Regulators’ knuckles rapped on complaints handling
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is failing to comply fully with its duty to ensure complaints are properly handled, a review has found.
All legal regulators were this week ordered by the Legal Services Board (LSB) to improve the way they handle complaints. In a letter to the SRA, the board said the organisation had to be more proactive in ensuring complaints are handled well by firms it regulates.
The letter referred to a confidential draft of an SRA review, which found a ‘small but material rate of non-compliance with the complaints-handling requirements’. It added that this was compounded by some evidence of ‘poor attitude’ about complaints from consumers.
The LSB has told the SRA to target firms that present the most risk and do more to understand consumers’ experience of the complaints-handling process. Concerns have also been raised with the LSB about the extent to which solicitor firms are failing to assist barristers to meet their own regulatory requirements.
The SRA and Bar Standards Board have been invited to work more closely to find ways to help their regulated communities. The LSB’s concerns - set out in individual letters to all regulators - follow last week’s second annual ‘health check’ of legal services reform by the Legal Services Consumer Panel.
LSB chief executive Chris Kenny said: ‘Most regulators still have more to do in understanding the volume and nature of complaints, focusing on consumer experience of the process and, most importantly, using information about the effectiveness of complaints handling as part of their wider monitoring, supervision and enforcement activities.’
The SRA said new outcomes-focused regulation was proof that the needs of clients have been embedded into regulation.
Antony Townsend, SRA chief executive, said: ‘As we stressed when we launched OFR, it puts the consumer at the heart of legal services.
‘The handbook that we provide to the regulated community to guide their work provides the framework for this customer-focused approach.’
Comments
Infant World
The law is not fit for the modern world. It creates pain. It creates winners and losers and the losers complain. We need a system where both sides win.This will eradicate the agony and make both sides happy. Then there will be no complaints.
Welcome to Infant world, the aim of all consumer panels. In infant world the law helps everyone and everyone can live happily ever after.
This is the place where the intellectual giants who foist all this regulation on us want us to be. A utopia which will never ever exist because the law is not a touchy feely enterprise. It is a very definite and defined place.
When these jokers have finished there will be no adversarial system just omnipotent judges and then the fun will really begin, once the judges have absolute power.
Tears
I weep for our profession when utter idiots like Townsend get to force his utterly asinine and achingly right-on regulation on all of us.
How did we allow fools like this to control and destroy our profession and, worse, why do we let them continue to get away with it?
Missing the real Culprit
The real culprit as we thought is not Townsend but it is Charles Plant. He is the dictator . Until we have people like Plant, Townsend and Middleton sitting there comfortable in their nest we will keep on having injustice in the law profession.
I think it is about time other solicitors and Associations see what is happening.
BSB turned around their lack of equality and transparency very fast because they had support of their former chair and the Inns of the courts.
We plead with the Law Society or LSB intervene and save us from this Mafia yo have created and you can not control.When are you Law Society going to accept your responsibilities.
Law Society should also have an enquiry and I mean a proper one not a SHAM.
How many attempts to get this right
OSS, LCS, LeO, and so on. I lose count of the number of attempts to get this right. I think that The Law Society played a blinder in getting rid of complaints handling. The simple truth is that everyone is your best friend - until you send them a bill. Even if it's in accordance with the initial estimate, there's always something to moan and whinge about. You would have thought that resolving a complaint is a simple matter but with the ridiculous interference of all these unaccountable agencies each with their 2p, the matter just gets worse and worse. If we cut out all the interference then maybe things would improve.
LSB etc
The real problem is the fact that the government needs to create employment, if they are to reduce the civil service then they need to create quangos to absorb the redundant. The profession then picks up the bill for these people who then say they hope the cost of running these boards will not be passed on to the "consumer". The more regulation, the more costs increase, this is the real world.
That is why why we have the useless LSB and SRA. When does Mr Townsend face disciplinary proceedings and hopefully the sack for the practising certificate debacle?
It really is amazing/ We have
It really is amazing/
We have dodgy bankers. Getting no punishment.
We have dodgy politicians getting little or no punishment.
Now we have very dodgy legal regulators. Who are completely
unaccountable. What on earth is the Law Society doing?
