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From reading SRA annual reports, compensation fund levies had not increased for 4 years prior to the most recent increase, yet there had been an explosion of misappropriation and fraud in the profession (and a resulting indemnity crisis) - clearly something does not stack up there. A minority of offenders in the profession cause solicitor contributions to the SRACF to have to increase. You can blame the SRA for failing to keep its house in order and for failing to bring adequate prosecutions against solicitors who raid client accounts. In the Ecohouse case none of the solicitors were struck off despite a £33m fraud, so the solicitors could offend again (actually Ecohouse was the 2nd offence for one particular solicitor involved - the SRA previously failed to prosecute him in 2012 for tax fraud when his firm was shut down by HMRC owing HMRC and its creditors £2.1m). Lack of prosecution permitted that solicitor to go on devise and perpetrate the Ecohouse fraud.

Another reason why solicitors are paying through the nose to fund the compensation scheme is that the SRA are avoiding interventions, meaning that misconduct continues for months on end because the SRA doesn't wish to infer dishonesty by intervening. Where Ecohouse was concerned the SRA never did intervene and it took them 11 months just to threaten an intervention in writing. By that time the the fraud had grown to staggering proportions and hundreds more clients had been fleeced. The SRA's inaction and failure to strike off unscrupulous solicitors is costing the majority of decent solicitors a lot of money.

So if you are looking for someone to blame for large levies, don't blame it on clients or investors who have been betrayed, blame it on solicitors who cheat them, and blame it on the SRA's tainted culture and failure to act. The SRA will soon come to realise that it is a false economy to try to avoid interventions or avoid alleging dishonesty. Where the SRA is concerned, the regulator needs to adopt the approach that "Dishonesty is the best policy".