The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) will consider scrapping proposals to charge 4,500 sole practitioners an additional practising fee of £300 a year, the Gazette has learned.

The proposals, dismissed by the Sole Practitioners Group (SPG) as ‘unbelievably blinkered’, ‘supremely arrogant’ and ‘totally inequitable’, feature in an SRA consultation paper on new forms of practice and regulation arising from the Legal Services Act. The act requires sole practitioners to be ‘recognised’ in the same way that all firms, including legal disciplinary partnerships, are to be ‘recognised bodies’.

The document argues that recognition of sole practitioners involves extra cost because, unlike solicitors joined in a practice, they must be assessed on their ability to run their own firm. The SRA thus proposes that it is fair to charge sole practitioners the same as law firms.

SPG chairman Hamish McNair (pictured) described the proposal as ‘utterly disproportionate. How can it be right to charge a sole practitioner and Clifford Chance, for example, the same sum? Surely a magic circle firm is hugely more complex to regulate than a one-person practice.’

Janis Purdy, a former chairwoman of the SPG, described the charges as a revenue-raising exercise. ‘The SRA has simply plucked the figures out of a hat,’ she said.

David O’Hagen, who chairs the SPG’s professional sub-committee, asked: ‘Why should we be penalised in this way? This is yet another example of the government’s complete lack of understanding of the legal profession.’

SPG member Clive Sutton called on the Law Society to protest on behalf of sole practitioners. ‘You don’t need to think very hard to see it is inequitable to equate an individual with a huge City firm,’ he said.

SRA chief executive Antony Townsend, responding to the group’s criticisms, said the SRA had proposed the £300 as an interim solution pending a more comprehensive review of fees to take effect from 2010. It had expected to approve the fee at today’s board meeting. ‘But in light of the representations we have received from representatives of sole practitioners, the SRA will look again at the ?proposal,’ he added.

Law Society President Paul Marsh said he did not believe it justifiable to increase substantially the burden on sole practitioners. ‘I also note that this new charge will have a disproportionate impact on ethnic minority solicitors who are over-represented among smaller firms,’ he said. ‘I have written to the chairman of the SRA board, urging him to reconsider the proposal.’