Who regulates these regulators. No one, was the quiet reply.
When things go unchecked, then corrupt
practices will creep in, as some of the actions of the SRA/SDT
in conjunction with the Courts of Justice, and favoured Q C's
seem to indicate.
Law Society needs to get a grip.
Weeping for the profession?
One of your correspondents says he weeps because of the regulation and the regulators.
I weep because it is so ineffective.
As a former solicitor I didnt have to be taught that stealing and lying was wrong (the Law Society now seeks to have Ethics taught as part of the qualifying course) . I was taught to put the client first, and like most others, I did. Honesty and Integrity could be taken for granted with few exceptions
Now, however, I am aware of a national firm which charges clients for putting right its mistakes and double charges and bills for unauthorised work (finding by Cost Officer). Another narionally known firm put a false costs certificate into a court. Another firm put several false costs certificates and claims into courts.
Does the profession think these actions are okay? If not, then we need stronger regulation.
stronger regulation
Celia -
Nobody with half a brain would condone the actions you describe, still less support crooked solicitors.
But the SRA on Townsend's watch lets the large firms get away with murder and deliberately targets the small one or two man bands. And if they can't find the evidence they just carry on anyway. If your former firm falls into this category and you think they cannot be touched by the SRS absent 'stealing or lying' you are living in a dream world. They have their closure targets to meet.
So yes - completely ineffective against the big boys. And completely disproportionate and in some cases corrupt in their treatment of the small fry.
Yes WEEP BLOOD TEARS
Yes this regulator is making innocent solicitors weep blood tears. SRA let magic circle firms get away with murder because they know if they touch large firms they will attack back. However they target the small practices because they know they can bully and victimise them and they do not have the funds to defend themselves against a large organisation.
ANon @18:38 is absolutely right there is serious proportionality. I think as solicitors need to do CPD points I think the parliament should have similar CPD points for people like Plant, Townsend, Middleton, Calvert, Barnecutt, Todner, and now Spooner.....etc.,
Master of the Rolls should scrape the SDT and have should form a new tribunal which is not contaminated with muddy waters as BSB did. Same should apply with SRA. People should resign from their position.
Yes WEEP BLOOD TEARS
Sorry in the 2nd para I meant to say not "proportionality" I meant "disproportionality"
@Celia Nelson - it really
@Celia Nelson - it really isn't about stealing, lying and cheating. I would suggest you may take some time to read reports of cases on the SDT website to get a flavour of the basis upon which the SRA springs into action.
===
We all know - it is inevitable - that a young girl working for Co-Op legal services is going to request a cheque on a matter from client account when the funds aren't there. Indeed, it will probably happen quite a bit, and the accounts department won't authorise it.
But one day, it will be authorised, and the client account of that ledger will be overdrawn.
It won't come to light (as it was a mistake) for maybe a month, maybe longer.
When the SRA do find out about it, what are they going to do. We all know the answer is precisely nothing. It was an internal error, rectified straight away.
===
On the other hand, if a sole practitioner does the same thing, the next letter is from the SRA. They will not "suspect dishonesty" as this stage, but they will ask questions. They will want the office bank accounts. They will want details of incoming and outgoing transactions. They will want details of the supervision arrangements.
They will appoint an "agent" (perhaps Gordons LLP) who will be paid by the hour and therefore will get more money if they can find a problem.
They will try to frame a case based on the money having been used deliberately because it co-incides with a quiet period on fees, or an overdraft on the office account.
===
One day, in the future, a large ABS will employ a crook. They will have done checks, but you see the thing is crooks have a way of deceiving people.
That crook will steal money. This will get discovered. The crook will go to prison. The ABS will pay the money back.
The SRA will investigate and ask the Compliance Officer for Finance and Administration what went wrong. The ABS's Public Relations team will "meet with" and "engage" the regulator. They will draw up an "action plan". There will be "lessons to be learnt" and "further training". The Compliance Officer will be moved sideways and a new Compliance Officer for Finance and Administration will be appointed.
The SRA will be happy.
===
Meanwhile a three partner practice will employ a crook. The exact same facts will occur.
