Hundreds of firms fail to nominate compliance officers
Some 800 law firms failed to nominate compliance officers for legal practice (COLPs) and compliance officers for finance and administration (COFAs) by yesterday's deadline, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has revealed today.
These two roles are a key part of the SRA's move to outcomes-focused regulation (OFR), which was introduced last October. They are responsible for ensuring that firms have suitable systems and controls in place to comply with the new regulatory requirements.
While responsibility for this compliance rests with the firm, its managers or the sole practitioner, the compliance officers must ensure compliance, and are responsible for recording and reporting failures in compliance.
Nominations opened on 31 May and closed yesterday. The SRA announced today that 93% of the 11,000 regulated law firms and sole practitioners in England and Wales have either completed the nomination process or are in the final stages of doing so.
The regulator said that over the next month it will be ‘engaging’ with those - 7% of all firms - that have not yet nominated a COLP or COFA, to help resolve any difficulties they have had in completing the process.
The SRA has until 31 December to assess and process the applications. Approved COLPs and COFAs will then be required to take up their roles from 1 January 2013.
SRA chief executive Antony Townsend said: ‘When we introduced OFR, we moved away from the focus on prescribed rules to concentrate on what outcomes we want for the consumer and for the sector as a whole.’
He added: ‘The appointment of COLPs and COFAs is key to this new regime and we're delighted to be in the position of assessing nominations.'
Further information on COLPs and COFAs is available on the SRA's website.
Comments
COLP and COFA nominations
My firm have never received the SRA email and email reminders in order to nominate my COLP and COFA's by the 31st of July 2012. I chased this up requested that this email be forwarded to me prior to the 31st. I have still not received it...........
COLP & COFA Nomination
As SRO for my Firm I made the appropriate nominations for these posts well before the deadline. My nominated COLP recieved his follow up e-mail to which he responded immediatly and recieved an acknowledgement. My nominated COFA did not and still has not recieved his e-mail. He has telephoned the SRA about this but has been told that the system has failed and that I would receive another e-mail to start the process again! I am still waiting for this. I hope that the SRA are not including my Firm or any other Firm in the same position as one of the 11,000 who have not responded by the deadline?
We nominated on the first
We nominated on the first day. Everything tickety-boo and all emails received and actioned.
Then, last week, another email saying we had not nominated!
Nomination of COLP and COFA
Not sure that excuse will wash ... there has been so much publicity about this, from numerous sources other than the SRA
COLP / COFA
I wrote to the SRA asking them if I needed to comply, as a sole practitioner, with all of this because my practice had signed off an agreement to merge with a larger firm with effect from 1 September 2012 and therefore any half processed nomination for myself for my existing practice would then be abandoned.
I got no reply so rushed back from Court in London yesterday and completed the process online.
Yet again another layer of time and resource wasting red tape from the SRA who continue to threaten and intimidate small firms and sole practitioners with dire consequences for minor procedural irregularities whilst constantly failing to impose similar standards on themselves.
I'm expecting a call to tell
I'm expecting a call to tell me that I'm one of the ones who failed to regiser. I'll then send them a copy of the receipt. Such is my faith in the SRA.
COLP/COFA
May I please be identified with the remarks of the two previous posts. More bureaucracy from an organisation that doesn't understand risk management; has torn up a set of rules which provided certainty in dealings with the public and each other and wants to get rid of sole practitioners because, far from being recognised as the backbone of the profession, we are perceived to be a liability. I thought Government had said it wanted to make life easier for small businesses. That message clearly has not translated to the SRA who continue to impose more and more red tape.
COLP & COFA Nominee
Our firm completed stage one after having received the hyperlink from the SRA and My SRA confirmed we had done so.
You could not start the process without this first email.
We received several reminders then from the SRA saying we had not completed to which we responded by explaining that the COLP was awaiting an email from the SRA but none had been received.
The SRA advises you not to chase them but on Friday we called them after 20 minutes we were advised that we were not alone and what we needed was to start the process again however in order to do so we needed a new hyperlink. It appears we were one of many in this position
To get a new hyperlink we had to email Friday morning the same email address that we had been advising of the problem for several weeks however we were assured that within hours we would receive a new hyperlink.
Several emails later we still await the hyperlink.
COLP & COFAs
Why does Antony Townsend make it sound as though assessing nominations is like looking for an Oscar winner?
Erm, because he and his
Erm, because he and his self-serving organisation is a pointless waste of our money? Just a thought.
COLP and COFA nomination
Along with, I suspect, a large number of the 800 firms who have "failed" to nominate a COLP and COFA, my firm, despite half a dozen e-mail requests and 4-5 telephone conversations, has never received a hyperlink and, accordingly, has been unable to initiate the process. We have been ready since the turn of the year to complete the process, but cannot do so, given the requirements of the SRA. The failure is theirs, and theirs alone. Surely the disastrous experience with mySRA should have prompted the regulator to have a non-technological fall back in place? We could have completed a form back in April ..... I look forward to engaging with the regulator - absurd!
