Local government lawyers are pressing the Solicitors Regulation Authority to concede more ground in its proposals to lower the practising certificate fee payable by employed solicitors.

The SRA has proposed that the PC fee be split into two elements, with 40% of the costs to be recouped through an individual fee payable by both local government and private practice, and 60% paid through a ‘firm-based fee’, which would not apply to local government solicitors.

This will shift more cost onto private practice, in an acknowledgement that the employed sector costs less to regulate.

However, two prominent local government lawyers’ groups have called for a more radical 20/80 split between the individual and firm-based fee. The proposal, put forward by Solicitors in Local Government and the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors (ACSeS), would mean that local government lawyers would pay only 20% of the overall fee.

ACSeS said its members had had ‘an exceptionally poor deal’ on PC costs, and private practice had been ‘feather bedded for far too long’.