Report comment

It is a comfort to hear disparaging remarks about the SRA, the SDT's "Kangaroo Court" and the SRA CEO coming from solicitors within the professional.

There was an article in The Times earlier in the week about the SRA taking 8 years to investigate a dishonest solicitor that had been reported several times by fellow partners and other solicitors (search for "Watchdog took 8 years to ban rogue"). It is confirmation of the SRA's persistent regulatory ineptitude, despite being alerted multiple times to serious misconduct, and is confirmation of the SRA's failure to intervene to protect clients.

In the Ecohouse fraud the defaulting (and defrauding) firm were reported to the SRA for misappropriation of client funds multiple times from 1st Dec 2013 and in a flood of subsequent complaints, but the SRA did not intervene. The SRA finally threatened an intervention 11 months later in a letter to the firm, but never did intervene - this permitted misappropriation to continue and the severity of the fraud to escalate astronomically. The SRA's inaction is inflicting further loss on firm's clients in fraud cases. It begs the question "What's the point of the SRA if not to provide protection?". It is evident that the SRA ignores legitimate concerns about rogue solicitors even when they are reported from within , so lowering the reporting threshold is certain to make matters worse.

The SRA is failing to intervene because it subjects the SRA to claims through the SRACF owing to implied dishonesty resulting in PII declination. The SRA is in a conflict of interests between protecting clients from further loss and having to pay compensation from the SRACF, inevitably, conserving SRACF funds prevails and clients quite literally become the "Poor relation" due to the CEO's twisted and duplicitous sense of loyalties.

Should there be any doubt regarding the CEO's tenacity at defending the SRACF, the SRA recently denied compensation to victims of the Ecohouse fraud, leaving them with no recourse to redress after being defrauded by a UK solicitor firm through acts of enduring and intentional mass misappropriation of client funds which persisted over the course of 2.5 years.

The SRA CEO is ultimately responsible for the SRA's treachery towards legal service consumers and represents the sepsis that is rotting the SRA and the solicitor profession from within, irrevocably destroying public confidence in the legal profession, as well as any belief that the regulator is at all motivated to "Protect" at all.