot be notarised for an absent person.

Who is authorised for what under the Legal Services Act 2007

Section 12 of the Legal Services Act 2007 reserves six activities, and notarial activities and the administration of oaths are two of them. A person may carry on a reserved activity only if authorised or exempt for it. Doing so without entitlement is an offence carrying up to 2 years on indictment, a fine, or both, and pretending to be entitled carries the same maximum, which is what protects the titles.

Schedule 4 names the approved regulator for each activity. The comparison turns on one row.

Reserved legal activity	The Law Society, for solicitors	The Master of the Faculties, for notaries
Exercise of a right of audience	Yes	No
Conduct of litigation	Yes	No
Reserved instrument activities	Yes	Yes
Probate activities	Yes	Yes
Administration of oaths	Yes	Yes
Notarial activities	No	Yes

Schedule 2 defines both terms. Notarial activities are those customarily carried on by virtue of enrolment as a notary under the Public Notaries Act 1801, and the administration of oaths is the exercise of a commissioner for oaths’ powers under the Commissioners for Oaths Acts 1889 and 1891.

A commissioner for oaths may not exercise those powers in a proceeding in which they are interested, and must state the place and the date truly in the jurat. A voluntary statutory declaration can be taken by a justice of the peace, a notary public or another officer authorised to administer an oath under section 18 of the Statutory Declarations Act 1835, and knowingly making a false statement in a material particular in one is an offence carrying up to 2 years on indictment.

The £5 statutory oath fee, and the notary’s hourly fee

The Commissioners for Oaths (Fees) Order 1993 fixes a solicitor’s oath fee at £5.00 for each person making an affidavit, declaration or affirmation, plus £2.00 for each exhibit or schedule required to be marked, inclusive of VAT where payable. Neither figure has moved since 18 October 1993.

The order outlived its parent. Sections 81 and 81A of the Solicitors Act 1974 were repealed on 1 January 2010, but article 9 of the commencement order keeps instruments made under them alive, and legislation.gov.uk records no change since.

A notary’s fee is the notary’s own, and there is no scale. On instruction a notary must confirm in writing either a fixed fee or the basis of calculation, usually hourly, with a proper estimate, the work covered, the likely timescale and the likely disbursements, which are principally legalisation fees.

Act	What it costs	Who sets the figure
Affidavit, declaration or affirmation before a solicitor	£5.00 per person, plus £2.00 per exhibit marked	Commissioners for Oaths (Fees) Order 1993
The same in the High Court or Court of Appeal	£15 per person, plus £3 per exhibit, from 13 July 2026	Civil Proceedings Fees Order 2008
A notarial act	A fixed fee or an hourly rate, quoted in writing with an estimate	The notary
Certifying a copy	No statutory fee and no scale	The person certifying

The £45 apostille fee, paid to the government rather than to the notary

An apostille is the certificate the Legalisation Office attaches to confirm that a signature, stamp or seal is genuine, charged per document at a rate the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office sets. A notary or solicitor who bills it is passing on a disbursement.

Legalisation service	Fee per document	How long it takes
Standard, paper	£45 plus courier or postage	Usually up to 25 working days
Next-Day, registered businesses only	£40	Next working day
e-Apostille	£35	Up to 2 working days
Restricted Urgent, registered businesses only	£100	Same day

Paper apostilles come back by courier at £6 per 1.5kg within the UK including BFPO, £32 to European countries outside a named list, and £42 to the rest of the world.

The electronic route is not open to every document. General Register Office certificates covering birth, death, marriage, civil partnership and adoption, ACRO police certificates and DBS certificates for England and Wales, disclosure certificates for Scotland and Northern Ireland, fingerprint certificates and ACCA membership certificates all fall outside the e-Apostille.

The recipient can verify the apostille on gov.uk from the issue date and number printed on the certificate.