The crook will go to prison. The money will be paid back. The firm will report the crook to the SRA. They will produce a report and point out the mistakes that were made and the "lessons to be learnt".
The three partners will be taken to the tribunal and the SRA will actively request that they be struck off as solicitors. They will actively seek to destroy the lives and careers of three professional people. The SRA will use the "lessons to be learnt" as evidence of the fact that the partners knew that they weren't exercising proper supervision and that the partners are not fit to run a law firm.
The partners will get away with being fined and not struck off. They will struggle financially to pay the fine, and details of the SDT tribunal will appear when prospective clients search for the firm.
SRA
Dom -
An excellent exposition of what WILL happen in the future.
What about the position where the SRA have spent 3 years investigating a known sole practitioner crook - catching him stealing client money repeatedly (in one case crossing out the client's name on a client damages cheque and putting it in his own personal bank account). When he dupes someone to join the partnership and the new partner discovers what is going on and forces the crook from the profession (as well as informing the SRA and calling in the police), guess who the SRA go after? Why the innocent partner of course - taking him to the SDT, intervening in his new practice and bankrupting him in the process.
Unbelievable? Of course. Fanciful? Sadly not. I have not worked in the profession since they did precisely what I describe above.
This England, my England my
This England, my England my God what has happened to my country.
Having spent much of my three score years and ten travelling the world
serving my Queen and country in Empire and Commonwealth In areas where
England was seen as the mother of Parliaments and the true place of Justice.
What has happened to my England now where uncontrolled
committees rule the judicial system and no one in the Mother
of Parliaments gives a damm. For goodness sake nay for Justice sake someone
get a grip of the three mustard dears who are running this quango of inequality.
Thirty years of wrecking
Simple. The baby boomers took control and in the space of a few years building on the work of the war babies they have almost completely destroyed the old world. Thirty three years of wrecking is taking us back to the 18th century fast.
Useless SRA
When I provided he SRA with perfect proof of lies and perversion of justice by a solicitor they said they were not a regulatory body.
Can we, legally, define Honesty?
"Honesty and Integrity could be taken for granted with few exceptions."
Past tense, at age 71 I think rightly.
Everything in the media suggests that most people want very strict, self-denying, old-fashioned? standards of personal honesty in those they have professional dealings with, especially doctors, teachers, lawyers and financiers, though they themselves might not observe such high standards. That may be hypocritical but it is not unreasonable.
There seem to be far more people now then when I was young prepared to divide themselves into 2 personalities, their "own" - as parent, friend, club member etc, with people whose opinion they cared about, for selfish or altruistic reasons - and a personality which is the property of their profession/business, where it's not "their" fault that they behave dishonestly, or it's not really dishonest, to advance their employer's - and protect their own - interest by disadvantaging a category - client/customer - rather than a real, even a vulnerable, person.
Once, friends who behaved as some politicians or other high society inhabitants have done recently would have been cast off and cast out - I think of Quintin Hogg's rage at Profumo for "lying to the House" - but not now; they are protected, sympathised with, cavorted with at "pyjama parties".
Is there any going back?
Do not forget that Quintin
Do not forget that Quintin Hogg's main animus was, in fact, about the adultery itself-no doubt instigated by his first wife's infidelity. His attitude to being asked various questions by, I think, Robert Mackenzie showed an arrogance ill fitted to one purportng to represent his voters. Indeed at the same time Hugh Gaitskell (whose death, incidentally was a huge loss to the country) was conducting a liaison with Ann Fleming-and I believe Hogg had to be "reined in".
The attitude of which you complain is far from a modern phenomenon.
QHogg
"an arrogance ill fitted to one purportng to represent his voters"
Yes, that's something else again, but it's common to all politicians, though mostly more concealed. I am constantly perplexed by the lack of challenge to politicians' assertions that their right to pass any legislation they please is validated by the "democratically" arrived at will of the electorate (and especially so when in the same breath they also assert their right to favour their own "conscientious" preferences), when never has a government come to power with the support of even half of those voting, and Blair's last government pushed through legislation despite the fact that 2/3 voters and 78% of the electorate had not agreed to being ruled by them. Why is our populace so supine?