COLP and COFA
Has anyone stopped to ask: "Why are these positions necessary?"
To my simple mind it all sounds like bureaucratic bollocks based upon some plan of the SRA to make itself look really funky and like a proper Regulator to the LSB.
As has been evidenced by the UK's banking fiasco Outcome Focussed Regulation and the "light touch" approach does not offer up effective Regulation. Real Regulation is through fear of being caught and if caught punished severely.
How many Solicitors believe that the SRA is an effective Regulator? How many fear it? How many fear being caught and the consequences of being caught? Even if one never does anything wrong, one should still fear the Regulator.
Am I the only one who wishes that the SRA would stop parading like a naked Emperor and start acting like a competent fearsome Regulator??
Is the law society really acting as our spokesperson
It seems to me that the law society is simply not able to fight the professions corner. The SRA are incompetent and choose to have one law for themselves and another law for those it regulates. Quite frankly it's not a surprise the SRA failed miserably with mysra. However, what really adds insult to injury is the fact that we solicitors do not have an active and robust enough union to speak out for us. If we did we would not find ourselves nominating COLPs and COFAs without any uproar from our so called union body who claims is fighting our corner. We find ourselves once again open to more unnecessary red tape and hideous bureaucracy.
How long do the SRA take over each COLP/COFA review?
Check out these maths?
No of Firms 11,000
No. COLPs/COFAs 22,000
No. Working Days to 31-Dec 104
Approvals per Day 212
No. People Working 10
Working Hours/Day 7.5
Effective Working Hours/Day 6.0
Time (in mins) spent Per Review 17.02
Sorry for the formatting!
So, the key variable here is how many people the SRA have doing nothing else but reviewing COLP/COFA applications.
How many is it really?
Regs....David.
Computers not people
I think the answer to David's question is that 90% of these nominations will be processed by computer and granted on the nod, as it were, without any human intervention.
A proportion, and perhaps even 10% would be beyond them, will get some form of scrutiny based on 'risk' - probably those firms/solicitors currently under investigation.
The lucky few COLPs and COFAs will get a telephone interview but I would not expect this to be more than a few hundred.
The Law Society as opur spokesperson
May I nominate Bob Crow of the National Union of Railwaymen as the Chief Executive of the Law Society. We need someone who will fight out corner!
I'd second that (although it
I'd second that (although it is the Rail Maritime and Transport Union now)
We've had a quick show of
We've had a quick show of hands here and Bob's got the job.
Administration arrangements
I need to organise a booze-up in a brewery. Am I safe in asking the SRA to arrange this?
The is as many others have
The is as many others have observed utter garbage. The problem is the rather gormless "one size fits all" mentality, with sole practitioners appointing themselves to these positions which in the large city firms are filled by a solicitor and an entire department!
We recently had cause to consult the ethics line on a potential conflict on a comemrcial matter to be told that really the rules on acting on both sides are the same as they always were. So why not just say so then? What puzzles me is how the COLP is ever going to report anything as the rules are now so subjective at it will be nearly impossible to know when a firm is in breach. Presumably we are in breach when the bureaucrats at the SRA say so.
Excuses
When I eventually got the email the system worked fine. However to get to that point involved numerous phone calls and inconsistent excuses from various SRA staff. It was quite shambolic.
Townsend and incompetence
Who will rid us of this incompetent Townsend?
Wise words
Reading the above reminds me of my late father (who died seven years ago today coincidentally); he was a High Street solicitor for 40 years.
Shortly before he died he began saying quite often that he was just glad he`d been able to retire when he did, and no way he`d want to be a solicitor these days if he was starting out.
He still had all his marbles, and how right he was !
And nobody has commented on
And nobody has commented on the fact that the whole "online questionnaire is pointless anyway".
COFA Questionnaire:-
1. What is your name?
2. Are you a fraudster, money launderer, drugs runner, rapist or murderer. (NB We know that most fraudsters have the tendency to lie when it suits, but please answer this question honestly.)
3. Er, that's it.
Well worth all the trouble involved. (Why not on practising certificate renweal simply ask the questions "who is your COFA?", and "Are you the firm's COLP?").
Guys-call an EGM and vote out
Guys-call an EGM and vote out the current Council-appoint a new one to represent us properly.
While we're at it pass a no confidence motion in the SRA-no legal effect but it probably wouldn't be able to withstand the political fall-out, which is what counts.
SFA
Yet another example of why more and more sole practitioners are simply operating totally outside the Regulatory circus to avoid fiasco after fiasco from this absolutely unfit for purpose self-service unaccountable incompetently led and managed farcical "organisation".