When a solicitor’s certificate is enough for a document going abroad

Some documents need no certifying at all. Court documents under a wet ink seal, General Register Office and Companies House certificates, government department letters signed by an official and doctors’ medical certificates go to the Legalisation Office as issued. Everything else needs a UK public official’s certificate first, and gov.uk names a UK notary or solicitor as its example, over powers of attorney, contracts, qualification certificates and copies of passports and driving licences.

The electronic route says the same, because an e-Apostille needs a PDF electronically signed by a UK notary or solicitor. For England and Wales gov.uk points at the Faculty Office register for notaries and the Law Society register for solicitors, and gives Scotland and Northern Ireland one combined link each.

Certification is the cheaper end of the same job. gov.uk names a solicitor or notary among seven categories of person who can certify a copy, and requires set wording plus the certifier’s occupation, address and telephone number, without capping the charge. A certified copy is not itself a notarial act, and the Legalisation Office takes it from either profession.

Two things move the answer back to a notary. The destination country may require legalisation by its own embassy or consulate on top of the apostille, and the receiving authority’s wording may ask for a notarial act or a notary’s seal, which a solicitor who is not a notary cannot supply.

808 notaries against 178,428 practising solicitors

Counted page by page from the Faculty Office register on 7 September 2026, 808 notaries are entitled to practise in England and Wales. The Solicitors Regulation Authority counted 178,428 practising solicitors, out of 214,080 on the roll at the end of June 2026, roughly 1 notary for every 220 practising solicitors.

Within that 808, fewer than 40 also handle conveyancing and probate as notaries rather than as solicitors.

Complaints about a notary, the Faculty Office and the Legal Ombudsman

Notaries in England and Wales are appointed and regulated through the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which issues practising certificates through its Court of Faculties and holds the rule-making power over qualification, training, conduct and discipline. Solicitors are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the split holds even where one person wears both hats.

A service complaint goes to the notary first, then free of charge to the Secretary of the Notaries Society, the Clerk to the Worshipful Company of Scriveners where the notary is a scrivener, or an independent notary appointed by the Faculty Office, and then to the Legal Ombudsman. Conduct complaints, which include practising without a valid practising certificate, go to the Faculty Office.

Both sit on the Legal Ombudsman’s list of approved regulators whose providers it can investigate, and its limits are identical either way. It cannot give legal advice, recommend a provider, stop a firm recovering outstanding costs, or insist that a file is released where costs are outstanding, which is the boundary that also applies to complaining about a solicitor.

Notaries in Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland has no separate notarial profession and no Master of the Faculties. Under section 57 of the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1980 only a solicitor qualified to practise may apply to the Court to be admitted as a notary public, and a petition for admission as a solicitor can carry the notary application, so both happen in one order. The register of notaries public is kept by the Council of the Law Society of Scotland rather than by any ecclesiastical court.

One Scottish rule has no English counterpart. Section 10A of the Requirements of Writing (Scotland) Act 1995, in force since 1 October 2022, disapplies any requirement for a solicitor, advocate or notary public to be physically in the same place as the person signing, swearing or declaring. Complaints go to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, with a 3 year time limit that changed on 1 April 2023, and conduct complaints pass to the Law Society of Scotland.

In Northern Ireland the notary is a solicitor as well. Article 78 of the Solicitors (Northern Ireland) Order 1976 gives every solicitor holding a practising certificate the powers any enactment confers on a commissioner for oaths, bars their use in a proceeding where the solicitor acts for a party or is interested, and requires the place and the date in the jurat.

The Law Society of Northern Ireland publishes the Notaries Public list with each notary’s name and date of appointment, and names the College of Notaries Northern Ireland as their professional body. Its March 2026 list carries 38 notaries public, 8 of them with a Belfast office, and each is a solicitor first, working from the kind of firm the Belfast list ranks. The false declaration offence there is article 10 of the Perjury (Northern Ireland) Order 1979 rather than section 5 of the Perjury Act 1911, with the same 2 year maximum.