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Re. Anon @ 16:44, on the issue of the SRA’s costs.

Whilst we do not know precisely what the costs schedule accompanying the SRA’s claim for costs contained, we know from the judgment that the costs claimed (£50,120.58) comprised claims for an SRA Forensic Investigation Report, work of the SRA Supervision department, and the work Capsticks.

We also know that the SRA’s advocate “invited the Tribunal to make its own assessment about the number of hours claimed and to make any adjustment it considered appropriate in all the circumstances” [para 38], that no issue was taken by Mr Beach as to the Forensic Investigation Officer (FIO) costs [para 39] and that the Tribunal similarly had no issue with the FIO costs [para 40].

The Tribunal, acting upon the SRA advocate’s invitation to assess the hours claimed and adjust as it considered appropriate, likely struggled to work out where 237 hours of claimed time at £113 per hour of time had been spent when according to paragraph 39, “the majority of the statements deployed in the trial had been prepared by the Applicant’s FIO rather than Capsticks”. Having read the judgment it appears to me that the whole case was light on documents compared to many SDT cases.

Couple that big question mark about the actual time properly and productively spent with the Tribunal’s criticisms of the Rule 5 Statement (presumably prepared by Capsticks) containing “inaccuracies” (presumably over and above those corrected as a Preliminary Matter by the SRA’s advocate) which “unnecessarily complicated and prolonged the proceedings” [para 40] and such crucial matters as “the Ivey test was incorrectly quoted” (which is surely the single-most important bit for the SRA and its solicitors to get right when bringing allegations of dishonesty against a member of the profession) [para 40 again], and it becomes more easy to see why the Tribunal took a knife to the costs claimed and rather harder to see where those 237 hours – NEARLY SEVEN FULL 35 HOUR WEEKS – could have been spent preparing for a three day hearing.

In those circumstances it strikes me that the comment “The Tribunal did not consider that the costs of matters between the SRA and Capsticks Solicitors should be payable by the Respondent” is rather flattering, compared to what the Tribunal probably felt.