A solicitor has been fined for her role in a scheme that saw her former firm help clients avoid £2m worth of stamp duty land tax payments.

Kelly Buckle-Fleming has been fined £1,000 and ordered to pay £2,000 in costs after a Solicitors Regulation Authority investigation found that Leeds firm Dixon Law Solicitors had enabled clients to avoid the payments in 47 transactions.

The firm, which Buckle-Fleming was a director of from 2010 until she left in 2012, closed down in 2014.

According to the SRA, Buckle-Fleming did not tell lender clients that borrower clients were avoiding SDLT payment and acted in transactions where there was a ‘significant risk of conflict’ between the buyer and the lender.

The regulator said that if Buckle-Fleming failed to accept its findings then she would be referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.