My 9 December Gazette arrived late because of inclement weather. Just as well. Last week, I was in a really bad mood. Now, I’m just cross.

So the SRA is ‘consulting’ on proposals which will see an end to the compulsory coverage of claims by mortgage lenders and so on. My recent experience of consultation by any institution (notably the Land Registry, but examples are legion) means it is going to happen anyway, but here’s a chance for you to let off steam and for us to say ‘we consulted’. But let us move on. The SRA says that ‘most’ of the 36% of firms that do not conduct residential conveyancing would benefit from lower premiums; the Association of British Insurers ‘welcomed’ the proposals.

And the Pope is catholic. What on earth is the SRA thinking? In my view, it should be seeking to exclude cover for publicly quoted companies and, oh, I don’t know, litigation, and anything else my firm does not do. I’m sure I’ll benefit from lower premiums; I neither know nor care what the ABI thinks.

Paul Marsh is quite right. This is the latest example of the SRA’s failure to understand the conveyancing market or to regulate it. Outcomes-focused regulation may sound like a good (and probably cheap) idea when it is not you who has to second guess what it actually means. But if the rather entertaining, and incomprehensible, leaflet entitled ‘Risk and compliance support’ I have received is anything to go by, it is not a world I wish to inhabit. If the SRA gets its way, I probably won’t be able to afford to.

Roll on retirement.

Jeremy Garner , Stilwell & Harby, Dover, Kent