The board of the Solicitors ­Regulation Authority will decide today whether to recommend a 313% increase in compensation fund contributions in 2009/10.

SRA officers have proposed that solicitors holding clients’ money contribute £470, up from £150 last year. Last month, the regulator predicted that practitioners would have to pay a ‘significantly larger’ sum (see [2009] Gazette, 30 April, 1).

If the board endorses the increase, it will be up to the Law Society Council to make a final decision, with payment from solicitors due in November.

Last year, Chancery Lane decided to halve the SRA’s recommendation of a £300 contribution. The SRA’s paper says this year’s proposed increase ‘would have been much less had the Council accepted the board’s recommendation last year’.

The number of interventions, a last-resort measure involving the SRA sending in an agent to close a practice on grounds ranging from dishonesty to death, is expected to top 100 this year. The compensation fund has also been put on notice by a lender that it will make claims relating to more than 600 property transactions involving mortgage advances of £90m.