The Solicitors Regulation Authority has gone to court for permission to destroy hundreds of thousands of files proving to be an ever-bigger drain on the regulator’s resources.

A judgment from July, published this week, reveals that the solicitors regulator applied to the High Court for authority to destroy documents which have come into its possession as a result of interventions into firms.

The last order of this nature was from 2015 and the SRA required further permission in relation to all interventions since that date.

Anthony King, technical manager in the client protection directorate of the SRA, explained that as of June 2021, almost 350,000 boxes containing around 1.4 million files were in storage. This costs 28p per box per month, adding up to £1.15m a year.

The number of boxes stored on behalf of the SRA is likely to have increased significantly since last summer’s application, with interventions into former Metamorph Group firms adding at least an extra 60,000 boxes of files, and last month’s closure of City firm Fletcher Day likely to have involved thousands of boxes.

The latest court application would result in the immediate destruction of 765,000 files, addressing storage costs which increase by 1.5% per year. King estimated that if the court approved the latest application the SRA would save around £120,000 per year.

Box of files

Almost 350,000 boxes containing around 1.4m files were in storage as of June 2021

Source: iStock

An SRA study into how often clients or interested parties ask for documents from storage suggests this is relatively rare, and less likely over time. Based on 2015 interventions, the figures show that 15,961 files were returned to clients within two years of the intervention to which they relate. Almost 200 files were returned in the sixth year following interventions, which represents only 1% of all repatriated files.

Other options were considered, including scanning files prior to destruction and writing to clients with files the SRA was seeking to destroy. Both were found to be prohibitively expensive.

Sir Anthony Mann, sitting as a High Court judge, approved the SRA application on the basis of non-original documents, but noted that the regulator may need to seek further approval for a policy of destroying original documents.

 

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